Application assessment and roadmap
Find out what each of your applications needs, what the change will cost and what it will return, before you commit a budget.
Decide with evidence, not instinct
Modernisation budgets tend to follow the loudest complaint rather than the biggest opportunity. A structured assessment fixes that by looking at every application through the same three lenses: what it is worth to the business, how healthy its technology is, and how risky it would be to change.
The result is a recommended route for each application, a roadmap that sequences the work by value and dependency, and a business case that management, the board and your auditors can follow.
When an assessment pays off
01
Nobody has the full picture
Owners, versions, dependencies and support dates live in people's heads and old spreadsheets.
02
A platform decision is coming
A hardware refresh, a data-centre move, a cloud plan or the end of a vendor contract forces a choice.
03
The auditors are asking
Findings about unsupported software, weak access control or untested recovery need a credible plan.
04
The budget can't cover everything
There is money to modernise, but not for every system at once, and you need to know where to start.
What we look at
Every assessment covers the same ground, scaled to one system or a whole portfolio.
Inventory and ownership
Every application with its owners, users, versions, hosting, licences and support dates, in one register that you keep.
Code and architecture
Static analysis of the source for size, complexity, outdated libraries, known vulnerabilities and blockers to containers or cloud.
Dependencies and data flows
Which systems call which, which share databases and which batch jobs run when, so nothing breaks in a move.
Business value and risk
Interviews with business owners about how critical each system is, the demand for change and the cost of an outage.
Infrastructure and cost
Servers, storage, licences, support contracts and staff time, as the baseline for the business case.
Security and compliance
Gaps against your own policies and regulator guidance, such as Bangladesh Bank's ICT security guideline for banks.
How we score
Business value against technical health
We place every application on two axes: how much it matters to the business, and how healthy its technology is. Where it lands sets its broad direction. The detailed route then comes from its dependencies, risk and cost.
- Invest
- High value, healthy technology. Keep improving it.
- Modernise
- High value, weak technology. Usually the first priority.
- Tolerate
- Low value, healthy technology. Leave it alone for now.
- Eliminate
- Low value, weak technology. Retire or replace it.
How an assessment runs
01
Scope and collect
Agree which applications are in scope, then gather inventories, source code, architecture documents and monitoring data.
02
Analyse
Scan the code, map dependencies, review infrastructure and security, and interview owners and support teams.
03
Score and route
Score each application on value and health, and recommend one of eight routes with its effort, risk and benefit.
04
Roadmap and business case
Group applications into waves, sequence them by value and dependency, and estimate cost, savings and timeline.
What you get
- An application register with owners, technology, dependencies and support dates
- A technical health scorecard for each application
- A recommended route for each application, with the reasoning
- Target architecture and platform options
- A wave plan and roadmap with milestones and dependencies
- A business case covering cost, savings, risks and quick wins
- A summary for management and the board
Tools we use
Automated analysis does the counting; interviews and workshops supply the judgement.
- SonarQube
- OWASP Dependency-Check
- Trivy
- Syft SBOMs
- Konveyor
- Red Hat Migration Toolkit for Applications
- Network flow and APM data
- CMDB and licence exports
- Architecture workshops
Questions about assessments
How long does an assessment take?
A single system usually takes a few weeks. A portfolio takes longer, depending on the number of applications and how quickly we can reach the code, the documents and the people who know them.
Do you need our source code?
It gives the best results, and we can work on your premises and systems under your NDA. Where there is no code, as with many vendor packages, we assess from documentation, configuration and how the system behaves in production.
Is the assessment tied to buying a product?
No. Our recommendations are vendor-neutral, and some applications will be best left exactly where they are.
What happens after the assessment?
You own the results and can act on them with any partner. Many clients ask us to modernise one application first, as a pilot that proves the approach before the rest follow.
Plan your modernisation with evidence
Tell us which applications worry you most and what is driving the change. We'll propose a scope and a timeline for the assessment.