Progress Software Engineering

Progress Software Engineering

Role Overview

Our team maintains and extends established business applications built using Progress
OpenEdge / ABL. Much of this work involves understanding and safely modifying long-lived
applications, troubleshooting existing behavior, implementing enhancements, and
extending existing systems to participate in newer application architectures.

The majority of the work is legacy application maintenance and enhancement. New
development is also required, particularly around the creation of APIs that make existing
Progress application capabilities available to other systems.

Effective augmentation requires strong Progress development skills as well as good
software engineering judgment. A resource needs to be able to understand unfamiliar
existing code, determine the implications of a proposed change, communicate effectively
with the internal team, and make changes without unnecessarily destabilizing established
systems.

Progress Development

• The team’s Progress work includes:
   Development using Progress ABL / Progress 4GL
   Supporting applications running on Progress OpenEdge 11.7 and later
   Maintaining and enhancing established Progress applications
   Understanding and safely modifying unfamiliar or legacy code
   Debugging and tracing application behavior through existing codebases
   Implementing new functionality within established applications
   Working with Progress database access from an application developer’s

perspective

Deep Progress database administration knowledge is not required for this development
profile.

API and Integration Development

An increasing portion of the work involves enabling established Progress systems to
integrate with newer applications and services.

• Relevant capabilities include:
   Creating APIs around existing Progress application capabilities
   Understanding HTTP and REST-style APIs
   Separating business logic from API or transport concerns where practical
   Designing clear interfaces between legacy applications and newer systems
   Working with formats such as JSON for application integration

Software Engineering Practices

Progress development is expected to reflect sound software engineering practices despite
the age or constraints of the systems involved.

• Relevant capabilities include:

 Designing maintainable software
 Understanding separation of concerns, coupling, cohesion, and dependency management
 Incrementally refactoring legacy code where doing so improves the change being made
 Balancing improvement opportunities against scope, risk, and business value
 Applying automated testing where practical
 Reasoning carefully about regression risk
 Understanding existing behavior before modifying it
 Avoiding unnecessary rewrites when incremental change is more appropriate

Requirements, Judgment, and Communication

• The nature of the work requires developers who can:

 Listen carefully and communicate clearly
 Clarify requirements and assumptions
 Understand the purpose and expected outcome of a change
 Work independently while maintaining regular communication with the internal team
 Seek alignment when requirements or technical direction are unclear
 Identify unexpected dependencies and regression risks
 Raise concerns or alternative approaches early
 Accept technical direction and incorporate feedback constructively
 Recognize when additional technical guidance is needed

Additional Relevant Capabilities

• Depending on the work, useful experience can include:
   Integrating Progress applications with .NET or other modern application environments
   REST API design and consumption
   JSON serialization and API payload design
   Relational database concepts
   Query performance and indexing from an application-development perspective
   Git source control
   Modernization of legacy application interfaces
   Automated testing of legacy or difficult-to-test applications
   Working in environments where established Progress systems coexist with newer technologies

Responsibilities Outside This Profile

• This development profile does not depend on a resource serving as:
   A Progress DBA
   An AIX or operating-system administrator
   A business analyst
   A help desk or second-tier application support resource
   A CI/CD or deployment infrastructure administrator

Those capabilities may be useful in particular circumstances, but they should not be
treated as primary screening criteria when identifying resources to augment Progress
development work.

Most Important Characteristics

• When considering a resource for this work, the strongest indicators of fit are:

1. Strong Progress ABL development capability.
2. The ability to understand and safely modify established applications.
3. Good technical judgment about scope, risk, and design.
4. Strong listening and communication skills.
5. A tendency to seek and maintain alignment on requirements and intended outcomes.
6. An incremental approach to improving legacy software rather than unnecessary rewriting.
7. The ability to recognize when questions or technical concerns need to be raised with the internal team.

Requirements

Progress ABL / Progress 4GL Progress OpenEdge 11.7+ Legacy Application Maintenance Debugging / Troubleshooting Enhancement of Existing Progress Applications Good Software Engineering Practices Good Communication