Strategies for Software Reengineering

Technologies develop quickly, and as a result, a system created several years ago can hardly meet today’s demands. End users will not tolerate poor performance, errors or other signs of aging software. A system can also appear obsolete if it is unable to process an increasing amount of data, difficulties in system maintenance and expanding functionality are present as well as complicated or impossible integration with the latest technologies and systems. In these cases, a question about system reengineering can be raised.

System reengineering is the process of improving existing software (refactoring) or creating new software with the same functionality, changing the system architecture and/or the data structure, adding functionality and updating stack of deprecated technologies.

A key element of reengineering is to increase the company’s business value and to improve the source code quality. Depending on source code quality and business value, you may need business processes reengineering, software reengineering or complete rewriting (redeveloping).

The following strategies can be used when reengineering a software system:

• Upgrading source code to the newest language version. It is possible and makes sense if the system is not too outdated and updating the programming language version can influence the system’s performance significantly.
• Implementing the Enterprise Knowledge Management System project, the first step the INSART team took was to optimize the application performance by upgrading the Java version to more optimized solutions.
  
• Step by step modification of old components to new ones were created considering possible high loads, demands for functionality and scalability and technologies used. In this case, the system’s architecture and data structure can be transformed slightly.
• The next step in the Enterprise Knowledge Management System project was modifying component after component to enable usage of new technologies and to expand functionality. This method of reengineering allowed us to customize the application functionality according to new requirements.
• Creating a completely new system considering the functionality of the legacy system that should be saved. In this case, the system’s architecture and data structure can differ significantly from the earlier implementation and the technologies used can be completely different.
• Having maintained the Remote Device Management system, the INSART team worked out and suggested a strategy of reengineering it to increase performance, make it more scalable and simplify its maintenance. While going through the process of reengineering, most technologies were changed, the system’s architecture was redesigned and database structure was replaced with a more convenient one.
  
• Creating a new system considering new and/or updated business processes. This method of reengineering is extremely important if the legacy software does not comply with all business processes.
• When reengineering the Online Marketing Platform, some new business processes were added. Also, the INSART team participated in selecting the most suitable technologies and developing the system that met all requirements for functionality, performance, scalability and reliability.

To stay afloat in any industry, businesses have to keep up with contemporary trends and technologies to meet the expectations of users and customers. That’s why reengineering is a necessity.

When you choose the best option of reengineering your system, you should consider possible problems that may arise, advantages that will appear and the budget of the planned changes; the cost of reengineering the system and maintaining a new one can be much less than the cost of maintaining the current system over time.

The IT team chosen for reengineering should have adequate expertise and be skilled in analyzing and examining your current system to work out the best strategy for its reengineering on the basis of requirements, and to implement this process on a high level. INSART has experience in reengineering and can provide full research, justify the most adequate changes for your system and implement your requirements.