Where Legacy Code
Meets Practical Guidance.

You're stuck in legacy code — slow delivery, constant bugs, and nothing your team has tried has fixed it. Adding AI on top only made delivery worse. You're the one who wants to drive the change — you care about getting it right; what's missing isn't the will, it's the how. Optivem Circle puts you in a room of senior engineers every two weeks, working through the real problems you're facing — live, practical, no curriculum.

Live calls + 24/7 async access
Bring your real challenges
No curriculum, no slides — live guidance on the real problems you're hitting. Queue your questions ahead or raise them live, plus async Q&A 24/7 between calls.
Engineering decisions, resolved
TDD, ATDD, Hexagonal Architecture, Clean Architecture, CI/CD, legacy code, AI — and anything else. Unlimited scope.
Get your sandbox work reviewed
Submit your sandbox / practice work anytime — Valentina reviews it async between calls.
Full replay access
Every public session recorded — watch anytime if you can't attend live.
Fortnightly · 2-hour sessions
Our current cadence, generally 3–5pm CET/CEST (9–11am ET). The schedule flexes to demand and may adapt over time.
The Problem

You've tried everything.
The legacy code won't budge.

Working in legacy code is relentless pressure — stressful deliveries, slipping deadlines, and fresh bugs every time you touch code no one fully understands.

01

You're alone with your legacy codebase

Just you and hundreds of thousands of lines of untested, tangled code — and the pressure to keep shipping without breaking it.

02

Theory doesn't map to reality

Textbook examples are clean. Your production codebase is not. The gap between them is where progress stalls.

03

There's no one to ask

AI gives you confident answers that fall apart on contact with your real codebase. Your team is stuck on the same problems you are. You need someone who's already shipped the fix.

And you're the one trying to change it. You're not content to just cope — you want to raise the bar for your codebase and your team. The will is there, and the mandate. What's missing is the capability to make the change stick. That's the gap Circle closes.

The Other Side

Now imagine
the opposite.

You touch the legacy code and it doesn't fight back — there are tests, so you know the moment something breaks. Deliveries stop slipping, because delivery has become predictable again. Your team stops going in circles and starts moving in one direction. The AI tools finally help, because there's a safety net underneath them. And when you hit something you've never seen before, you're not stuck alone with it for two weeks — you bring it to the next call and leave with a clear next step, then go further than you could alone and bring back what you hit next. A little direction, applied call after call, bridges a gap that looked impossible on your own. The change you've been wanting to drive finally has the how behind it.

That's what the Circle is for.

What You Get

Practical guidance,
live and async.

No curriculum. No slides. Q&A on what you're actually working on — live on the calls and async between them. Advisory support for engineers already doing the work.

Live Guidance, Every Two Weeks

A 2-hour live session every two weeks — the cadence we run for now. Bring the real challenges you're facing at work; queue your questions ahead of the call or raise them live. Concrete, applicable direction — code examples where available. Proprietary code stays off public calls — that's what Teams is for.

TDD ATDD CI/CD Hexagonal Architecture Clean Architecture Legacy Code AI

Ask Questions Anytime

Post questions async between sessions and get them answered in the open, where everyone learns from the answer — a community of practice where each answer compounds into the archive rather than disappearing into a private DM.

TDD ATDD CI/CD Hexagonal Architecture Clean Architecture Legacy Code AI

A Library That Compounds

Every public session is recorded and added to a growing archive. Join now and you're in on the ground floor.

Europe & US-Friendly

Every two weeks, ~2 hours, generally 3–5pm CET/CEST (9–11am ET), with dates announced in advance.

Sandbox Review · Annual & Group only

Submit your own sandbox / practice work (katas, course exercises, open source) and Valentina reviews it async; feedback lands in the community for everyone — getting your own work reviewed. Your real production codebase stays off — that's Teams.

Two courses included · Annual & Group only

Full access to Valentina's Pipeline Accelerator and ATDD Accelerator — self-paced courses you work through on your own time, reinforcing what comes up on the live calls.

No Syllabus

The kinds of things
members bring.

