January is a proverbial time of change. Whether it’s a reorganization, a promotion, a new project, or something else, in January lots of people find themselves with a new assignment.
For Engineering leaders, this often includes a new codebase, new team members, and more. As such, getting started requires information like: What’s the tech stack? What’s the architecture that connects it together? What function does each component provide? As basic as this information might seem, getting it is frequently achieved through 1:1 pairing with key stakeholders. And the bigger the project(s), the longer this will take, consequently prolonging the creation of an action plan. Adding fuel to the fire, comparable changes in the rest of the organization typically have Engineering dependencies, resulting in urgent inbound from all of these colleagues looking for Engineering feedback to inform their plans. It should come as no surprise that the resulting plans can turn out a little sketchy and otherwise sub-optimal.
A bunch of capabilities we’ve recently added to Flux provide enormous value throughout the year. But they are especially timely in this scenario because of all of the above. Here are some examples:
Understand your new codebase in minutes
Flux now automatically discovers and describes the tech stack, the code structure and architecture, available functions, inputs and outputs, and more. Here’s an example:
This is generated off the code and thus doesn't require any of the team's time. And it's always up to date: if your code changes, our summaries change. Plus, you can instantly get it across everything in your estate, which is especially helpful for leaders with large teams or lots of projects to manage.
Uncover the biggest issues and build an action plan
Armed with this understanding, Engineering managers have the foundation they need to build an action plan for their new project. What's the most important thing I should do with this project in the first quarter? Does this area have security issues, quality problems, etc.
Flux finds this as well, across quality, complexity, security / privacy, 3rd party risk, and more. Here’s an example from an open source repo we recently tested of security / privacy issues you’d want to investigate, if only to make sure these configurations don’t wind up in production.
Perhaps the code in your new project has quality / maintainability issues. Understanding that up front is enormously important, and Flux can help. Here’s an example from an open source project we recently evaluated:
For an early project trying to move fast, this might be just fine. But there’s enough in these high-level findings to warrant further investigation.
AI brings code evaluation and understanding to everyone
Code discovery and analysis of this kind has been possible for some time. But it required multiple tools, used by a small team of senior developers, and weeks to months of time to do the work and turn the resulting mess into an action plan. For this reason, such analysis has been episodic and reserved for only the most important projects, at critical moments in time. Flux’s agentic, compound AI approach makes it easy to do this analysis and surface the most important issues immediately. As a result, it’s available to everyone and can be done any time: including to kick off your 2025 like never before.
Check it out for yourself! Schedule a demo today.
Ted Julian is the CEO and Co-Founder of Flux, as well as a well-known industry trailblazer, product leader, and investor with over two decades of experience. A market-maker, Ted launched his four previous startups to leadership in categories he defined, resulting in game-changing products that greatly improved technical users' day-to-day processes.
