How We Do It:
At Essential Software, we have combined people with maintenance skills and processes that are vital to maintenance to create a business where maintenance engineers can thrive. ESW’s foundation is built on years of experience. ESW’s focus and this experience has created a company that delivers a fresh perspective to our partner’s legacy applications. Our goal is seamless integration with our partners’ processes letting ESW deliver results in a way that increases our partner’s customer satisfaction, decreases their maintenance costs, and delivers quantifiable customer value.
ESW Advantage
Essential Software raises the bar when it comes to software maintenance.
Here is what sets us apart:
1. Your Vision Is Our Vision
Many companies provide initial estimates quickly, without taking the time to properly understand the business and technical context in which the work will be done. At Essential Software, we take the necessary steps, before making changes to code, to be certain that we are in agreement with our partner on the nature of each problem, what is required in a solution, the approach that we will take, and what the cost and time frame will be for implementation. This process allows everyone to move ahead in a context of shared goals and mutual trust.
2. No Surprises
Our partners don’t like surprises (well, at least not the bad kind). At Essential Software, our process specifies a series of reports, both weekly and at key control points in the workflow, this keeps everyone current on the details and progress of the agreed solutions. If problems come up during implementation, they are communicated quickly. When new information requires a change in approach, our partners are in the best possible position to make that decision proactively.
3. Rapid Code Mastery
At Essential Software we think of computer code as a second language. From our first engagement with a new client and with a new code base, we quickly digest the essence of the application, analyze the important issues in the context of the existing code, and translate those issues into surgically focused solutions which address the client’s immediate needs. And we require minimal support from the client’s staff, allowing them to focus on forward-looking issues and the next generation of products.
4. Quality Assurance
Quality is particularly important when making changes to a software product which is already in use in the field. Customers expect upgrades to work better than the version that they replaced. At Essential Software we have a dedicated Quality Assurance team that is committed not only to making sure that our fixes do what they’re supposed to do, but also to helping you make sure that everything else that used to work, still works properly.
5. Configuration Management
Software is highly sensitive to its environment, including the specific hardware and operating system where it is installed, as well as to other products which may be present on the same system. With operating system fixes often being issued on a weekly basis, configuration sensitive issues can arise at any time. At ESW we have a team of experts in configuration management, and a library of configuration images which we use, as one of the first steps in our process, to determine each issue’s specific configuration sensitivity; providing our partners with early information regarding possible work-arounds, and our engineers with a solid starting point for characterizing the problem.
6. Clean Beginnings and Clean Endings
Software is a tricky business. As computer science pioneer Edsgar Dijkstra has said, “programming is so inherently difficult and complex that programmers need to harness every trick and abstraction possible in hopes of managing the complexity of it successfully.* Such a difficult undertaking requires extraordinary care throughout its execution.
In particular, it is not enough to simply deliver a solution and then go on to the next issue.
