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Brownfields Project Rescue

We get it: some­times soft­ware goes wrong. Whether its be­cause of missed dead­lines, tech­ni­cal chal­lenges or a mis­un­der­stand­ing of user needs, we can pro­vide the pro­ject lead­er­ship and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise to re­solve the sit­u­a­tion.

Why do soft­ware pro­jects fail?

Our teams are well-versed in pulling pro­jects back from the brink. In our ex­pe­ri­ence, pro­ject dif­fi­cul­ties of­ten arise from sit­u­a­tions such as:

  • Poor pro­ject scop­ing, re­sult­ing in soft­ware which does­n’t ben­e­fit the end user
  • Offshore or out­sourced de­vel­op­ment with lit­tle to no qual­ity con­trol
  • A re­la­tion­ship break­down be­tween the de­vel­op­ers and the prod­uct own­ers

Generally, any pro­ject which comes to us in a trou­bling state will be scoped by our team. This allows our prod­uct de­sign­ers and de­vel­op­ers to gain a deep un­der­stand­ing of the soft­ware, as well as iden­tify risks.

At the con­clu­sion of scope, you are able to de­velop the new and im­proved soft­ware with us or shop around for an­other de­vel­oper — you’re in con­trol of your I.P.

Proceeding with your Brownfields Project

Option 1: Continue de­vel­op­ing the Brownfields Application

Risks:

  • Slow ve­loc­ity
  • Significant tech­ni­cal debt
  • Poor per­form­ing ap­pli­ca­tion

This is the eas­i­est so­lu­tion in the short term but has the least busi­ness value long term. WorkingMouse will only con­tinue sup­port­ing a Brownfields ap­pli­ca­tion if there is an im­me­di­ate plan to re­build.



Option 2: Migrate the ap­pli­ca­tion code to a newer tech stack

Risks:

  • Same prob­lems, newer tech­nol­ogy
  • Migration risks

Converting your old code to a newer tech stack seems like a log­i­cal fix, but in re­al­ity is trad­ing one prob­lem for an­other. Documentation, changes to busi­ness processes and deal­ing with legacy code now in a new lan­guage all have im­pli­ca­tions on the long-term suc­cess of the ap­pli­ca­tion. For that rea­son, WorkingMouse does not use any lan­guage mi­gra­tion tools.



Option 3: Rebuild the ap­pli­ca­tion

Risks:

  • People/software fit
  • Rushing the re­build

The third op­tion is to mi­grate the brown­fields pro­ject to a brand-new code­base. This is the process of turn­ing an un­der­per­form­ing Brownfields pro­ject into a mod­ern, state of the art ap­pli­ca­tion. In or­der to achieve this WorkingMouse com­pletes a re­build us­ing the ex­ist­ing ap­pli­ca­tion as a base­line.

Our Process to Rescuing Projects

Step 1: Support the ex­ist­ing ap­pli­ca­tion

We of­fer fixed term sup­port ap­pli­ca­tions that we have not de­vel­oped. This al­lows the busi-ness process to be sta­bilised whilst the new ap­pli­ca­tion is be­ing built. It also means we can ac­cess the knowl­edge of the old legacy sys­tem. To do this, we have a rule­set that the ap­pli­ca­tion must qual­ify for. Most im­por­tantly, there must be plans to re­build within the next 6 -12 months.



Step 2: Scope the new so­lu­tion

To avoid the mis­takes of the past and en­sure we don’t need to go through the res­cue process again, it’s im­por­tant to scope out a so­lu­tion. It gives us an op­por­tu­nity to de­ter­mine what went well with the ex­ist­ing sys­tem and what could be im­proved mov­ing for­ward.



Step 3: Develop, re­lease and mi­grate

Lastly, it’s now time to de­velop. When de­vel­op­ing we fol­low our Way of Working. This en-sures a con­sisted and de-risked ag­ile ap­proach to de­liv­ery. Using the Codebots tech­nol­ogy en­ables us to lever­age a plat­form that ex­cels at Brownfields mi­gra­tions. A care­ful data mi­gra­tion is re­quired be­fore mov­ing across to the new ap­pli­ca­tion.

Digital trans­for­ma­tion

Digital trans­for­ma­tion can be a broad term, and there are many pos­si­ble ways of achiev­ing this. Are you strug­gling to main­tain a re­la­tion­ship with an ex­ter­nal ven­dor?

Are you be­ing dragged down by tech­ni­cal debt? Or are you stuck in a rut with off-the-shelf soft­ware which leaves you no room to in­no­vate?

Our scop­ing teams will in­ves­ti­gate your soft­ware and busi­ness processes to get to the heart of the is­sue. This will en­able us to pro­vide you op­tions for how best to pro­ceed

Learn more about Digital Transformation

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