What we solve ·What is unaccounted for, and what am I missing?
Forge · Build
Who maintains the applications the business areas built on their own?
The areas built their applications with AI and the person who made them left in March.
What got built, who answers for each thing, what happens the day it fails and what it really costs to sustain it. With an owner and an operating manual.
Self built software debtSend this page to whoever decides
What you receive
- The inventory of what was self-built, with the process it holds up and its consequence.
- The matrix of owners named and accepted in writing.
- The minimum operating manual for each critical application, tested with a recovery.
- The real cost of sustaining it and the recommendation sheet with the four exits.
The proof that applies here
- 19 years operating software other people built.
- Operations leadership over 60,000 servers and 150 people across eleven teams.
- Mainframe generational succession without interruption: the same problem with a different technology.
How we solve it
The method, not the promise.
- The amnesty gets declared and the areas get asked what they built. Without that the inventory is born short.
- It gets classified by consequence, not by technology: what stops and how long before it gets noticed.
- An owner gets named per application and accepted in writing. It is the part that is worth something.
- The minimum operating manual for the critical ones gets written and a recovery gets tested.
- A recommendation gets made per application among the four exits: sustain, replace, rebuild or switch off.
Use this today, without hiring anyone
The inventory of what was self-built can be started alone, and the column that makes it useful is not the one you would expect. Three columns and one afternoon with your managers.
- What got built and what process it holds up. Not the technology: the process. An application nobody uses is not a problem, even if it exists.
- What happens if it stops and how long before it gets noticed. This is the column that orders everything else. Most of what shows up can be down for a week with no consequences, and two or three things cannot be down for an hour.
- Who answers, by name. Not an area. The ones left without a name are your finding, and they are usually the majority.
And the calculation that changes the conversation with finance: to the cost of sustaining each application, add the time of the person who does it today without appearing in any budget. That number, added up, exceeds what buying the tool would have cost, and it is the argument you are missing today.
This sounds like you if
- A process that matters depends on something made by someone who is gone.
- The areas built their own applications and there is no common inventory.
- Audit asked who answers for that software and ownership was not defined.
Before you hire
It gets diagnosed, documented and handed back. The firm does not operate your applications and does not rebuild them within this engagement.
The way of building is new; operating what other people built is not, and it is the entire career of whoever does it. What you buy here is someone who already knows what breaks first when the person who made it is gone.
Of the applications your areas built this year, how many have a person's name next to them today?
If the problem is a different one
We run it in a spreadsheet and no product on the market does exactly this.
Custom operational application
I know there is AI in use and I do not know which tools or with what information.
Shadow AI inventory
We were told to bring the budget down and every owner defends their application.
Technology spend rationalization