Has your IT project hit a wall, and the application that was supposed to drive the business is generating more problems than value? This is a common scenario, resulting from unmaintainable code left by a previous team or the pitfalls associated with programming with AI. This article is your practical guide to the process of rescuing IT projects. You will discover the step-by-step process of a professional IT project takeover, why a code audit is essential for diagnosis, and how strategic code refactoring can transform a sinking investment into a stable foundation for your company.
Table of contents
Introduction
2. Rescuing IT projects: The takeover and repair process step by step
3. The new challenge: Programming with AI and problems with code from ChatGPT
Introduction
In the dynamic world of technology, where speed of implementation often outpaces attention to quality, many IT projects hit a wall. As a COO or product director, you are certainly aware of how paralyzing it can be when a business-critical application is no longer developable, generates more and more errors, and its maintenance costs skyrocket. This problem is not an isolated one. It is often the result of overly optimistic assumptions, time pressure, or, worst of all, collaboration with an inexperienced team. In such situations, the necessity of a complex operation arises – rescuing an IT project.
This article is a guide to a process that not only saves a sinking investment but also transforms it into a stable and scalable foundation for your company's future growth. We will discuss how to diagnose the source of the problem, what a professional IT project takeover looks like, and why a code audit and code refactoring are key elements of an effective repair. We will also address the new challenges posed by programming with AI, showing how to fix AI-generated code and avoid common pitfalls.
Why do IT projects fail? Diagnosing the problem
Before we move on to the recovery process, it is crucial to understand why a crisis occurs in the first place. Rarely is there a single, specific cause. Most often, we are dealing with a combination of factors that accumulate over months, leading to a state where further development becomes impossible or unprofitable. From a management perspective, awareness of these pitfalls is the first line of defense against future problems.
Unmaintainable code from a cheap software house: the trap of apparent savings
The decision to choose the cheapest provider on the market often seems rational from the perspective of short-term budget optimization. Unfortunately, in the IT industry, this apparent saving often turns into a gigantic technical debt. Unmaintainable code from a cheap software house is a scenario where the initial costs are low, but the application works on a wing and a prayer. What characterizes such code?
- Lack of scalability: The system architecture does not anticipate an increase in the number of users, data, or functionalities. Every attempt to add a new module results in a series of unforeseen errors in other parts of the application.
- "Spaghetti code": A lack of clear structure, with business logic mixed with the presentation layer and data access logic. Such code is extremely difficult to understand and, consequently, to modify.
- Lack of documentation and tests: Cheap contractors often skip these "unnecessary" elements to speed up work. As a result, a new team taking over the project must spend hundreds of hours on reverse engineering just to understand how the application works.
See how professional technical documentation reduces costs and risks in IT, protecting the company from the irreplaceable employee syndrome:
Technical Documentation: How to Lower IT Costs and Risk - Dependence on outdated technologies: The choice of non-promising or niche technologies may be dictated solely by the competencies of a particular, cheap team. In the future, finding specialists to maintain such a system becomes nearly impossible.
From a product director's perspective, this state of affairs means stagnation. Instead of innovating and responding to market needs, the entire budget and time of the development team is consumed by fighting current problems and putting out fires. The apparent savings at the beginning turn into a bottomless pit.
Fixing an application after an inexperienced developer or team turnover
Another equally common source of problems is the human factor. Fixing an application after an inexperienced developer is a challenge faced by companies that rely on internal but not fully-formed teams. A junior developer, even the most talented one, can make architectural decisions without proper supervision and mentoring, the negative consequences of which will only become apparent after months or years. This results in code that works but is inefficient, difficult to maintain, and full of hidden security vulnerabilities.
High turnover in the project team poses a similar risk. When key developers leave, they often take with them priceless, undocumented knowledge about the system. New team members, thrown into the middle of a complex project without a proper introduction, need much more time to get up to speed, and their first attempts to modify the code can destabilize the entire application. In both cases, the result is a slowdown in work, a decline in quality, and growing frustration on both the business and technology sides.
Rescuing IT projects: The takeover and repair process step by step
Once the diagnosis is made and the decision to intervene is taken, a methodical and structured approach becomes crucial. The process of rescuing IT projects is not about chaotic patching, but a well-thought-out strategy that must begin with a deep understanding of the situation and end with the implementation of solid foundations for the future.
Step 1: Code audit as the foundation for effective repair
The first and absolutely essential step in any rescue operation is a professional code audit. This is the equivalent of a patient's comprehensive diagnostic tests before surgery. Attempting to fix code without an audit is like treating blindly – it may bring temporary relief but will not eliminate the cause of the problem, and in the worst-case scenario, it could even worsen the patient's condition.
What does a reliable code audit include from a business perspective?
- Architecture analysis: Is the application's structure logical and does it allow for further development? Are the individual modules properly isolated from each other (which facilitates modifications)? Will the adopted architectural solutions not become a bottleneck in the future?
- Code quality assessment: Experts analyze the code for compliance with good programming practices, readability, logic duplication (DRY - Don't Repeat Yourself), and cyclomatic complexity, which indicates how complex and difficult to test the code is.
- Detecting technical debt: An audit allows for the identification and quantification of technical debt – the sum of all compromises and shortcuts taken in the past. The audit result often presents an estimated time and cost to "repay" this debt.
- Security analysis: Scanning the code for known vulnerabilities and security gaps (e.g., SQL Injection, XSS) is crucial for protecting the company's and its clients' data.
- Review of dependencies: Checking whether the project uses outdated or unmaintained external libraries that could pose a risk to stability and security.
