Portfolio Code Scan for a Dutch National Government Institution

The Issue at hand

Before re-tendering maintenance and management of a number of applications, the institution wanted to create a level playing field for bidders: an objective view of the technology mix and code quality of each application.

The Service Provided

Metri ran its Portfolio Analysis service using the Highlight SaaS tool — which scans application code at portfolio level without it ever leaving the organization — measuring:

• Software Resiliency — how well the code follows best practices and withstands production failures.

• Software Agility — how easily a development team can understand and maintain the application.

• Software Elegance — how much value the code delivers per unit of complexity.

• Cloud Readiness — the roadblocks and boosters affecting a cloud migration.

• Short online questionnaires with application managers, covering maintenance effort and business impact.

The outcomes achieved

The scan gave the institution a fast, detailed view of code quality across the applications going to tender, informing decisions on tender strategy — including how the work should be divided into lots — and gave bidders enough insight into what they'd be maintaining to submit well-substantiated prices. One newly delivered application turned out to have unexpectedly low quality; a follow-up Software Quality & Risk Assessment deep-dive led the responsible supplier to fund a substantial quality improvement at its own cost.

Deliverables

• Stakeholder Presentation: A detailed view of code agility, elegance, resiliency, and cloud readiness, plus technical debt and remediation cost.

• Detailed Portfolio Report: Per-application, per-technology quality detail combined with business impact and cloud-migration effort.