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Legacy systems
The developer of our software has left
← Legacy systems
First secure what you need in order to continue at all: the source code, the licences, the build environment, the database and the knowledge nobody wrote down. As long as those five are complete, the application is transferable and you have time to decide calmly what happens next.
Five things to secure
- The source code
- Not just the latest version but the whole project: scripts, report definitions and installer files that do not sit inside the application itself.
- The licences
- For the development environment and for third-party components. Without them a successor cannot even compile the application.
- The build environment
- Which version of the development environment, which components, which settings? Record how source code becomes a working application.
- The database
- The structure and a recent copy, plus the scripts and scheduled tasks that run around it.
- What lived in someone's head
- Passwords, certificates, where the server is, who does the hosting, which integrations exist. This is the part that evaporates fastest.
What you do not have to decide yet
- Replace or not
- That question comes later. First make sure the choice still exists.
- Who takes it over
- An application that is properly documented can be picked up by several parties. That is precisely your negotiating position.
What we do
- Work through the source code
- We read the code, document how it works and put everything under version control.
- Make it buildable again
- Setting up an environment in which the application can be compiled and deployed once more.
- Only then develop further
- Fixing and extending — or coaching your own developers so the knowledge stays in house.
This is not only a Delphi problem. The same five points apply to an old web application, an Access database, or an AS/400 environment whose administrator has retired.
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