Web Application Audit: first step towards new requirements

Does this feel familiar? The user interface is out of date, the performance reminds more of a carriage instead of a hyperloop, the conversion rate is dropping year after year and the cool features have to give way to maintenance. Everyone knows it, no one is saying it. It’s inevitable. The software needs to be rewritten. Budget managers are already shivering at these thoughts.

In the blog article, we describe why rewriting software is not necessarily the way to go and how the targeted measures of a web application audit can help you to make your software sustainable again without using up the budget for the next five years.

Evaluating Year Rings in Software in a Structured Way

Just as the human world is changing, so are the influences that affect software. Humans, age. But how does software age?

Whether it’s moving to the cloud, new technologies, new features, policies, standards, and other legal issues, the factors that affect software are many and varied. All of these factors, and many more, impact software in its lifecycle and cause the software to fail to meet requirements.

The problems that arise from this are multi-faceted. The user experience is not intuitive. The user interface is outdated. Potential security vulnerabilities cannot be fixed or can only be fixed with a lot of effort. The loading times of the application are high and the architecture is difficult to combine with modern technologies. The effects are also strongly felt in the maintenance of the systems. The operation and development process are costly and when it comes to code quality, often the only constant is inconsistency. It is no wonder that at this point many think that a new implementation of the software is inevitable. But not all investments made in the past have to be written off immediately. Often it is already enough to renew the facade and maintain the solid core.

Analyze individual action items with a structured methodology in the key areas of performance, architecture, security, user experience, code quality and development process. We also highlight these in our Web Application Audit. The goal here: In close coordination with you, we find the most urgent areas for action. Our first step is to identify the biggest pain points that external and internal influencing factors have created over the years. Only when the pain points are clear can we address them with targeted measures. Based on these measures, the next steps can then be taken and informed decisions made.

Expertise remains trump

But software is complex. Your domain is complex. You don’t just go in, do an audit of a domain you don’t understand, then hand in a paper and move on. IT only works together – hand in hand. That’s why we use specialist workshops to get to know your business area and your specialist problems. Because only those who understand the business can make well-founded technical decisions. In the next step and building on this, we devote ourselves to the technical side. Structured workshop formats with targeted questions for your experts help to identify the technical problems. The consolidated results are then processed in the second phase. Partially, further workshops as well as tool-supported evaluations are carried out in order to completely penetrate the problems until the potentials fully emerge. Software is individual, which is why we also determine the duration of the individual phases individually.

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In a concluding workshop, you will receive a well-founded catalogue of measures to bring precisely these potentials to life and thus prepare them for a flourishing future. The catalogue of measures contains various recommendations addressed to different stakeholders. Together, we derive a prioritization based on the benefits, regardless of whether you yourself, another partner or we continue to support your project.

In addition to the catalogue of measures for your web application from your web application audit, you create transparency about the state of your application. Transparency is important for us, too. We will be happy to provide details on pricing and procedures upon request (via contact form or e-mail).

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