Maintaining an application

Question

User-305496339 posted

Hi Guys,

I have been given the assignment at work to get acquainted with an application and subsequently I will be asked to start making modifications or enhancements  to it. I was wondering where should I start in the learning process in regards to this application to make me the most effective at making changes to the application. Thanks !

Answer 1

User409696431 posted

Your question is far too general to get an answer.

What kind of application is it?  Web Forms?  MVC with the full Asp.Net framework?  MVC Core application?  Etc.

There is quite a difference among them, and you need to know which to learn.

Answer 2

User61956409 posted

Hi rkrex,

I have been given the assignment at work to get acquainted with an application and subsequently I will be asked to start making modifications or enhancements  to it. I was wondering where should I start in the learning process in regards to this application to make me the most effective at making changes to the application. Thanks !

It seems that you got an assignment to maintain an existing application, normally you may need to know the framework that application built on, and the implementation of main functionality module.

With Regards,

Fei Han

Answer 3

User379720387 posted

Study the database, create some diagrams, and it will become obvious what the main thread of the application is.

Answer 4

User409696431 posted

Studying the database won't help with the first step: what kind of application is it?

Looking at the source files (e.g. if you have .aspx and aspx.cs or aspx.vb files, it's a Web Forms application) and folder structure will help with that.

Answer 5

User1120430333 posted

Hi Guys,

I have been given the assignment at work to get acquainted with an application and subsequently I will be asked to start making modifications or enhancements  to it. I was wondering where should I start in the learning process in regards to this application to make me the most effective at making changes to the application. Thanks !

What kind of application is it?

Does the application have a user-manual?

Does the application have any existing specifications documents and other such documents? 

Are there any power users that you can talk to about the application?

Have you gone through the process of trying to use the application to understand?

Have you looked at the program code to understand it?

Do you understand the application's architecture and any design patterns the application is using?

Answer 6

User541108374 posted

Hi,

if there's still someone around who made the project sit down with her/him to go through the code. Record the session so that later on you can go back to it in case of need and that person's not around anymore. 

Make sure everything's in some source control system (Azure Devops, Github private repo, ...) and that the code works on your machine.

Familiarize yourself with the code and if needed learn the technology needed to maintain it. 

Kris.