Global computer hardware manufacturer

Implemented our solution

1. Despite the shortcomings, the old version of the application had a number of significant advantages which made it one of the best in its class – respectively, the threshold value for the quality of our work was very high. Moreover, at the time of the start of the project, there were more than 20,000 users around the world, and therefore particularly stringent requirements were imposed on stability and usability. 
   
   The legacy application was being developed and improved for about 10 years, and we were tasked to implement the key functionality in two years.
   
   ICL Services has provided a team of thirty people: analysts, developers, testers, and managers.
   
   

   Taking into account the strict time constraints, it was important for us to ensure effective interaction with the Customer. To this end, we:

   • created a clear project management structure: the customer appointed key employees, and we provided a project manager; 
   • agreed on the formats and frequency of interaction, after which key stakeholders were identified and monthly meetings were scheduled.
     
2. Based on the results of the requirements analysis, the following technology stacks were selected for the project.
   
   The following solutions were used to implement the backend:
   
   
   •  .Net Framework (4.6 and 4.7.2)
   • .Net Core 3.1
     
     Dapper was used to optimize database access.
     
     Hangfire was used as a task scheduler.
      
     The frontend was implemented by ICL Services based on the latest Angular (9.0).
     
     System performance was a priority. We created a web application that had to support a high speed of information processing regardless of the number of users (up to tens of thousands of concurrent users), the complexity and composition of processed

     orders (hundreds of thousands of items in one order).

     We actively used DevOps, in particular Continues Integration and Continuous Delivery.

3. How it was implemented in the project:
   
   
   •  Our experts have performed deep automation of both testing (unit tests and Coded UI) and deploying the application to the server environment.
   • The tests were performed every night, and in the morning the developers checked the impact of the changes on the application build. During testing, test data was also automatically generated and prepared. This allowed developers to anticipate problems: since each new build was created every night, the next day the experts saw the identified problems and could quickly fix them.
   • After deployment to the environment, autotests were also performed, and experts tracked possible failures related to the characteristics of the environment.
     This development, testing, and deployment process allowed us to significantly reduce development time and save the Customer's money.
4. During this project, our experts:
   
   
   • developed a detailed system of non-functional requirements and described all the constraints that needed to be considered;
   • fully automated testing, including in terms of performance;
     
     
   • defined strict KPIs together with the Customer, which we monitor to this day, and also took into account the rather poor quality of communication channels amongst European users of our product, after conducting separate testing and modelling of various situations;
   • ensured deep heritability of interface elements thanks to the participation of UX experts.
5. The result of our work completely satisfied the Customer: we managed to ensure user migration with minimal training and without loss of efficiency, which in other situations often accompanies the switching from one key application to another.
   
   In the future, it is planned to implement integration with the internal systems of the Customer. This will significantly increase the efficiency of all departments.