The result of the audit is a detailed report that is not just a list of bugs for developers. It is a strategic document for management that clearly defines the current state, identifies the biggest risks, and recommends specific remedial actions with their prioritization and estimated cost. Based on this, an informed decision can be made whether the project is worth rescuing or if building it from scratch would be a better solution.
Step 2: IT project takeover – transfer of knowledge and responsibility
The audit is followed by the takeover phase. A professional IT project takeover is more than just copying a code repository. It is an organized process of transferring knowledge, access, and responsibility that minimizes the risk of chaos and downtime.
Key elements of this stage include:
- Gathering artifacts: The new team must gain access to everything related to the project: source code, databases (anonymized), documentation (if any), access credentials for servers, cloud services, analytics systems, and all other tools.
- Workshops with the previous team: Whenever possible, Q&A sessions are organized with the people who have worked on the project so far. The goal is to extract as much undocumented knowledge as possible about the architecture, business logic, and "specific" solutions.
- Setting up the development environment: The new team must be able to independently run, compile, and test the application on their own machines. This is the moment of truth that verifies the completeness of the received materials.
- Establishing a communication plan: Clearly defining who the decision-maker on the client's side is (Product Owner), how often status meetings are held, and how work progress is reported.
A smooth takeover is the foundation that allows the new team to quickly become productive and begin the actual repair phase.
Read our guide and learn step by step what a safe software house change should look like to smoothly regain control over a sinking project:
Changing a Software House: How to Save Your Project?
Step 3: Code refactoring, a strategic investment in the future
With a full picture of the situation after the audit and full control over the project after the takeover, the heart of the operation can begin: code refactoring. It is important to understand that refactoring is not "rewriting from scratch". It is the process of improving the internal structure of existing code without changing its external behavior. From the end-user's perspective, the application works the same, but "under the hood", a revolution is taking place.
Why is code refactoring an investment?
- Increased readability and understandability: The code becomes easier to analyze, which drastically reduces the time needed to onboard new developers and introduce future changes.
- Easier development: Well-refactored code allows for faster and safer addition of new features. Instead of spending 80% of their time fixing bugs, the team can focus on delivering business value.
- Reduced number of bugs: Simplifying logic, removing duplication, and adding automated tests during refactoring leads to a significant increase in the application's stability and reliability.
- Improved performance: Refactoring often identifies bottlenecks and suboptimal algorithms, improving which translates into faster system operation.
Code repair through refactoring is a continuous process that should be carried out iteratively. Instead of freezing development for six months, a better approach is to gradually "clean up" successive parts of the application while concurrently delivering the most important features from a business perspective.
The new challenge: Programming with AI and problems with code from ChatGPT
The modern technological landscape has been enriched with powerful tools – generative artificial intelligence. Programming with AI, using tools like Claude Code, GitHub Copilot or ChatGPT, promises an unprecedented increase in productivity. Unfortunately, this promise also has its dark side, generating a whole new class of problems that often land on the desks of managers responsible for the product.
How to fix AI-generated code? Common pitfalls
AI tools are extremely effective at generating code snippets, solving standard algorithmic problems, or creating boilerplate. However, their uncritical use, especially by less experienced developers, leads to serious problems. Problems with code from ChatGPT and similar tools are a real threat to project quality.
Common pitfalls include:
- Lack of business context: AI generates code based on patterns from millions of lines of code it was trained on. However, it does not understand the unique context of your application, the specific business logic, or the long-term product vision. The generated code may be technically correct but completely inadequate for the needs.
- "Hallucinations" and subtle errors: Language models can generate code with great confidence that is simply wrong, uses non-existent functions, or contains hard-to-detect logical errors.
- Security vulnerabilities: AI-generated code may unknowingly replicate outdated practices or contain security vulnerabilities that were present in the training data.
- Inconsistency and lack of standards: Copying and pasting code snippets from AI without adapting them to the standards and conventions of the project leads to chaos and makes it difficult to maintain architectural consistency.
The answer to the question "how to fix AI-generated code?" is complex. This process requires even more attention than code written entirely by a human. Fixing AI code involves treating it as a proposal or a first draft that must always be verified, understood, and adapted by an experienced developer.
The role of the expert in the world of AI – why the human is still essential
Paradoxically, the more common programming with AI becomes, the more important the role of the experienced expert becomes. They must act as the ultimate reviewer and architect who can:
- Assess the quality of AI-generated code.
- Integrate it with the existing system in a consistent and secure manner.
- Reject AI's suggestions when they are inadequate or harmful in the long run.
- Make strategic architectural decisions that no AI is currently capable of making.
In the hands of an expert, AI is a powerful tool for automating repetitive tasks and rapid prototyping. In the hands of a novice, it becomes a next-generation technical debt factory. Therefore, investing in a team that can consciously and critically use these tools is key to avoiding future project disasters.
Check out our expert article and learn why an independent AI code audit is an absolute necessity today to ensure the security of your application:
AI Code Audit: Why It's Crucial for Your Project?
Summary
Rescuing IT projects is a complex but feasible process, provided it is approached in a methodical and strategic manner. As a director responsible for product or operations, you don't need to understand every line of code, but you must understand the process and the risks. Problems like unmaintainable code from a cheap software house or the need for fixing an application after an inexperienced developer are not a sentence, but a signal to act.
The key to success is a sequence: a reliable code audit, which provides the diagnosis; a professional IT project takeover, which ensures control; and strategic code refactoring, which is an investment in the future. In the age of ubiquitous artificial intelligence, new challenges are emerging, such as problems with code from ChatGPT, which only emphasizes the growing value of human expertise and critical thinking in technology.
Properly executed code repair is not just a cost, but an opportunity to transform a problematic asset into a solid, scalable, and secure pillar of your company's digital strategy. It is a decision that allows you to regain control over technology and steer it back on track to generating real business value.
