Industrial manufacturing
A test suite that had never passed, repaired and extended
The browser suite went from reporting nothing to catching real defects, with a unit and integration layer behind it.
See the project ↗Services / Modernization and rescue
Make your next change feel possible.
Rescue slow, fragile software with focused improvements your team can understand, review, and keep building on.
Does this sound familiar?
A good fit when…
- Nobody trusts the tests or wants to touch the code
- Small changes turn into difficult releases
- A growing system has become expensive to run
From the problem to the handover
What we’ll build.
What you’ll keep.
There is code nobody wants to open. Tests fail or do not exist, releases are slow, and every change feels like a gamble. Either the business slowly stops asking for changes, or it keeps asking and the changes pile up on the main branch until everyone can agree to a release, which then ships them all at once, where they step on each other.
- 01 / Deliverable
Large files and tangled modules split into focused ones, following SOLID principles
- 02 / Deliverable
Databases refactored in place: schemas, indexes and migrations reworked without stopping the business
- 03 / Deliverable
A test suite brought from failing or missing to trusted and fast
- 04 / Deliverable
Build and release pipelines that run on every change and fail loudly
- 05 / Deliverable
Dependencies brought up to current supported versions, so security fixes arrive as routine pull requests
- 06 / Deliverable
Legacy processes moved to managed cloud services where it lowers cost
How we get there
- 01
Get access, read the code and run it, so the work starts from the system as it is and not from a description of it.
- 02
Measure code health, test results and release times before touching anything.
- 03
Restructure in small steps with the tests green the whole way, through your normal review process.
- 04
Put every change through tests, a pull request with an AI-paired review and CI/CD, so releases go out small and often instead of piling up into one risky deployment.
- 05
Measure again with the same tools and write down the before and after, so the improvement is a number.
Experience you can inspect
Similar challenges.
Concrete outcomes.
Earlier work that informs how I approach this service. Each engagement has its own scope.
Before we start
A few useful answers.
Bring one recent change that was harder than it should have been. We’ll talk through the code, tests, releases, and business constraints behind it.
More about working together ↗Does modernization mean a rewrite?
Rarely. Most rescue work restructures the code in place, in small steps behind tests, so the business keeps running the whole time. A rewrite is proposed only when the measurements show it is the cheaper path.
Does that include the database?
Yes. Data is where most business software lives or dies, so modernization covers the schema too: tables split or consolidated, indexes tuned to the queries people actually run, and every change shipped as a versioned migration with a way back.
How is the improvement measured?
With the same tools on the same code before and after: code health scores, test counts, type errors and pipeline timings. On one engagement the repository's code health moved from 7.91 to 9.53 and its worst file from 1.0 to 6.05.
Can the work lower our cloud bill?
Often. By my own account from that role, with no proof page, moving four legacy processes to cloud-native services on AWS cut the runtime for the same work by more than 90% and the cloud cost by 85%.
Can Aternex work alongside our developers?
Yes. Austin can join your repositories, tools and review routine on contract or as a full-time hire, or Aternex can take a defined problem and own it from investigation to production.