Three weeks to turn an inherited platform into business decisions
An airline catering business separated from its European parent and inherited a data platform it had not built, could not staff and could not explain. A short Advisory health check established what was there, scored it for a non-technical board, and set the order of work that followed.
3 weeks
From start to scored findings
8
Recommendations, prioritized
3/5
Overall maturity, approaching 4
2
Tools selected and adopted
Quick Facts
INDUSTRY
Airline catering and inflight hospitality
BUSINESS CONTEXT
Newly separated from its European parent
CORE CHALLENGE
An inherited platform with no reliable picture of its condition
SERVICES
Advisory — health check, architecture, tool selection
TECHNOLOGY
Databricks dbt Fivetran
STAKEHOLDERS
CIO and the internal IT team
The Challenge
BUSINESS
-
Leadership could not say what the business owned, so any decision about what to build next was a guess
-
There was no budget for a wholesale platform replacement, and no evidence to say whether one was needed
-
The business was under pressure to keep producing analytics while the question went unanswered
DATA AND TECHNOLOGY
-
The platform was organized project by project, with raw, refined and reporting layers repeated inside each project rather than shared across the business
-
Transformation code was being written straight into the platform with no version control
-
Data could not be landed fast enough to keep up with what the business was asking for
ORGANIZATIONAL
-
The handover was roughly three hours of recorded sessions, plus documentation missing its context
-
Nobody had checked that what was handed over was fit for the business receiving it
-
The remaining team did not have the skills to carry the work on, and hiring was proving slow
What we did
1
Current-state assessment of the inherited platform, worked from the system itself
2
Maturity scoring across every area, one to five, as a traffic light report
3
Eight recommendations in priority order: three quick wins, four medium-term, one long-term
4
Target-state architecture guidance, including the move to Medallion
5
Tool selection for ingestion and transformation, based on the assessment findings
HOW WE WORKED
We worked alongside the team that remained after the separation, because those were the people who would own whatever came next.
The report was built for the non-technical audience that would decide. Scoring the findings and presenting them as traffic lights meant the CIO and the wider leadership could read the state of the platform, while the full spreadsheet stayed available for the engineers.
Outcomes
1
Missing
2
Developing
3
Functional
4
Mature
5
Optional
Data structure and organization
Security and governance
Orchestration and CI/CD
4/5
3/5
3/5
Overall
3/5
Overall: a solid three, approaching four. Testing and compute were also reviewed, as supporting practices.
Eight recommendations, in priority order
3 quick wins
4 medium-term
1 long term
Before
After
An inherited platform nobody could explain
Every area scored and the weak points named
Three hours of handover video and context-free documentation
A single report leadership could act on
Layers repeated project by project
Architecture direction set on the Medallion Method
Transformation code with no version control
dbt in daily use, with version control
Data landing too slowly for the business
Fivetran selected for ingestion
BUSINESS
-
A platform nobody could explain became one the business could budget against and build on
-
No replacement program was needed, so spending went to the specific weaknesses instead [Rebuild avoided: $__]
-
Within weeks the client was committing money to the fixes the review had identified
TECHNICAL AND ADOPTION
-
Architecture direction set: shared layers across the business under the Medallion Method
-
Version control introduced to transformation work through dbt, now in daily use
-
Around half of the eight recommendations were implemented, including security and governance
The business gained an accurate view of what it owned and the ammunition to make confident decisions about it.
IN THE CLIENT'S WORDS
[Client quote pending approval — Todd. Preferred attribution: CIO or equivalent. The quote should speak to the clarity the assessment gave them and what it let them decide.]
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PLACEHOLDER
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Inherited a platform you did not build?
A short health check tells you what you own and what to fix first, in language your board can act on.