Custom or customized software is the beating heart of most enterprises, from airlines to insurers. Like any valuable business asset, your in-house software systems need regular care and maintenance to ensure they’re fully operational and optimized.
Not only is well-maintained software cheaper to run, it’s much easier for developers to innovate and iterate on. Here’s what you can do to cut costs without compromising on quality.
Avoid the pitfalls of custom software ownership
Maintenance is a necessity when running any kind of IT system. But the more time devs spend fixing bugs and errors, the less time they have to innovate new features and functionality. We’ve written before about the burden of technical debt and the impact it can have on your mission-critical systems if not properly managed.
When the scales tip toward an unhealthy level of technical debt, innovation naturally slows down. Devs are so preoccupied with fixing bugs and errors that there’s little time left over for making improvements and adding new features. This also comes with another cost – motivation. If devs are spending all their time putting out fires, it won’t be long until they’re looking elsewhere for more creative opportunities – and you suddenly lose valuable expertise.
A maintainable codebase makes innovation easier
Software never sits still. Sales teams on the frontline are usually the first to gain insights into customer needs from prospects who are comparing products and services. There’s always a competitive need to add new features and functionality.
With developers spending more time on touching up old code and less time building new features, it will take much longer to get new features to market. When code is less maintainable, development slows down and scalability is hindered. Maintainable software not only makes innovation easier – it’s also easier for new developers to understand and work with.
Get independent fact-based insights into your codebase
Bringing in an independent expert to measure and report on the state of your code base is a useful way to surface relevant data and meaningful insights into software quality, including the amount of new code added within a certain time period.
This type of report gives nontechnical and technical team members a common language to talk about custom code, its quality, and the ongoing cost of ownership. Visualized in easy-to-understand dashboards, you can see, at a glance, key performance indicators such as its maintainability, the level of technical debt, and the rate of productivity.
Not only that, BonCode’s tool-based consultancy measures software quality across an entire portfolio of custom-coded systems and multiple technologies, not just a single software project. The more relevant data you have on your codebase, the better your overall view of the situation. Source code analysis can empower your organization in two key ways:
- Better management of your software portfolio based on facts
- People from different backgrounds get the same understanding of the costs involved
BonCode’s tooling and reporting give you clear insights into the quality and cost of your custom-coded systems so that everyone from finance to IT can have a meaningful discussion about software budgets based on facts.
To discover how BonCode can help you mitigate the costs of running custom software systems, book a call