There's no curriculum — you bring what's blocking you. A course fixes its scope up front, but legacy code never respects a syllabus; here the scope is unlimited, so whatever's actually blocking you is on the table — including the big stuff like architecture, refactoring, and legacy modernization. A few examples of the kind of thing:

"I've got a 200k-line monolith with zero tests. Where do I even put the first test without rewriting everything?"
"My team keeps writing tests that break on every refactor. How do I get them testing behaviour, not implementation?"
"We want to adopt ATDD but the business won't give us time. How do I make the case to my manager?"
"Our CI takes 40 minutes and everyone's stopped trusting it. How do I get it fast and green again?"
"Copilot writes code that passes review and breaks in prod. How do I put a safety net under AI-generated code?"
"Where's the seam? I need to get this legacy class under test but everything's tangled together."
"We're stuck arguing Hexagonal vs Clean Architecture. Which actually matters for our situation?"
"We need to break a 200k-line monolith into services without a big-bang rewrite. What's a safe incremental path, and how do I keep delivery going while we do it?"
"How do I introduce ATDD on a team that's burned out and skeptical of 'yet another process'?"

Bring yours.

Membership

Choose your plan.

Individual membership Monthly €97 / mo Recommended Annual €1,164€930 / yr Save 20% · €234 off
Live guidance calls every two weeks
Your real challenges talked through, with examples where available
Ask questions async between calls — 24/7 in the community
Full replay access
Unlimited topic scope
Alongside other senior engineers
Submit your own sandbox work for review — async review of your sandbox / practice repo (not your production codebase)
Pipeline Accelerator + ATDD Accelerator — both self-paced courses included
Join Monthly Join Annual
Company · Group

Bringing several engineers?

Everything in Annual, per seat, on the shared public calls — plus a bulk per-seat discount (the more engineers, the bigger it gets), one company invoice (name + VAT), sandbox review and both courses for every seat, and an optional annual term.

  • 3+ seats10% off
  • 5+ seats15% off
  • 10+ seats20% off
Up to 20%off / seat
Stacks on the Annual per-seat rate
Book a Call to Discuss

All plans billed in advance · cancel anytime — access continues to the end of the period you've paid for. Plus a 30-day money-back guarantee: not 100% satisfied in your first month? Full refund, no questions asked.

Expense it to your company training budget.

You're improving the codebase you're responsible for — so this is a work expense, not a hobby. We make funding it frictionless:

  • A proper invoice with your company name and VAT number — ready to expense to your employer, or to write off as a business expense if you're an independent contractor.
  • Training-budget friendly — a clear, itemised membership most engineering managers can approve from an existing L&D / training budget.
  • Manager pitch in one line: "Fortnightly senior-engineer guidance on the exact legacy-code problems slowing our delivery — €97/mo, cancel anytime." Forward it and you're most of the way there.

Or invest in it yourself. Not every employer funds training — and you don't have to wait for one. Deepening the skills that actually move legacy code is some of the best career insurance there is: the market rewards engineers who can do what most can't, and you never know when you'll be glad you have the edge.

Bringing several engineers? See the Group plan above — per-seat discount, one company invoice.

Bringing your team but need to work on your own codebase — privately?

That's Optivem Teams: dedicated sessions reserved for your engineers alone, on your real, proprietary code, in full confidence. The one option that works on your code, not open-source examples.

About Your Coach

Valentina
Jemuović

Technical Coach at Optivem. Years spent helping engineering teams modernize legacy systems without years of expensive trial and error.

"Teams aren't stuck for lack of theory. They're stuck because no one's shown them how to apply it to real, legacy code."

Creator of the ATDD Accelerator and Pipeline Accelerator programs. Worked directly with engineering teams across Europe and North America. Optivem Circle brings that same guidance to any engineer fighting through legacy code.

TDD ATDD CI/CD Hexagonal Architecture Clean Architecture Legacy Code
Valentina Jemuović, founder of Optivem
FAQ

Common questions.

