Brookfield Retail Properties: Maximus
Brookfield Properties, one of the largest real estate companies in the United States, developed Maximus to be the one-stop shop for Security personnel responsible for physical security operations at its hundreds of shopping mall properties across North America. It provides security directors, security guards, and other staff with a centralized interface for managing security incidents, assets and reports essential to creating safe and hospitable shopping environments for consumers. Maximus is a fullstack application built in AngularJS on the frontend, and Node.JS / Express on the backend. It’s persisted by MS SQL and hosted across a variety of Azure Cloud Services.
Project Overview
Taking the reins
Replacing an incumbent software vendor is a delicate process requiring attention to detail, discretion, and the ability to unravel complex systems with little to no assistance quickly and without interruption to service. Red Foundry was able to take over day-to-day maintenance of Maximus and begin shipping new features and defect corrections inside of an 8 week period.
Building for the future
Once behind the wheel, Red Foundry immediately began stabilizing the platform by establishing agile software development processes, introducing proper version control, and rebuilding CI/CD pipelines and deployment processes, enabling a regular cadence of reliable, predictable deployments of new functionality and feature enhancements to the Maximus platform.
Development Challenges
Legacy systems
Maximus is a workhorse with over 6 years of service to its many properties, users, and stakeholders. Despite the immense value that legacy enterprise applications like Maximus create, they are still susceptible to aging, technical debt, and the need to adapt to ever changing and modernizing technical ecosystems.
Red Foundry knows what legacy enterprise systems need to stay relevant and thrive. We keep our opinions and preferences out of the equation when planning for technical debt remediation, instead focusing on the most economical ways to update, upgrade, and retrofit applications like Maximus to remain secure and performant, as well as clear barriers to future feature development.
Results Achieved
Improved feature development velocity
By addressing process issues and shoring up the software development cycle and deployment processes for the Maximus platform, Red Foundry was able to create a cadence of regular, reliable feature development and production releases, breaking a many-month stretch of stagnation. This has breathed new life into the platform and enabled business leaders to begin roadmapping exciting new features.
Restored stability and reliability
By stabilizing the codebase and infrastructure, Red Foundry has freed up IT resources and product leaders at Brookfield to focus on their core job functions: not fighting fires in their applications production environment. Red Foundry remains available to triage and fix emergent production issues through our AppCare offering, while continuing new feature development and modernization of the platform.
Ready to get started?
We see our clients as our partners and are invested in their success. We ensure what we build for our clients will have a positive ROI. We never build anything just for the sake of it.
