Best-fit conditions
A business-critical .NET or SQL Server system is difficult to change because behavior is hidden across code, stored procedures, reports, integrations, and workarounds.
Not a fit when
- The buyer has already committed to a rewrite and does not want current behavior or dependencies examined.
- Source, database, integration, or domain-owner access is unavailable for the defined system boundary.
- The request is emergency break-fix work, commodity staff augmentation, or a fixed implementation bid without discovery.
- Acceptance depends on discovering every undocumented behavior or guaranteeing zero regression.
What the buyer receives
- Application, database, job, report, integration, and dependency inventory
- Current-state architecture and data-flow map
- Business-rule and stored-procedure inventory
- Characterization and behavioral-parity test plan
- Unsupported-component, security, maintainability, and key-person risk register
- Target-state seams and reversible modernization sequence
- Cost, effort, uncertainty, acceptance, and rollback scenarios
Delivery sequence
- Confirm business-critical workflows, owners, release constraints, and continuity requirements.
- Inventory code, databases, jobs, reports, integrations, environments, and operational workarounds.
- Trace representative behavior through application and data paths.
- Define characterization tests, parity scenarios, reconciliation rules, and disputed behavior.
- Identify reversible seams and target-state boundaries.
- Deliver the sequenced roadmap, risk model, and decision package.
Decision value
- A shared current-state system picture
- Visible business rules and unresolved behavior
- A safer basis for estimating and sequencing work
- Explicit parity and reconciliation expectations
- Reversible modernization steps instead of a single high-risk cutover
- A proceed, narrow, stabilize, replace, or stop decision
Client responsibilities and scope assumptions
Client responsibilities
- Provide access to technical owners and domain owners
- Provide representative code, database, report, job, and integration evidence through an approved channel
- Identify production constraints and known failure history
- Review disputed business behavior and approve the parity basis
- Confirm which systems and environments are inside the engagement boundary
Scope assumptions
- One named decision owner and one named technical owner
- A bounded system or workstream with timely access to representative evidence
- Public-safe qualification before confidential material is exchanged
- Client reviewers available for domain questions, disputes, and acceptance
Explicit exclusions
- Full rewrite or production migration
- Unlimited source review or data cleansing
- Guaranteed discovery of every undocumented rule
- Production on-call, managed operations, or open-ended maintenance
- Formal security assessment, legal advice, or certification
Acceptance and commercial boundary
Acceptance: Accepted when the agreed inventories, maps, parity plan, risk register, and sequenced roadmap are delivered and reviewed. Acceptance is based on artifact delivery, not completion of a later modernization program.
Commercial boundary: The starting investment assumes a bounded application estate and representative workflow set. Additional applications, databases, acquisitions, environments, or implementation work require written scope changes.
Public commercial starting investment only. Government and subcontract pricing depends on the solicitation, labor structure, flow-downs, security requirements, and negotiated scope.