About
The Nationwide Group's new CTO inherited four live Cordova mobile apps with no repository access or documentation after key staff left. Ollon's developers reverse engineered the code, restored two of the four apps within three months, updated them for new mobile OS releases, and started a replacement platform ahead of Cordova's end of support.
Challenge, approach, and impact
Orphaned Live Mobile Apps After Staff Departures
A new CTO arrived just as several team members left the company, and discovered four mobile apps live in production that no one on the remaining team understood.
No Repository Access or Documentation
The team did not have access to the code repository, and no documentation existed describing how the apps were built or where their dependencies lived.
Cordova Platform Approaching End of Support
The apps were built on Apache Cordova, a cross-platform framework heading toward the end of its support life, putting the long-term viability of every app at risk.
Upcoming Mobile OS Updates
New iOS and Android releases threatened to break the apps, leaving a short window to stabilize them.
How we built
Testimonials
Anonymous
Ollon
“Walking into this one, we had four live apps, no repository access, and nobody left who had built them. My first job was getting the team set up with environments we could actually build and ship from, and then figuring out how the apps worked by watching how they behaved. I've done a lot of rescue work over the years, and this was a good reminder that careful documentation as you go matters as much as the fixes themselves. The client now has a record of how their apps work that never existed before.“
Team structure
Client team
Ran
Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
Daily point of contact
The client stakeholders at The Nationwide Group were working closely with the team at Ollon
Agency team
3 x Developer
Production
1 x Project Manager
Production
