I agree with the advice of moving the project forward release by release. With that said, it might be useful to create a new project from the django-admin start

I agree with the advice of moving the project forward release by release. With that said, it might be useful to create a new project from the django-admin startproject template, and then add your apps back in. Starting at 1.7, getting everything working and then doing it again with 1.10 would be my recommendation. YMMV though.