Professional services
Application development and maintenance, including what happens after launch
Building software is the smaller half. Most of an application's cost and nearly all of its life happen after go-live, which is the part most proposals skip.
The situation
The application nobody is responsible for
Software delivered without an owner degrades quietly. Dependencies age, small faults accumulate, and the people who understand it move on.
- An application whose original developers have gone
- Dependencies years out of date, some no longer supported
- Faults reported by users rather than by monitoring
- Small changes that take weeks because nobody dares touch it
- No test suite, so every change is a risk
- A supplier who built it and has since become unresponsive
What it covers
What this covers
New development
Building applications, in increments, against requirements that are written down.
Taking on existing applications
Adopting software somebody else built, including when documentation is thin and the original team has gone.
Support and incident response
Agreed response times and a route to someone who can actually fix it rather than log it.
Updates and patching
Keeping dependencies, frameworks and platforms current, which is the work that prevents an emergency later.
Ongoing improvement
A steady flow of enhancement rather than a large project every three years.
Monitoring
Knowing something is wrong before a user tells you.
How we work
How maintenance engagements start
Taking on unfamiliar software starts with understanding it. Anyone who quotes support on a codebase they have not read is guessing.
Review the codebase
Read what exists: structure, dependencies, test coverage, deployment, and the known problems.
Stabilise
Fix the urgent, get deployment reliable, and put monitoring in place so problems surface on their own.
Reduce the risk
Update dependencies, add tests where change is most frequent, and document what nobody wrote down.
Improve steadily
Move to a regular flow of enhancement, which is cheaper and less disruptive than periodic large projects.
Outcomes
What you are left with
- A named team responsible for the application
- Dependencies current, and a routine that keeps them current
- Faults found by monitoring rather than reported by users
- Tests where change is most frequent, so changes are safer
- Documentation adequate for a new developer to start
- Steady improvement instead of a large project every few years
Platforms and tooling
What we work with
Platforms
- .NET
- Java
- Node.js
- Python
- PHP
- React
- Angular
Operations
- Azure
- AWS
- Docker
- CI/CD
- Monitoring
Practice
- Automated testing
- Static analysis
- Dependency management
- Documentation
Named as platforms we work with, not as formal partnerships.
Common questions
Questions we are usually asked
Yes, and it is a large part of what we do. It starts with reading the codebase rather than quoting from a description, because the honest scope only becomes clear once you can see what is actually there.
Most inherited code is, to some degree. That is a starting point rather than a barrier: stabilise first, then reduce risk in the areas that change most often. Rewriting because the code is untidy is rarely justified on its own.
Usually a retained arrangement covering agreed response times and a volume of change, sized to the application. What matters is agreeing beforehand what counts as support and what counts as new development, because that boundary causes most disputes.
Yes, unfortunately. Dependencies acquire security vulnerabilities, platforms deprecate versions, and browsers change. An application left untouched for three years is not stable; it is accumulating an upgrade you will have to do all at once.
You should be able to. Code in your repositories, deployment in your accounts, documentation written for someone who has not met us. A supplier relying on lock-in rather than being worth keeping is a supplier you should be able to leave.
Yes. Adding capacity, covering a specialism, or taking a self-contained part of the estate are all common arrangements.
Talk to someone who has built this
Not a salesperson working from a form. Tell us what the problem looks like and someone who has delivered this kind of work will come back to you, usually within one working day.
Book a free consultationRelated
Where this usually connects
- Agile and DevOpsShorter release cycles and a build pipeline you can rely on.
- Legacy modernisationFor the system nobody wants to touch but everything depends on.
- HostingManaged hosting for the systems we build and the ones you already run.
- Cloud servicesMoving to cloud, or making an existing cloud estate behave.
- Bespoke business applicationsSoftware shaped around how you work, when nothing off the shelf fits.
- Project managementDelivery run by people accountable for the outcome.