Case Study
Rebuilding the Plane While Flying It
The FC Tech Stack Story · Nathan Feger, Engineering Leader
Systems Consolidation
A Sprawling Product Ecosystem
One platform? Not quite. Five distinct products. Multiple stacks. One small team holding it all together.
LMS
Learning Management System, system built by the FC Team
Client App
Administrative interface
Learner App
Core learning platform (Another LMS, came in through an Acquisition)
Testing App
Standalone assessments
Mobile Apps
Multiple platforms
The Problem
A small team. A sprawling architecture. And a company that needed to grow.
Scaling Crisis
Infrastructure costs growing super-linearly with user growth — unsustainable at scale.
Resource Drain
1–2 engineers fully consumed keeping data synchronized across fragmented systems.
Technical Debt
Multiple stacks creating maintenance nightmares and team allocation paralysis.
Growth Imperative
A new CRO hired with a mandate: change the growth curve substantially.
Strategic Goals: The Path Forward
Four Objectives
Clear, measurable targets to anchor every technical decision and justify every trade-off.
Improve Lead Time
Increase team flexibility and cross-functional skills to streamline delivery.
Reduce Escaped Defects
Minimize critical issues reaching production through better architecture.
Cut AWS Cost by 30%
Optimize infrastructure and resource utilization across the consolidated platform.
Reduce COGS
Lower the minimum team size required for ongoing maintenance and support.
The Consolidation Roadmap
The Consolidation Roadmap
A strategy to unify the platform. Start with the executive team and get buy in, then execute.
1
Leadership & Executive Buy-In
Securing the mandate. Without organizational commitment, nothing else moves.
2
Low-Hanging Fruit & Developer Productivity
Admin UI rewrite and dual writes — well-scoped problems executed cleanly.
3
The Hard Part
Making the learner tool the system of truth and replacing the LMS — where real complexity surfaced.
4
The Long Tail
Admin consolidation and assessment rebuild — a long tail of discovery, dependency, and organizational endurance.
Company Cultural Impact
The Challenge
Historical teams were deeply tied to legacy tools that had once been the new hotness. FranklinCovey has a remarkable tolerance for customer-facing pain — as long as nothing changes.
The Strategy
Partner heavily with my manager and the division head. Surface the business metrics. Help them see it logically before they could accept it emotionally.
Overcoming emotional attachment to legacy systems required as much leadership energy as the technical work itself.
Where Was Nate
The Technical Bets
Getting Executive Buy-In
First pitch: 2 engineers' time recovered, 30–40% AWS reduction, smaller team footprint, and a single unified tech stack enabling true flexibility.
Engineering Team Conviction
1-on-1s, team meetings, and formal training plans — proving I wasn't playing favorites while asking half the team to abandon their expertise.
Process Changes
New Tech Design Review process. Expanded pull request coverage. Pairing introduced as team culture — two teams learning to operate as one.
Where Was Nate
The Human Work
Executive Selling
Helping my manager carry the vision upward — translating architecture into business metrics that resonated at the executive level.
Product Integration
Redesigned staff meetings to bring Product in. No platform consolidation succeeds without product alignment and shared ownership.
Manager Goals
Managers tasked with building feature teams crossing legacy team boundaries, focused on cross-training and go-forward work streams.
Team Changes
Some team members couldn't make the transition. We helped them find roles where they could be successful — honestly and with care.
Mid-Flight
State at Handoff
A snapshot of where things stood at the end of my tenure. The hill was longer than expected — but the summit was always visible.
Leadership & Executive Buy-In
Executive buy-in secured. Admin UI rewrite completed. Dual writes enabled — no major incidents.
Low-Hanging Fruit & Developer Productivity
Making the learner tool the system of truth exposed the true depth of consolidation complexity. Ongoing.
The Hard Part
Customers migrated off the Legacy LMS successfully. Backend treatment as microservice underway. Replacement still unsettled — 2 years in.
The Long Tail
Admin consolidation and assessment rebuild in progress, informed by all prior learning.
Goal Accomplishment: Measuring Progress
50%
Lead Time
Improved for team members leveraging the new architecture. ✓
25%
COGS Reduction
Achieved through cross-training and greater system independence. ✓
—
Defect Rate ↔
Initially reduced, then reverted as new data model complexities emerged. Work continues.
—
AWS Cost Savings ⟳
Full realization still pending. Early data supports the 30% hypothesis — dependent on completing consolidation.
Lessons Learned
Calendar Time Is Brutal to Manage
Vision planning is normal work. Getting exec buy-in and migrating customers consumed nearly 2 years — plan for that reality explicitly.
Data Models Are Non-Delegable
Foundational data models must be sound from day one. Some decisions are too consequential to delegate — even to trusted engineers.
Buy-In Is Never Binary
Not everyone who says yes means yes. Continuous communication — up, down, and across — is not optional. It's the job.