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case study
Architecture Roadmap for Subscription Management Overhaul
Untangled a fragile subscription platform across three codebases — delivering a phased recovery roadmap and scalable API-first system design.
Client
National media publisher with gated content and subscriptions
Role
Systems Strategist & Recovery Planner
Timeline
~2 months
Stack
Custom Platform, API Layer, WordPress, GA4
The Challenge
The platform was fragile by design. Three codebases. Dozens of invisible dependencies. 30+ API calls per page — causing slowdowns, recursion bugs, and surprise outages. Every update risked taking the business offline.
My Role
I mapped the chaos and designed a clean, API-first architecture — delivering a phased roadmap to recover stability and unlock future growth.
Solutions Delivered
- Ran a full audit to uncover logic duplication, failure points, and critical paths
- Mapped dependency fire zones across API, App, and DB layers
- Designed a modular, layered system to separate logic, ops, and UI concerns
- Developed a step-by-step recovery plan with clear staging and technical milestones
- Built visual diagrams to guide teams on system layers and service boundaries
- Wrote execution-ready tickets to help dev teams ship without guesswork
- Aligned new system design with GA4 tracking integrity and future analytics goals
Business Outcomes
- Delivered a clear, phased recovery roadmap adopted across dev + leadership
- Projected 30% performance gains by cutting redundant logic
- Estimated 60% less dev debugging and 70% ops efficiency boost
- Gave the business a scalable, maintainable subscription platform
- Reduced future risk through better architecture, visibility, and governance
systems-design architecture tech-debt