It is a sad truth that nothing lasts forever and that truth even applies to your beloved web application. After years of growth, care and attention your web application may be reaching the end of its lifecycle.

Will you choose to continue to adapt and modify your application to make due on current standards and technology? Or will you choose to place your beloved steed out to pasture and foster in the new work horse for your business and team?

To answer that question you will need to take a long look at your web application; measuring it in several key areas.

Below is a summary of some of the areas which a web application should be reviewed:

Technology

• Does your web application require legacy language releases or libraries?

• Is your web application built on an actively used and supported framework?

• Does your web application work well on modern browsers?

• Is your web application mobile responsive or supportive of mobile users?

Performance

• How quickly does your web application load?

• What are your web application’s bottlenecks?

• Does it perform well under heavy user or data load?

• If your application offers reporting, does it support online and offline reporting?

Maintenance Cost

• Does your web application need continual maintenance due to poor browser operation?

• Is there a large number of support tickets related to poor user interface design or experience?

• Do you need to continually train or retrain users?

Maintenance Availability

• Is it difficult to find people to work on your application due to old programming languages or conventions?

• Are you able to retain motivated and forward-thinking developers?

Competition

• Do competing applications have features or device support that you do not?

• Are you gaining or losing market share?

• How do competing applications compare to yours in ease-of-use?

Business Gains

• Are there current opportunities being missed due to poor device or browser support?

• What is your current client retention and what is the likelihood for increased retention if you reworked your application?

• Is there marketing or monetization opportunities that you are currently missing out on due to lack of current capabilities?

Business Loss

• How fanatic is your user base about current features and user interface?

• Is there a migration path available for your application?

• Will you need to force people to update to the new platform or will you continue to offer both platforms?

Once your team has reviewed your application you will be able make an informed decision on whether to send it to pasture or keeping it working out in the fields.