Using Historical Incident Management Data to Plan for System Upgrades

Inheriting a freelance development project with a disorganized codebase, poor documentation, and limited communication from previous developers can be a challenging task, as illustrated by the author's experience with a particularly troublesome project. The codebase, filled with inefficient programming patterns, required significant resources to stabilize, but the integration of incident management tools proved invaluable. These tools enabled the identification and resolution of critical issues such as database locking and memory leaks, which were otherwise difficult to detect and solve. For instance, a problematic hourly cron job causing site crashes was refactored, improving site uptime, while memory issues, including slow-loading pages due to inefficient database queries, were addressed by optimizing server configurations and caching results. The use of incident management tools not only facilitated problem-solving but also highlighted the potential for these tools to plan upgrades and scale well-architected applications effectively, underscoring their importance in both troubleshooting and project growth.