With the pace of technological innovation,
applications might become unadapted to integrate newer
technologies or connect to the outside world. Because natural
evolution of a software application tends to make it less
efficient, obscure, and costly to update and maintain,
modernization becomes complicated or impossible due to a lack
of understanding of its internal structure.
Our specific approach begins with an assessment step, where the target information system is equipped with software probes allowing to accurately monitor its behavior. This audit stage is done with standardized tools, which are integral part of the project.
The result of this preliminary analysis, and its tools, are part of the project deliverables. The development team is therefore able to autonomously resume this analysis at any moment. The team is strongly encouraged to use the same monitoring tools during the rest of the project.
Decisions of refactoring are based on the
results returned by this study stage. During further
development projects, they are continuously used to check the
validity of the preliminary analysis.
The investigation tools can be:
These tools are designed to fit into Survol framework and are continuously used during the lifecycle of the project, of which they are an integral part. If, based on the investigation stage, no decision of software renovation is taken, or further developments are postponed, the monitoring tools are a significant deliverable in terms of documentation and self-analysis capability, and an investment usable for later software maintenance.