A guide to application modernization process & tools

These expectations affect every industry, and the line between digital tools for business and personal use is only getting blurrier. If you’re sensing your enterprise application needs a significant redesign, your customers probably are, too. And they’ve probably told you through informal feedback channels, or worse, through attrition.

We’ve worked with many enterprise organizations to transform legacy platforms to improve customer retention, expand to new markets, and solidify our clients’ positions as industry leaders. Below, we’ll share more about the approach and payoffs of app modernization, team structures that lead to success, and common mistakes to avoid in the process.

There are a number of modernization methods that help to ensure you’re pursuing the right solution—and building the right thing. The complete approach your organization takes should be made based on identified user needs, organization goals, and other factors like timeline and resources.

Here are some examples of modernization methods:

• Current State Audit: Assess the current state of the application by doing an audit to collect an inventory of features and functionality. In this step, you should consider evaluating each feature in terms of the level of effort it will take to modernize versus the potential value it provides to customers and the organization.
• Refactor: Instead of trying to tackle modernization all at once, break the application down into individual parts or features. One way to approach a refactoring effort is to identify and prioritize the most valuable parts of the application, and consider separating those out into their own services first.
• Replatform: Move your application to the cloud, which can be accomplished in a number of ways depending on the needs and constraints of your organization’s development process.
  • Rearchitect: One approach is to take advantage of the opportunity to restructure your application. Making the application easier to update, for example, could ultimately improve the experience for the end users as deploying new features and feature updates becomes easier.
  • Lift and shift: If your organization requires a less labor-intensive path, one way to accomplish replatforming is by migrating the application to the cloud “as is.” However, keep in mind that a slow on-premises performance is unlikely to improve with cloud migration. In those cases, rearchitecting is likely to yield better results.

• Product sets a vision, creates a roadmap for the project, and defines its essential requirements. This team includes Product Owners and Managers as well as Business Analysts.
• Design understands customer needs through research, determines how to meet those needs, and creates s UI that supports your goals—all while testing and iterating along the way to ensure you’re building the most useful product possible. This team includes research, content strategy, and UX/UI-focused designers.
• Engineering builds out new features in a sustainable framework, launches iterative product improvements, and ensures your product is performing well. This team includes front-end and back-end architects as well as UX engineers.

Relying on these three core teams also creates a creative tension that balances each aspect of your project’s needs. By nature of their specific function and expertise, everyone involved will ensure the app’s end result is impactful, realistic, functional, and valuable to the business.

Hiring vs. training employees

When we talk about modernization with clients, the conversation inevitably turns to how to build these teams. Specifically: should you hire or train to fill gaps? The answer depends on your goals.

Most organizations we work with do a combination of both, starting the project with our team and utilizing existing employees to kickstart the transformation. From there, they either hire or train new people as scope expands and complexity increases. You want to understand and align around these new processes, evaluating progress regularly so you have what you need at each stage of the project.

One of the first concerns in any modernization effort is ROI. Will this effort pay off in a meaningful way that helps us meet our business goals? Domino’s (yes, the pizza company) is an excellent example of how well this can work.

Domino’s had initially seen great success when they went public with their promise to deliver a pizza in 30 minutes or less, but their competitors had caught up. Sales had slowed, and Domino’s needed their edge back.

In 2011, Domino’s then-CEO Patrick Doyle tasked his team with not only modernizing the Domino’s app and adding ordering functionality, but he added a challenge: Any customer with a smartphone should be able to order a pizza in the 17 seconds it takes for a light to turn green.

The resulting app was a huge success.

From 2010 to March 2017, Domino’s share price outperformed Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. Doyle famously described Domino’s as “a tech company that sells pizza,” and that mindset has contributed to their astounding growth.

Your customers and employees expect to be delighted by your application. When they’re not, your ability to drive conversion slows, your employees can’t be as productive, and customer confidence in your service offering itself erodes.

If you’re eyeing an app modernization project, you can ensure its success by prioritizing the roles you need to make meaningful change, avoiding common mistakes, and driving sustainable, long-term growth.

If you want to talk more about what this can look like for your enterprise organization, schedule an initial conversation with a Think Company expert.