Overview
A diagnostic framework for assessing legacy Rails codebases through targeted questions to different stakeholders. The approach reveals hidden technical debt and operational risks by surfacing what teams are avoiding or have given up on.
The Breakdown
- Developer fear patterns - Identifies untouchable code areas and deployment anxiety through questions about avoided modules and Friday deployment hesitancy
- Management visibility gaps - Exposes blocked features and monitoring blind spots by asking about year-long delays and real-time error tracking
- Business impact assessment - Uncovers abandoned functionality and broken customer promises through questions about disabled features and stopped commitments
- Production reliability indicators - Uses recent failures and estimation accuracy as proxies for codebase health and predictability