We recognize that you might want guidance as to which portions of your application need refactoring. We find that the 80/20 rule usually applies, in that 80% of the benefit is obtained by 20% of the effort. We would like to help you target your resources at the portions of the application that will provide you with the most business benefit.

During the application baseline, we work with you and your staff to get an understanding of what the application does and how it is organized. We get your perspective on the problems you face, both at a business level and a technical level. We take a copy of your source code repository for your application and any automated tests. If your unit tests require external resources (e.g., Databases) in order to run, we’ll take a copy of those as well. These items are needed so that our forensic tools can be used to assist our analysis. We also take reports of your current backlog (e.g., Jira or Trac) and outstanding reported defects. And of course we’ll be happy to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Some of the information we look at in forming our recommendations:

  • Planned enhancements
  • Code volatility: which portions change the most frequently
  • Code coverage: which portions are covered by automated tests
  • Code complexity: which portions are the most complex
  • Review of application code
  • Review of application backlog and reported defects.

We always recommend doing an application baseline as a first step. The price of this analysis is usually a fraction of what the entire refactoring will cost. It also gives you a chance to decide which tasks your staff will handle and which tasks you would like assistance with.

Please contact us if you have questions or want to get started.