• How maintainable is our system's design?
• Will the system's design scale to meet our needs?
• Are we using construction and design best practices?
• What is the quality of the architecture, design, and code in the system we are acquiring?
• Will the quality of the design and code support our next desired release date?
• Will the system scale to meet our increasing user needs, data volume, or other changing business requirements?
• Are the architecture and design sufficiently robust to support current and future business goals?

• Architecture Reviews. Reviewing your product or system to ensure that its design and architecture will support your business objectives
• Technical Due Diligence. Analyzing a potential acquisition and assessing the target system--including its design and code--and assessing the development practices used to build it
• Project Assessment. Evaluating the development practices used on the project and providing recommendations on changes that will increase your development speed, improve product quality, or otherwise meet your business objectives

Architecture Reviews
Maxsam Partners provides independent evaluations of code, design, technology, and capability tailored to your business goals. Using a combination of automated tools, visual code inspection, and interviews with the technical team we quickly provide the information you need to make a sound business decision. Our evaluation results in a clear, concise, business-based evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the current system, along with specific recommendations for improving it.Some of the situtations in which Maxsam Partners has reviewed systems include:

• The team is concerned that the existing system architecture won't scale to meet the expected increase in user load
• The management team worries the system can not be extended with all of the functionality the user community needs
• A team is trying to decide which of its two current platforms it should use as a foundation for future product development. It wishes an independent analysis of the strengths and weakneses of each to help in the decision making process
• Commonly reviewed areas include:
  
  • Identifying scalability risks and architectural strengths that support scalability
  • Characterizing the effort required to modify the system to support new functionality
  • Answering specific questions about the system’s architecture
  • Risks to internationalization, portability, or other specific questions

Technology Selection
Is C++ the best language for our system? Should we use .NET? Does it make sense to use a COTS application? Our broad experience and expertise in custom software development makes us uniquely qualified to answer technology selection questions. We'll help you perform a business-based evaluation of technologies and products to select the best fit for your needs. Some of the issues to consider when evaluating a technology, platform, language, or product are:

• Can we achieve the desired functionality with it?
• Does it support our performance and robustness needs?
• Does it support our usability and/or maintainability needs?
• What platforms will our system run on?
• Can updates be obtained in a timely manner?
• What is the vendor's track record for support and enhancements?
• Maxsam Partners experts will help you evaluate products and technologies from a technical and business perspective to ensure it meets your short and long term goals.

Technical Due Diligence
Acquiring a company or product is a significant undertaking. Solid technical due diligence uncovers risks and provides insight into whether the software and/or development organization you are buying will meet your business goals. Maxsam Partners provides independent technical evaluations of architecture, design, technologies, and code tailored to your business goals. Using a combination of automated tools, visual code inspection, and interviews with the technical team we quickly provide the information you need to make a sound business decision. Our technical due diligence services include: Architecture and Design Review analyzes the system architecture, technology, designs, and code to identify strengths, weaknesses, and risks to your business goals. Our experts engage with your team to ensure we understand your concerns and provide key information as early as possible. Commonly addressed topics include:

• Providing an overview of the key physical and logical views of the system
• Identifying scalability risks and architectural strengths that support scalability
• Providing insight into the sophistication and robustness of internal algorithms and data models
• Characterizing the effort required to modify the system to support new functionality
• Clarifying the level and extent of internationalization support
• Identifying security and privacy risks
• Answering specific questions about the system's architecture
• Code Quality Assessment characterizes the system's size, maintainability, and defect history. Our analysis provides quantitative measures that reveal:
  
  • The understandability of detailed design and code
  • The use of good coding practices, including factoring, abstraction, commenting, naming, coupling, cohesion, consistency, etc.
  • The use of secure coding practices including buffer management and string handling
  • Risks to internationalization, portability, or other specific questions
  • Size and complexity of functional modules
  • The appropriate use of language features
  • We have significant technical due diligence experience and are experienced in a wide array of target platforms (including Windows, Linux, and embedded software) and many languages and technologies.