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Tag: software development

Document Like Your Code Depends on it!

The Most Important Thing Nobody Wants to Write Documenting software is the software developer equivalent to washing your windows. Ask any developer how they feel about documentation, and you usually get a sigh, a grimace, or possibly a vague promise that they’ll “get to it later.” Unfortunately, just like windows, later means, harder, more work and in the worst-case scenario, a complete renovation. When “later” turns into “never”, organizations pay the price with onboarding delays, security gaps, and in some infamous cases — catastrophic project failures. As most IT pros...

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What the Fuzz?

Fuzz Testing: Breaking Things on Purpose (So Hackers Can’t Do It First) One of our recent blog posts – The 90-90 Aphorism brought up the subject of ‘fuzzing’, which led to several rabbit hole conversations with our team. Many of the non developers on staff assumed it was a made-up term, an autocorrect incorrect, a typo missed during our collaborative blog writing and editing process. As with all things nerdy here at STEP, we embrace every opportunity presented to increase our knowledge or share our expertise. Thanks to our development team and their passionate referrals to sources...

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SDLC: Software’s Sheet Music

♪♫ This is How We Do It ♪♫ Whether you are a tech savvy business leader who eagerly anticipates finding the newest hit on SoundCloud or are a more traditional leader who prefers a harmonic acoustic session around the bonfire, seeking a company to help turn your “great idea” into software that sings can feel like a daunting task. Often, leaders focus on what the solution will do for their business, without concern for how its going to be built. They can see the full album complete with digital downloads and liner notes from the newly minted vinyl edition but not the sheet music or...

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The 90-90 Aphorism of Great Software

Why 180% = 100% Aphorism /ˈafəˌrizəm/ noun “a short clever saying that is intended to express a general truth” The 90-90 rule in software is the persistent illusion of “it’s almost done”. Tom Cargill of Bell Labs coined this aphorism back in 1985: “The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.” You read that right, 180%. Welcome to software engineering. 180% = 100%, Really? Yes, really! If you’ve ever...

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Middleware: The Smart Path to Legacy Modernization

Keeping on trend with our focus this year of writing about Legacy Software and budget conscious strategies to modernize them, we turn to Middleware and how it can help bridge the gap between legacy systems and modern applications. For many organizations, legacy systems still power their core operations. They are proven, reliable work horses that are increasingly expensive to maintain. Businesses are continuously looking at ways to do more with less as budgets are trimmed while systems are expected to chug along at the expense of innovation and modernization. Last week we touched on...

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Containerization and Orchestration: Modernizing Legacy Systems for the Future

If you are a regular reader of our blog, you may have noticed our recent focus on Legacy Systems and their ubiquitous need for updates. These core systems are running mission-critical workloads but struggle to adapt to evolving business demands, scalability requirements, and cloud-native ecosystems. This is a global problem, eating up 80% of IT budgets annually and contributing to developer burnout and innovation drag. But there is good news! Containerization and orchestration have emerged as a powerful strategy to bridge the gap between traditional infrastructure and modern software...

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Innovation Drag: How Legacy Systems Hold Back IT Teams, Budgets, and Modernization

In the modern enterprise, agility and speed are no longer competitive advantages—they are survival tools. Yet for organizations, legacy systems act like an anchor, slowing progress and draining resources. “Innovation drag” or the friction that leads to the slowdown, prevents IT teams from kicking off digitization and modernization projects at the pace business demands. Innovation drag can quietly undermine an organization’s ability to compete, and throttle team momentum. What Is Innovation Drag? Innovation drag (from an IT perspective) is the reduction of a team’s capacity to...

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QA: The Cornerstone of Great Software

We talk a lot about well written software and that importance of building secure, scalable, user-friendly software. But what we don’t do is talk enough about is one of the most important roles in building great software – the Quality Analyst and their contributions to the final product.High-quality software doesn’t happen by accident—its the result of a disciplined, deliberate process. While skilled developers are the foundation, the Quality Assurance (QA) provided by Quality Analysts, is the safety mechanism that ensures even the best code delivers the right results in the real...

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Modernizing Legacy Systems with the Strangler Fig Pattern: Best Practices, Risks & Financial Implications

Legacy systems—while often reliable—are frequently known to be a major bottleneck for innovation. Businesses tied to outdated platforms face higher maintenance costs, slower delivery cycles, and increased security risks. Yet the path to modernization is laden with challenges, especially for mission-critical systems. This is where the Strangler Fig Pattern offers a compelling, low-risk solution. We touched on the Strangler Fig in our previous blog post about composable architecture and thought it warranted its own post. In this blog we will explore what the Strangler Fig Pattern is,...

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Composable Architecture: A Smart Choice—or Risky Gambit? 

Composable architecture—a modular, API-first model built from discrete, interchangeable services—is rapidly gaining traction. We’ve written about it in the past, but  Gartner predicts that 70% of large and midsize organizations will consider composability a key success criterion, and it may accelerate feature delivery by up to 80% (Newstack.io). However, as with any architectural paradigm, it comes with trade-offs.  Advantages  Faster Time to Market & Agility Organizations using composable systems launch new features up to 80% faster, driven by reusable components...

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