General
Do I need to have completed an Optivem course to join?
No — open to any senior engineer or tech lead actively working on legacy code modernization. Prior course experience is helpful but not required.
What topics are covered on the calls?
Whatever you're working on. TDD, ATDD, CI/CD, Hexagonal Architecture, Clean Architecture, legacy code, AI — driven by your real questions, not a fixed curriculum.
Will you write the code or build it with me?
No — coaching is advisory. You bring your real challenges to the calls and we work through the approach together, but the implementation stays in your hands between sessions. It's guidance on your work, not a build-it-with-you (or build-it-for-you) service.
Are results guaranteed?
Coaching is advisory guidance, not a guaranteed outcome — we give you the clearest, most practical direction we can, but the results come from the work you do between sessions and the decisions you make. We're confident enough in the value that every membership is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee: if it's not the right fit, get a full refund within your first month.
Is guidance live or async?
Both. Guidance is delivered live on the calls every two weeks, and you can also ask questions async between sessions — answered in the community so everyone learns from the answer. Every public session is recorded, so over time you build up a library you can revisit anytime while your membership is active. (Async question-answering is on every plan.)
How many sessions are there, and how do I get my questions answered?
Right now we run a fortnightly 2-hour live session — that's the current schedule, and it may adapt over time. You can queue your questions ahead of the call or raise them live on the day — plus ask async in the community between calls. Sessions are demand-driven: a scheduled call runs as long as someone has registered for it and/or submitted a question in advance — so to make sure a session happens, just register or drop your question in beforehand. A slot with no registrations and no questions at all simply isn't held. And when questions are heavy and we're regularly running over the 2 hours, we may add extra session slots to get through them — so the schedule flexes to fit the room either way.
What if I have follow-up questions?
Bring them to the next call. Most real problems take a few passes — you try the next step, hit something new, and we pick it up from there. Between calls you can post follow-ups to be answered in the open, so the thread keeps moving and everyone learns from it. Progress comes from a little direction applied call after call, not from one perfect answer.
Can I get my own code reviewed?
Sandbox review is an Annual & Group benefit — the one thing Monthly doesn't include: submit your sandbox / practice work (a kata, a course exercise, open source) and Valentina reviews it async, with the feedback posted to the community for all members. Your real production codebase stays off public calls — that's Optivem Teamsteams.optivem.com.
When are the calls scheduled?
Sessions are held every two weeks and run about 2 hours, with dates and times announced in advance. They generally run 3–5pm CET/CEST (9–11am ET), though exact timing varies. The Technical Coach reserves the right to reschedule a call to a different day or time, and you'll be notified in advance. Public sessions are recorded in full with replay access always included (by joining a public call you consent to being recorded); for Private (Teams), recording is your team's choice — so even if a new time doesn't suit you, you keep full replay access.
What if I can't make the live calls?
All calls are recorded. You'll have full replay access — watch at your own pace, on your schedule.
Can I cancel anytime?
Yes — any plan can be cancelled anytime, whether monthly, annual, or Teams. Billing is always in advance, so access continues until the end of the period you've already paid for — the rest of the month on a monthly plan, or the rest of the year on an annual one — and you're simply not charged for the next one.
Can I pause my membership?
There's no separate pause — and you don't need one. Since every plan is billed in advance and cancels anytime with no penalty, you can simply cancel and rejoin whenever you're ready. Just note that replay access to recorded sessions is part of an active membership: it's available while you're a member and returns when you rejoin.
Is there a money-back guarantee?
Yes — every membership, individual or Teams, comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. If it's not the right fit, request a full refund within your first month, no questions asked.
Circle vs Teams
What's the difference between Circle and Teams?
Circle runs as open public calls alongside engineers from other companies, working through the approach together — any code shown is open-source or freely available, never proprietary. Optivem Teams is exclusively for your team: dedicated calls, no outside attendees, where you get advice on your company's real, proprietary codebase in full confidence. Teams now lives on its own page → teams.optivem.com.
Can I work on my company's private code?
Not on public Circle calls — those use open-source / freely-available code, so nothing confidential leaves the room and no NDA is needed. For your real proprietary codebase, that's Optivem Teams: dedicated calls for your team alone, in full confidence → teams.optivem.com.
Get Started

Ready to make
an impact?

Practical, live guidance for the legacy code you're up against — every two weeks.