Studio / Takeover
The people who could touch
this system are gone.
When the engineer leaves or the contract with the development company ends, the system becomes untouchable. ALBY Studio takes it over: surveying what's there, building the documentation, and restarting changes without taking the system down — with a monthly-retainer team alongside you.
Problem
There's a structural reason
behind that frustration.
The engineer resigned, the contract with the development company ended, the vendor stopped replying. The system is still running today, but nobody knows what's inside it. No documentation, no idea what state the code is in — just a quiet fear of the next outage. And the business runs on top of it.
- 01There's no documentation, and nobody understands what's in there
- 02If something breaks, there's nobody who can fix it
- 03We want to switch vendors, but we're not sure it can be handed over
ALBY Studio takes it over starting from a survey, and gets changes moving again.
With ALBY Studio
With ALBY Studio,
even a system built by
someone else can be taken over.
Taking over a system that lived in one person's head starts with a survey. We establish the state of the code and the infrastructure, make the risks visible, and hand it to a team that can change it — without ever taking it down.
01
A survey that opens the black box
We examine the code, the infrastructure, and the data, and write up the system's state of health. The riskiest areas get attention first.
02
Take it over without downtime
Rather than rebuilding in one go, we deepen our understanding through a series of small changes. The business keeps running while a team that can maintain it grows.
03
Once it's taken over, we grow it
On a monthly retainer, the takeover isn't the end. We prioritise the change requests that piled up, and restart the improvements that had stalled.
Flexible team
From survey to changes,
one team throughout.
A tech lead runs the initial survey; after the handover, a core team of a product manager and a full-stack engineer stays on.
What the survey uncovers stays inside the team, so nothing has to be re-explained with every change.
Make the risks visible through a survey, take the system over without downtime, and keep a team on afterwards to improve it.
Survey
Examine code, infrastructure, and data, and make the risks visible
Tech lead
Product manager
Full-stack engineer
Handover changes
Deepen understanding through a series of small changes
- Tech lead
- Product manager
- Full-stack engineer
QA engineer
Handover complete
Stable operation
Put monitoring and updates in place, ready for incidents
- Product manager
- Full-stack engineer
- QA engineer
Improvement
Prioritise the backlog and restart improvement
- Product manager
- Full-stack engineer
Note: this is one example. Photos are illustrative. We adjust the team to the project, your budget, and your priorities.
Comparison
How is this different
from a full replacement?
Aspect
Full replacement
ALBY Studio
- Cost
- ReplaceA rebuild costing millions of yen
- ALBYImproved in stages within the monthly fee
- Timeline
- ReplaceSix months to a year or more before it's done
- ALBYChanges start right after the survey
- Migration risk
- ReplaceThe cutover is the scary part
- ALBYTaken over without downtime
- Existing assets
- ReplaceYou throw away what you have
- ALBYWhat works is kept and built on
Before you conclude that an untouchable system has to be rebuilt, there's another option: start with a survey.
Contact
Don't leave it sitting there
as a black box.
Whatever you know is enough to start. Tell us about the code and the environment as far as you understand it, and we'll take it from the survey onwards.