See How JetThoughts Helped Crosslake Transform a Legacy Software Project & Gain Control Over a Complex Codebase

Crosslake is a technology advisory services firm that include consultant-led, self-administered evaluations of a company’s adherence to industry best practices.

Crosslake envisioned a transformation of their software project from a complex legacy codebase in need of improvements to a high-quality product that’s easier to support.

In addition, Crosslake knew they were in need of more experienced technical resources and desired to evolve their internal development processes to meet industry best practices.

They initially reached out to JetThoughts to take over responsibility for ongoing architecture and development for a proprietary software in need of a technical owner.

The challenge

After the original developer of this software moved on, Crosslake had to assign new development resources to replace the creator and continue the project without any considerable disruptions.

With little documentation for a legacy codebase with many redundancies, Crosslake quickly realized that the junior developers they assigned to the project weren’t equipped to handle the situation.

In addition, the codebase’s complexity combined with the “bus factor” of lost knowledge made the maintenance and development processes very time-consuming.

The solution

JetThoughts provided a full-time senior-level CTO & architect to help guide the project and act as a virtual extension of Crosslake’ development team.

In addition, we provided a dedicated project advisor to bring real-time visibility into progress and ensure alignment with the leadership team at Crosslake.

From the very beginning of the engagement, JetThoughts provided Crosslake’ team with deep technical guidance based on decades of experience to help ensure a successful outcome.

We started the project with a kick-off meeting where we set expectations for the engagement, learned about the software idea, and aligned around a winning strategy.

To provide clarity into process & outcomes, we aligned around a simple development framework that enabled Crosslake to monitor budget & maximize the value delivered by our team.

Throughout the entirety of the engagement, we kept the team composition flexible to the specific needs and circumstances that Crosslake faced.

Outcome

• Reduced releases cycle from 2 months to every 3 weeks.
• Dropped average request processing time from 5 to 0.5 sec.
• Reduced average deployment time from 1 hour to 15 min.