Inherited a .NET app that nobody wants to touch?
Whether it's an ageing ASP.NET system that's slow and fragile, or a half-finished project a previous developer walked away from — I take it over, make it stable, and modernise it safely. A structured rescue: understand it, stabilise it, then improve it, without a risky big-bang rewrite. Remote, worldwide.
The situations I get called in for.
Legacy work is rarely about the age of the code — it's about the risk. If any of these sound familiar, it's the right time to bring someone in.
The developer left
A previous developer or agency is gone, and you're left with a codebase nobody fully understands. I take it over cleanly and document as I go.
Half-finished projects
A build that stalled at 60% and needs someone to pick it up, finish it properly, and get it to a real launch.
Scary to change
Every deploy is a gamble and small changes break unrelated things. I stabilise first so the app is safe to work on again. Deployment & CI/CD →
Grinding under load
An app that worked fine at launch and now crawls as data and users have grown — usually fixable without new hardware.
Old .NET Framework
Stuck on old ASP.NET / .NET Framework and needing a path to modern .NET — migrated in safe stages, not all at once.
No tests, no docs
No one's sure what the system does or how. I audit it, write down how it really works, and add safety nets before changing anything.
What a rescue includes
The goal is to make the system safe to own and safe to change — before adding anything new. Every rescue covers the fundamentals.
- A full audit of the code, data and infrastructure
- Plain-English write-up of how it actually works
- Stabilising the worst risks first
- Safety nets: version control, builds, key tests
- Performance & security fixes
- Staged .NET Framework → modern .NET migration
- Finishing incomplete features properly
- A prioritised roadmap for what comes next
I take on the ones others won't
Most developers want a clean slate. Inheriting someone else's half-working system is a different skill — reading unfamiliar code, keeping it running, and improving it without breaking what works.
- Comfortable in code I didn't write
- Stabilise first, modernise second — no reckless rewrites
- The app keeps working the whole way through
- Honest audit: what's worth keeping, what isn't
- One engineer across code, database and deploy
- You own everything, fully documented
Audit, stabilise, modernise — in that order.
Talk
What the app does, what's going wrong, and what you need from it. No jargon, no judgement about how it got here.
Audit
I go through the code, data and setup and hand you a plain-English picture of the real state and the real risks.
Stabilise
Fix the dangerous parts and add safety nets first, so the system is safe to work on before anything new is touched.
Modernise
Migrate, refactor and finish features in safe stages — the app stays live and working the entire time.
Hand over or stay on
A documented, healthy system you can hand to your team — or keep me on a retainer to keep improving it.
The thinking behind the rescue.
A write-up and related services that show how I approach inherited systems — and the layers a rescue usually touches.
7 signs your .NET app needs rescuing
Ageing apps rarely fail all at once — they get slow, fragile and scary to touch. The warning signs, and how a structured rescue works.
Backend & API development
Once it's stable, the new features and clean APIs the system should have had all along.
Database engineering
Old apps are usually slow at the database too — schema and query fixes are a core part of most rescues.
Got an app that needs rescuing?
Tell me what you've inherited and what's going wrong — even if you're not sure of the details. You'll get an honest read and a clear next step, with no pressure.