The goal of assessment is decision making. Everyone makes decisions. Managers decide about the overall development. Architects decide the broad technical direction. And, so do developers: they decide daily the course of the implementation. In fact, engineers spend up to 50% of the time assessing the state of the system to know what to do next.
Assessment is expensive and you already pay for it . Make it manageable by making it explicit.
Effective decision making requires accurate information. Software systems are large and complex in specific ways. Thus, manual code reading does not scale, and standard reporting tools are not enough. The specific details are crucial: from the domain to the technological constraints. You need a humane solution based on custom tools that provide the information that matters.
There is no magic. You know your context. Learn how to craft the tools that match it.
Decisions must be taken everyday. Assessment must become a daily reality. Thus, it must be approached explicitly and made integral part of the overall development process. This involves skills that must be present in the organization.
Make it a daily reality. Embed it in the process. Integrate it in the organization.
Assessment requires a tool infrastructure that makes it practical to build custom analysis solutions for your systems and your problems.
Control your effort with an appropriate infrastructure. The Moose analysis platform was designed for it.
