I joined Activus Ltd in July 2016 as a frontend specialist supporting a legacy modernisation project for their private medical insurance and underwriting platform. The business was relying on a VB6 Windows Forms application with a WCF API layer that had been in production for over five years and was increasingly difficult to extend.

My initial brief was to support the migration from WinForms to ASP.NET MVC, but it quickly became apparent that none of the existing developers had web development experience. Within weeks, I became the recognised frontend authority - formally acknowledged by the business - responsible for establishing patterns and practices that the team would follow.

One of my key contributions was designing a custom jQuery-based framework that implemented component-like patterns before modern frameworks made this standard. This approach was so similar to Vue.js that when Vue emerged as a viable option, adopting it felt natural - I had essentially been building towards the same concepts independently. The company chose this path over Angular, which was just becoming prominent at the time.

I migrated approximately 20 screens from the legacy application, with 10 of those later refined when a dedicated UX developer joined. Beyond development, I ran seminars and presentations on MVC.NET, REST API design, and frontend development. I conducted peer reviews, code reviews, and extensive pair programming sessions with the development team. By the time the engagement ended - when the company was acquired and contractors were released - I had helped transform a team of 15 WinForms developers into confident full-stack engineers. The upskilled team continued successfully after my departure, demonstrating the sustainability of the transformation.