Overcoming Key Person Risk in Your Tech Infrastructure

Just One Developer? Your Custom Software or App Is At Risk

Picture it: You’ve hired a custom software developer to design your web and mobile applications. Executive leadership sees the results of the work from this developer in demos, but with a personal lack of knowledge and expertise in this field, they have no way to determine the quality of the work or code. This often results in best practices being overlooked and critical information going undocumented. Now you have a developer who is the only party with the knowledge required to support and maintain applications. In most cases, they’re also the only party with access to the source code. Your developer has just become a significant risk for the business.

If you’re a small to midsize business that’s invested in ONE trusted individual to handle the development of custom software for your company, you WILL have a key-person issue. Worse yet, if the application is critical to your business, you may be operating on borrowed time before issues arise. If your custom software developer is a single internal IT resource or a 1099 subcontractor, you have just turned over the keys to the safe with all your valuables locked inside. What is the back up plan for vacations, turn-over, or God forbid…death?

What happens if your developer isn’t available in a time of crisis? What happens if you don’t have access to the source code? How quickly could you locate and onboard a third-party vendor to help? Do you have what the vendor needs (your valuables)? How will your business be impacted if it takes weeks to address your issues (retrieve the keys to the safe)? This happens far too often. Many organizations are also concerned about technical debt, aging applications, and the inability to allocate enough resources for continuous improvement. They might be frustrated with underperforming applications, cybersecurity concerns, or slow response times for updates and bug fixes. Some even face language, time, and communication barriers, or low quality and long development cycles when working with offshore teams.

Teamwork Makes the Dream (Applications) Work

A strong development team is the key to success for web and mobile applications. Despite many platforms that try to persuade app developers that one person can successfully build an app, this is simply not true. It takes a team of people to ensure that your app is not going to be a drop of water inside a bucket of competing apps on the market.

Mid-market companies face similar problems regardless of industry; you are large enough to need “something more” than a single custom software developer to spur growth and streamline operations, but not large enough to have a full-time software development and support staff. This is where Red Hawk Technologies gives you the competitive edge.

Red Hawk’s Dream Team: Your Solution to Key Person Risk

Red Hawk provides services through a fractional team of experts with years of experience working together. This unique business model ensures you have the right types of resources at the right times, without the overhead of a full-time staff. Our approach is designed to:

• Prevent Key Person Risks: Instead of a single individual holding all the knowledge and access to source code, our Senior Software Engineers collaborate with Project Managers to plan and allocate work across multiple engineering resources. This collaborative, multi-person approach ensures productivity, continuity, and the prevention of key person risks. Our proprietary operating system further drives this collaboration and prevents key person risks.

• Deliver Unparalleled Experience and Expertise: Our Principals have over 25 years of experience, and our Senior Software Engineers average 14 years of experience. This collective wisdom means "we've seen it all," enabling us to architect solutions and overcome complex technical hurdles that might stump an isolated developer. This depth of experience provides the leadership and expertise needed for financial and operational stability.

• Comprised of Comprehensive Team Roles: A successful app development team often requires diverse roles. Red Hawk’s fractional team seamlessly integrates these to ensure a well-functioning and user-friendly product:
  • Mobile Developer (the glue that holds an entire project together): Takes mastery of coding and applies it to application development.
  • Back-end Developer (the heart of the operation): Responsible for the smooth and efficient integration of the app’s database and operating system.
  • DevOps (the thought leader or brain of the operation): Critical during the app development cycle’s pre-planning and testing phases for automation techniques.
  • Designer (the personality behind the layout of an app): Provides the shiny exterior to algorithms and code, often also serving as a front-end developer.
  • Quality Assurance Specialist (the eyes and ears of the development process): Catches issues along the way, flagging them for immediate repair, always with the user in mind.

• Offer Cost-Efficient and Predictable Model: A significant benefit of our fractional service model is that we never charge for downtime or underutilized resources. Our award-winning Software-Development-as-a-Service business model provides predictable costs and bundles development, enhancement, maintenance, and technical support services for a fixed monthly fee. This approach dramatically reduces your financial and operational risk, providing the stability you need to achieve your ROI.

• Focus on Value Creation: We are a well-oiled machine that creates and protects custom software assets.

Red Hawk in Action: Real-World Solutions to Key Person Risk

Red Hawk has a proven track record of helping companies overcome key person risks and related software development challenges:

• Modernizing Legacy Systems: A client faced a critical dependency on a 20-year-old ERP system built by a developer nearing retirement. This, combined with scalability issues and the need to consolidate multiple legacy systems post-acquisition, jeopardized core operations. We partnered with them to modernize and unify their ERP, enhancing security, streamlining user management, reducing costs, and ensuring scalable growth beyond the original developer's tenure.

• Gaining Code Visibility and Control: Another client was heavily reliant on custom applications, but their primary concern was a direct key person issue: a lack of visibility into the code if their sole in-house developer were to leave. We stepped in to conduct a comprehensive code scan, providing the insights needed to mitigate this vulnerability and offering ongoing support to ensure business continuity.

• Seamless Support Transition for Critical Applications: When a client needed immediate support for their online consumer loan application, they faced a tight deadline. Within a few months, our dedicated Project Managers and Engineers successfully acquired the database and code, quickly providing support, bug fixes, and improvements. As their Chief Technology and Innovation Officer praised, "Red Hawk is truly our partner. We have built a strong relationship and appreciate their care and pride in supporting Eagle."

• Overcoming Skill Set Bottlenecks: This client experienced severe delays due to limitations in specialized skill sets tied to a single developer, spending months on a problem that our team solved in under four hours. This starkly illustrates how relying on a sole individual can create significant bottlenecks and inefficiency, a common byproduct of key person risk that we help resolve.

• Rapid Response to Catastrophic Departures: A prospect faced a catastrophic key person issue when their developer, intimately familiar with their software, passed away, leaving them without any internal expertise. They urgently needed insights into the software's health, code structure, and dependencies, with aspirations to move to cloud-native solutions. This scenario perfectly highlights how Red Hawk can swiftly provide critical expertise and ensure business continuity, even in the most unforeseen circumstances.