brownfield

Starting a new job focused on brownfield application refactoring & Agile

I am starting a new job on Monday. The company has a home grown enterprise case management application written in ASP.NET/VB.NET. They are attempting to implement an Agile development process. They have gone so far as to get two people Scrum Master certified and hire an Agile coach. They are currently focused on 6-9 months of refactoring...

Best Approach to Brownfield Database Development in SQL Server 2000/2005

I've recently taken over development on a SQL Server 2000 database that needs some help. We're planning on upgrading it to SQL Server 2005 soon. This database has no audit fields on the tables (CreatedBy, CreatedDate, etc.), no foreign keys, and terrible overall design. There are half a dozen programs that directly access the database...

Considering a new Rails app with existing data (not a db, actual data) -- what is the best way to proceed?

I have been tasked with developing a new retail e-commerce storefront for my current job, and I am considering tackling it with RoR to A) Build a "real" project with my limited Rails knowledge, and B) Give management quick turnaround and feedback (they are wanting to get this done ASAP and their deadlines are rather unrealistic - I'm tal...

Finding out how a developer handles brownfields projects

I'm doing some job interviews for the first time for my replacement. I want to know how they would approach a brownfields project, but am not really sure how to phrase the question. I'd like to know what their attitude is: e.g. throw out and rewrite, use a tool to refactor, step through the code and understand, what books they've read (...

Any advice for a developer given the task of enhancing & refactoring a business critical application?

Recently I inherited a business critical project at work to "enhance". The code has been worked on and passed through many hands over the past five years. Consultants and full-time employees who are no longer with the company have butchered this very delicate and overly sensitive application. Most of us have to deal with legacy code o...

Useful/Realistic code coverage goals for a brownfield ASP.NET application

Let me qualify this question. I'm working on a "classic" ASP.NET application (Web Forms) that doesn't use Model-View-Presenter and was not written using TDD. It's also using an antiquated data access strategy (hand written DAO layer that invokes stored procs to populate and persist objects) that is unlikely to be upgraded to an ORM desp...