Get your software project back on track
Software Project Rescue Services
Briebug rescues stalled, over-budget and failing software projects on any stack. We assess what is wrong, stabilize it, and hand it back to your team, running.
Who we rescue
A software project rescue is for a project that matters to the business and has stopped moving. The people who call us have to answer for the project, whether or not they wrote the code.
Founders and business owners
You paid for software that is late, broken or both, and you cannot judge the code yourself. You need someone senior to tell you the truth about what you own and what it will take to finish.
CTOs and engineering leaders
You inherited a codebase, a vendor or a deadline you did not choose. You need an independent read on the system and a team that can carry the load while your people catch up.
Product owners with a hard date
A contract, a launch or a regulator sets the date, and the current velocity will not reach it. You need the gap measured and closed, not another optimistic estimate.
Teams with a security finding to close
An audit or an assessment found weaknesses in a live system that people use every day. You need them fixed without taking the system down.
Call us when
A failing project rarely fails all at once. These are the warning signs we hear first, often long before anyone uses the word rescue.
Deadlines keep slipping
Every estimate is wrong, and nobody can say why or when it will be done.
Your vendor stopped answering, or left
The people who built it are gone, and the knowledge went with them.
Every release breaks something
There are no tests you trust, so each change is a gamble and the team is afraid to touch the code.
AI-generated code works until you extend it
It demos well. Then the next feature breaks three others, and nobody understands why.
The budget is gone and there is no finish line
Money keeps going in, the scope keeps moving, and nothing ships.
Your environments do not match
What works in test fails in production, and nobody can say which version is running where.
Rescue by situation
A guide for each of the most common calls we get.
Taking over a project from another vendor
When the vendor or freelancer who built your product leaves or stops answering, we take it over safely: your accounts first, then a clear plan.
Your developer disappeared
Your developer has stopped answering and the project is half-finished. Six steps to protect what you have before you hire anyone new.
AI-Built Code Rescue
Your app was built fast with AI coding tools and worked as a demo. Now every new feature breaks something else.
How a rescue works
Assess, stabilize, hand it back. The same three steps on every rescue, because guessing is what put the project in trouble.
Assess
Find out exactly what is wrong before you commit to fixing it.
Senior engineers read the code and talk to the people who build and use the system. You get the facts in writing, with a plan and a price, before you decide anything else.
- A fixed-fee technical assessment of the code, architecture, process, pipeline and security
- Interviews with the people who build and use the system
- Your top 10 pain points, each with a recommendation
- A triage report of what needs to be done, and in what order
- A milestone-based estimate for the work, and a statement of work
Stabilize
Stop the bleeding first. Then deliver the roadmap.
We work the triage report in order. The fixes that make every later change safe come first: a pipeline you can trust, tests around the code that breaks, and the security gaps closed. Then we build what the roadmap calls for, milestone by milestone.
- Fix the release pipeline, so every change ships the same way
- Add the tests that make change safe
- Close the security gaps the assessment found
- Fix the defects your users feel, then build what the roadmap calls for
- Track every recommendation to closure in delivery management reviews
Hand it back
A project your team can run without us.
A rescue is not finished until your own team can run the system. We document what we changed and why, and we pair with your engineers until they own the code and the process.
- Documentation of what we changed and why
- Pairing with your engineers until they own the code and the process
- An optional senior oversight retainer after handback
What the Technical Assessment gives you
Every rescue starts here. Before you spend money on fixes, you find out what is actually wrong, what to fix first, and what the whole job will cost. The assessment is not a sales call with a slide deck. It is a week of senior engineering work, written up so that anyone can act on it.
- A review of the code, architecture, process, pipeline and security
- Your top 10 pain points, each with a recommendation
- A triage report of what to fix, in what order
- A milestone-based estimate for the work
- A statement of work, ready to sign with us or to take to another shop
The fee is not credited if you hire us, because the report stands on its own: you can take it to any shop, or hand it to your own team. Most clients hire us to do the work.
- Fixed fee
- $10K
- Duration
- About 1 week
- Fee credited if you hire us
- No
Rescues we have run
Each of these projects was stuck when we arrived. Here is what was wrong, what the assessment found, and where each one ended up.
