Paralysing technical debt.
Any change breaks something. The time between hypothesis and experiment stretches out. Innovation frozen.
Service · Prototype → Product
From the prototype to Monday morning.
Your MVP validated the problem. The architecture no longer holds the growth, or the team that built it left. We audit it, rewrite it in parts and leave it in production without losing the original soul. Same product, solid foundations, an internal team able to operate it without us.
Inherited code, a team that left.
The original team evaporated.
The engineers who built the MVP have gone. Nobody understands the past decisions. Documentation non-existent.
Growing incidents.
Traffic grows, the system starts falling over at 5pm on Fridays. The current team fights fires instead of building.
Audit, plan, surgical refactor.
We do not rewrite everything (that mistake costs entire startups). We identify the 3–5 real bottlenecks, fix them without touching the rest, and leave monitoring installed.
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01
Audit (2 wks)
A deep technical analysis: architecture, database, infrastructure, security, cost. Output: a report with priorities and risks.
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02
Plan of attack
A backlog prioritised by impact. The decision: what to refactor, what to rewrite, what to leave. Fixed price per phase.
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03
Surgical refactor
Bounded changes with tests before touching anything. No downtime. The end user does not notice the internal redesign.
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04
Monitoring + handoff
We install observability (errors, performance, cost). We train the internal team. We stay as backup for the first 3 months.
A solid product, a capable team.
Technical audit
A complete report with findings, risks and an estimate of the cost of doing nothing. Useful in itself even if you do not continue with us.
Prioritised backlog
An actionable list of changes with expected impact and cost. Your CTO can execute it even without us.
Executed refactor
The critical bottlenecks, resolved. Test coverage above 70% in the critical areas.
Observability
Datadog, Grafana or similar configured. Alerts defined with judgement, not spam.
Architecture documentation
Technical decisions (ADRs), system diagrams, incident runbook. Your next engineer does not start from zero.
Handoff to the internal team
Pair programming, technical sessions, PR reviews for 30–90 days. They are left operational.
- 2 wks Complete technical audit
- In phases Surgical refactor, no rewrite from scratch
- Yours Repository and infrastructure, from day one
Our own products, not slides.
To decide with judgement.
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How to scale an MVP without rewriting it from scratch
A lot of MVPs die precisely when they start working: the users arrive, the data arrives and the architecture put together in a hurry starts to creak. The good news is that scaling almost never means starting from zero. This is the no-hype guide to doing it in phases.
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How long does it take to develop an app or custom software? Real timelines by project type
An MVP in weeks, an internal app in months, a SaaS in half a year or more. The question "when will I have it?" has honest answers if you understand what moves the schedule. These are the real timelines for custom software and the factors that genuinely stretch or shorten them.
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Signs your company needs custom software (and not another spreadsheet)
A spreadsheet does not fail all at once: it gets too small little by little. Copy-paste errors, "the good version", information in one person’s head, hours repeated every week. These are the concrete signs it is time to move to custom software, and when it still is not worth it.
What people ask us.
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01 How is the cost of the technical audit calculated?
It depends on the size of the codebase, the number of services and the level of visible technical debt. Typical duration two weeks. If we continue with the refactor or the scale-up, the audit is deducted from the next phase.
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02 How long does the full scale-up take?
It depends on complexity: between 8 and 20 weeks. Split into incremental deliveries every 2 weeks so the product in production never stops.
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03 Do you touch the user-facing product?
Only if it is necessary for the scale-up. The end user should not notice that we changed the technical foundations. If there are obvious UX improvements, we propose them separately.
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04 And if you recommend rewriting from scratch?
Rarely. An incremental refactor normally has a better risk/return ratio. If a rewrite is genuinely needed, we justify it with data and give a migration plan with no downtime.
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05 What happens to my current team during the work?
We work with them, not against them. Pair programming, knowledge transfer, respect for the past decisions that made sense. They come out of the process stronger.
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06 Do you sign an SLA after the handoff?
Yes, optional. A post-handoff support SLA: response within 4–8 working hours, deploy windows, access to a senior engineer. Cancellable on 30 days’ notice.
Let's start
Let's talk about your operation.
Tell us what costs more than it should. We come back with a concrete plan, realistic timelines and a clear yes or no.
contacto@plantekia.com