How to Maximize the Value of Your Custom Software Application

Posted by Donald Bickel
2
Sep 16, 2024
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If your business has invested in a custom software application, you likely want to do all you can to maximize its lifespan. Getting the most value out of your application doesn’t happen on its own: continual maintenance is required.

To keep custom applications – that are the result of a custom software and .NET development – from becoming outdated, certain best practices should be followed. Small, routine tweaks can prolong the life of your application, significantly reduce technical debt, and forestall the need for premature legacy application modernization.

You can get the most out of your custom application by following the four best practices below.

1. Refactor Your Code

As the needs of an application evolve, technology advances, and engineers cycle through projects, it isn’t uncommon for legacy codebases to become cluttered. This clutter can overcomplicate code, confuse engineers, and, ultimately, impact the functionality of your application.

To avoid the snags that come along with clutter, it is advisable to routinely refactor code. When code is refactored, it is restructured or reorganized, but the functionality of the application remains unchanged. Refactored code is, generally, much easier to maintain than cluttered code – and allows engineers to fix bugs or add new features more quickly and easily.

Simple ways to refactor code include:

  • Renaming elements
  • Breaking code into more focused modules
  • Editing out redundant code
  • Improving the structure of the code
  • Maintaining documentation that explains the code

2. Add New Features

Updating the functionality of an application is an easy way to satisfy new business requirements without a complete overhaul. If you have a product roadmap, adhere to it. If you don’t have a product roadmap, assess the needs of your users by identifying patterns in their request and support tickets.

Before working on or implementing a new feature, do your due diligence:

  • Gather Requirements: clearly define the value of new features or functions
  • Assess the Impact on Current Functionality: ensure updates won’t upset stability or existing performance
  • Consider New Maintenance Requirements: to determine whether your team has capacity for an increased workload
  • Thoroughly Test New Features: to make sure they work as desired

3. Improve Security

To maximize the value and lifespan of your application, you must prioritize security. Applications with faulty security – or those that fail to comply with industry and other standards – are all but guaranteed to diminish the trust of your users.

Routine steps you can take to bolster the security of your application include:

  • Routinely audit your application’s security
  • Identify vulnerabilities by running security assessments
  • Guard against foreseeable threats with security controls like encryption and authentication
  • Ensure adherence to regulatory standards

4. Continually Optimize Your Application

In general, applications that are routinely optimized perform better, scale more easily, and have longer lifespans than those that are not. While a number of best practices may be leveraged to optimize your app’s performance and ability to scale, here are some common best practices:

  • Pinpoint pitfalls by monitoring the performance of your application
  • Refine queries, so they may be handled more efficiently
  • Improve performance by frequently caching
  • Distribute traffic, via load balancing
  • Increase your application’s capacity by scaling horizontally

When to Modernize Your Application

Adhering to the best practices outlined above will help you maximize the performance of your custom software application – and extend its lifespan. But, while these standards will allow you to get the most value out of your application, no product lasts forever.

If your application requires a major upgrade, or experiences existential performance issues, it may be time to modernize your application. Regardless of whether a significant overhaul or routine tweaks and maintenance are needed, your goals should remain unchanged: to continuously deliver a secure, efficient and streamlined experience for your users.

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