Restore United
Business management platform for restoration companies
- Problem
- Technical debt was slowing the product: outdated Angular, manual deployments, an incomplete QuickBooks integration, and a mobile app that could no longer ship.
- What we found
- Deprecated Cordova mobile tooling, an expired Android developer account, features left incomplete by an old QuickBooks integration, and a production TLS certificate problem.
- Result
- Current Angular in an Nx monorepo, CI/CD into AWS, secrets in Secrets Manager, a working QuickBooks integration, and mobile apps that can ship again.
Cultivate
Premium gifting platform
- Problem
- Feature development had stopped. Releases shipped with bugs, and a system defect let purchases go through outside approved price ranges.
- What we found
- Environments that did not match, no formal delivery process, hardcoded payment API credentials, and old VPN and SSH access nobody had reviewed.
- Result
- Four aligned environments, one agile process in Jira, rotated credentials with least-privilege access, and features that ship predictably.
PSIA / SnowPro
Education, certification and membership platform for ski instructors
Angular 7 to 17and .NET Core 3.1 to .NET 8 (LTS)
- Problem
- Angular 7 and .NET Core 3.1 nearing end of life, failing test suites, and infrastructure that depended on a third party.
- What we found
- Jest and Cypress suites that broke during the upgrade, an end-of-life identity server, WordPress plugins that failed on PHP 8, and a planned Azure subscription transfer that risked major downtime.
- Result
- Angular 7 to 17, .NET Core 3.1 to .NET 8, working test suites, and repositories, pipelines and documents in an Azure DevOps environment PSIA owns.
Public-health nonprofit
Patient-transfer data exchange for a county public-health agency
- Problem
- A secure healthcare exchange portal with a tight contractual deadline, an under-resourced team, and little experience with React and TypeScript.
- What we found
- One shared integration environment, schema changes applied by hand, front-end changes that broke other screens, and back end and front end out of sync.
- Result
- Delivered on time, with TypeScript throughout, local Docker environments, database migrations in code, and automated tests.
Strata GPO
Member portal for a group purchasing organization
2,137customer accounts created in Microsoft Entra on release night, with zero errors
- Problem
- An independent security assessment flagged critical weaknesses in a live portal that thousands of members use every day.
- What we found
- Credentials stored in the portal's own database with no second factor, internal services that did not check callers, hardcoded secrets, and manual releases.
- Result
- MFA sign-in through Microsoft Entra, every service verifying every caller, secrets in Key Vault, and automated, scanned releases. 2,137 accounts migrated with zero errors.
Payzer
Field service software for the trades (a WEX company)
9 daysearly: every release feature done by April 21, ahead of the April 30, 2025 release date
- Problem
- A rebuild of the contractor mobile app from AngularJS to modern Angular, with a hard April 30, 2025 release date and not enough velocity to hit it.
- What we found
- A technical assessment measured velocity against the backlog and sized the gap: three Angular engineers and two native mobile engineers.
- Result
- Every release feature done by April 21, nine days early. The app released to its first customers, with Cypress tests in the pipeline.
FedEx
International express clearance and brokerage technology
8s to under 1sfor a key operations query, in initial testing
- Problem
- Several high-stakes clearance programs, including a legacy system retirement and an EU customs launch, all competing for the same small group of domain experts.
- What we found
- Air waybill logic locked inside the legacy system, a broken test suite on the EU launch, 8-second queries, and EU and non-EU code tangled together.
- Result
- A new air waybill service to replace the legacy logic, the EU customs soft launch pushed to production, and a key query cut from 8 seconds to under 1.
ReachWell
Public-sector communications SaaS for K-12 and local government
Disclosure: ReachWell is a Briebug affiliate (a related party), not an arm's-length client.
- Problem
- A legacy CakePHP and jQuery application sent messages from schools, counties and nonprofits, and some admin screens did not work.
- What we found
- A new Angular front end, a REST API in place of the PHP back end, a message queue for reliable delivery, and accessibility and tests built in.
- Result
- The rewritten platform went into service on June 1, 2026, and the new website and admin app launched in October 2026.
