26 March 2016
Introducing Code Care: Keeping Your App in Tip-Top Shape
by Peter Kananen
Building custom software can be a game-changer for your business, but it also can be demanding to keep your code in proper working order. When you’re running your business, we know you don’t want to worry about updates and security for your application. Code Care is our new monthly service designed to make sure your application is in good working order even when we’re not actively developing it.
Even though development on your app may have stopped, the ecosystem we used to develop it continues to evolve. It’s important to keep your app updated with the latest dependencies, frameworks, and security patches. When we resume development at a future date, it can be costly and difficult to do all of these upgrades at once. With Code Care, we make sure these tasks are completed every month, so your app is always working at its best.
What does Code Care include?
Each month, we’ll spend up to 8 hours performing required monthly maintenance. Here’s a list of the monthly maintenance items we perform as part of the service:
- Apply security updates
- Update third-party services
- Confirm appropriate hosting environment
- Confirm appropriate database hosting
- Upgrade Ruby version
- Update Ruby gems
- Update JS frameworks
- Investigate performance issues
If we’ve performed all of the above in under 8 hours, we’ll spend the remaining time addressing bugs, usability issues, and possibly even adding small features.
How does the monthly Code Care process work?
The Code Care agreement is sold as a yearly service contract. If we’re actively building your app now, we’ll just pro-rate the agreement for the remainder of the year when we’re done with development.
Each month, you’ll get an email asking if you’ve had any issues relating to your hosting environment, application performance, or any defects you’d like us to address if we have time. After we’ve performed Code Care for the month, we’ll provide a summary report showing what maintenance items we performed, the defects and usability issues we addressed, any features we completed, and a summary of suggested development work for next month.
