Case Study: Legacy Application Modernization

Enterprise Iron Financial Industry Solutions, Inc.
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BUSINESS PROBLEM

Enterprise Iron (EI) and a Partner company teamed up to engage a Federal Government Agency seeking to modernize a legacy application that had previously been transformed from COBOL to a proprietary pseudo-object-oriented language.

The resultant code was very difficult to maintain, and the Agency wished to refactor the proprietary code into modern Object-Oriented Java.

The combined team delivered Object-Oriented Java code that meets industry and federal standards, is easily maintained for future releases, and removes the proprietary run-time libraries, thereby reducing application cost.

The team worked alongside the Agency’s Technology Staff to analyze and document the current environment and together, shaped the object-oriented future state.

EI’s Architects, Development, and QA teams provided guidance and manpower to drive delivery of the year long project.

EI was able to shift gears and modify the legacy design as the Agency made multiple architectural changes to their required framework.

OUR SOLUTION

EI and our Partner determined the optimal programs for the first stage for the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) to understand the Agency’s environment and agreed upon the architecture and framework to use moving forward.

Together, we developed a schedule for the remaining code base over twelve (12) Sprints to be completed over the course of a year. These Sprints included the coding and QA testing of the new Object-Oriented Java code in the Agency’s desired framework.

EI identified and developed an automated process that created objects to process all input and output of sequential files and databases. This allowed the Development Team to concentrate on converting the business logic and greatly reduced the program conversion time.

Throughout the project, EI’s Agile based development process was flexible enough to identify patterns that shortened development cycle, increase run time efficiency, and seamlessly incorporate multiple modifications to the Agency’s framework specifications.

RESULTS & CLIENT BENEFITS

Together, EI and our Partner delivered an easily maintainable, Object-Oriented Java application to the Federal Agency.

Our Team stayed on with the Agency throughout the process of parallel and performance testing to ensure the new application operated efficiently and exactly as the legacy application performed.

Key components of the modernized application include:

  • An Object-Oriented Java application in the Agency’s desired framework
  • Exact replication of the legacy application on the Java platform
  • Agency’s Development and Support Teams were trained in supporting and enhancing the new application and ELM application for issue resolution
  • Recommendations for further improving and streamlining the application
  • “Lessons Learned” documentation garnered throughout the modernization process will be utilized while the Agency refactors the remaining applications