Any stack
A rescue is about engineering discipline, not one framework. Our teams deliver on these, among others:
- Angular
- AngularJS
- React
- React Native
- .NET
- Java
- Ruby
- Rails
- Laravel
- Node and NestJS
- Swift
- Objective-C
- Kotlin
- Dart
- C/C++
- Ionic
- WordPress
- AWS
- Azure
Angular is where we made our name. See our Angular and React expertise.
The Briebug Way
A project usually needs rescue because discipline slipped under pressure. We bring it back, and we keep it there.
- Senior engineers only. US-based senior engineers do the work. No juniors learning on your rescue.
- Plan first. We agree what we will change and how we will know it worked, before we change it.
- Test-driven development. We write the test that proves a fix before we write the fix. Passing tests are our definition of done.
- AI with guardrails. We use AI-assisted engineering inside the same review and test gates as everything else.
- A senior engineer accountable for every change. Nothing reaches your codebase unread, and a named senior engineer answers for every change.
Rescue by stack
What goes wrong on each of these stacks, and how the rescue works there.
Angular Project Rescue
Your Angular application is stuck on an old version, every release breaks something, or the team that built it is gone.
React Project Rescue
Your React application is behind schedule, each change breaks another screen, or the deadline is close and the team is stretched.
.NET Project Rescue
Your .NET application runs on an end-of-life version, a security review found problems, or releases still depend on one person.
We would rather walk away than ship you garbage.
We will not ship untested code to hit a date. If the only way to make a deadline is to cut the tests, we tell you, and we tell you what it will cost later. That honesty is the reason rescues work.
95% of assessments become engagements.
Questions buyers ask us
How much does a software project rescue cost?
It starts with a Technical Assessment for a fixed fee of $10K. The assessment ends with a milestone-based estimate for the rest of the work, so you see what stabilizing and finishing the project will cost before you commit to it. You can take that estimate to any shop and compare.
How long does the assessment take?
About 1 week. In that week our senior engineers review your code, architecture, process, pipeline and security, and interview the people who build and use the system. At the end you get the triage report, your top 10 pain points with recommendations, and a milestone-based estimate for the work.
Should we rescue the project or rebuild it from scratch?
That is what the assessment decides, from evidence rather than opinion. The triage report says what to fix and in what order. In our case studies, the existing systems were upgraded rather than thrown away: PSIA went from Angular 7 to 17 and from .NET Core 3.1 to .NET 8.
Can you take over from our current vendor, and what happens to their access?
Yes. Closing old access is part of stabilizing. For Cultivate we removed hardcoded credentials, rotated all tokens and revoked obsolete VPN and SSH access. For Strata GPO we moved every secret into a vault. For PSIA we moved all repositories, pipelines and documents into an Azure DevOps environment PSIA owns.
Can you fix code that was written with AI tools?
Yes. We assess AI-generated code the same way as any other code: we read it, find what breaks, and add the tests that make change safe. We use AI-assisted engineering ourselves, inside the same review and test gates, and a senior engineer is accountable for every change.
Which technology stacks do you work on?
Any stack. A rescue is about engineering discipline, not one framework. Our case studies ran on Angular, React, .NET, Java, Laravel and WordPress, hosted on AWS and Azure. Our teams also work in Ruby and Rails, Swift, Objective-C, Kotlin, Dart, C/C++, React Native, Node, NestJS and Ionic.
Will you work alongside our in-house engineers?
Yes, and we want to. The assessment interviews the people who build and use the system. During the rescue we pair with your engineers, and we document what we change and why. The goal of the last step is a team that owns the code and the process without us.
What support do we get after you hand the project back?
Your team runs the system, with documentation of what we changed and why, and the pairing time it took them to own it. If you want a senior engineer to keep watching over the system after handback, there is an optional senior oversight retainer, so your team does not have to carry every decision alone.
Why is the assessment fee not credited if we hire you?
Because the report stands on its own. For the $10K fee, our engineers spend the week reviewing your code and your processes to write a comprehensive report that you can take to anyone to have the work done. The fee pays for that work, whether or not you hire us.
What happens after the assessment?
We walk your leadership and your engineers through the findings. You keep the report, the triage plan and the milestone-based estimate. If you want us to do the work, the statement of work is ready to sign. If not, take everything to another shop or your own team.
Tell us what is broken.
A short call with a senior engineer. Tell us what is happening, and we will tell you honestly whether an assessment is the right next step.