Modernising a business application

An organisation running a long-lived application that only one or two people fully understand. [Placeholder: replace with the real client context, with permission.]

Changes were slow and risky, releases were manual and nobody was confident about recovery.

• Fragile manual deployments
• Little documentation and few people who understand the code
• Backups that had never been tested by restoring

• The application must keep running throughout
• Each stage must be reversible
• Existing data must be preserved and verified
• Knowledge must transfer to the client's team

A staged plan. First assess the architecture and dependencies, then secure backups and automate deployment, then modernise the highest-risk components one at a time.

• Architecture and dependency assessment
• Tested backups and recovery steps
• Automated, repeatable deployments
• Staged component upgrades with rollback plans

What Medici Labs does

• Architecture assessment and modernisation plan
• Backup, deployment and environment set-up
• Staged implementation and testing
• Documentation and knowledge transfer

What the client provides

• Provide access and knowledge of how the application is used
• Agree priorities and acceptable downtime windows
• Approve each stage before it goes live

Illustrative scenario. No measured results exist for this example. For a real project this section reports verified outcomes only.

Intended aims

• Improved maintainability
• Safer, repeatable releases
• A manageable path to future enhancements

Fixing backups first lowers the risk of every later step. Next steps could include moving hosting to the cloud.