Technology & process consulting for an ecommerce agency

Solution

Itransition conducted a comprehensive analysis of the customer's system and suggested an action plan covering such aspects as system architecture, code, technology stack, feature development, QA, and process optimization. These insights allow the customer to form and execute a business vision of the growing solution backed up by the latest technical advancements. 

Architecture 

We analyzed the system’s architecture and interviewed the customer’s team to gather information on architecture design and make recommendations for the necessary architectural improvements.  

The main challenge was maintaining a unified core for their system to manage the general functionality across all brands while also supporting system extension to fit each separate brand’s business objectives.

Itransition suggested implementing a modular design to divide the system into separate modules or layers. We recommended keeping the system core in Angular for shared functionality and themes, using microservice modules, and introducing separate NPM packages to extend each brand's unique features. This would ensure flexible product development, faster time-to-market for new products or services, scalability, speedy adaptation to changing markets, improved maintenance, and upgradability for the customer's end clients. In turn, the customer would attract more clients and increase loyalty among existing ones.  

To help the customer focus on marketing activities, Itransition created easy-to-follow development recommendations. Our team prepared and documented a list of best practices to build an architecture that aligns with the customer’s needs, goals, and the nature of their operations: 

1. Define clear project goals, requirements, and scope, keeping only the necessary architecture components and modules. 
2. Use design patterns and software development best practices to ensure a well-structured architecture that adheres to industry standards. 
3. Create a single point of truth for architecture documents, style guides, step-by-step instructions for bug fixing, etc. Keep the architecture design, components, and interface documentation updated. 
4. Conduct code reviews and refactor the new system to identify and simplify any overcomplicated architecture sections and improve code quality. 
5. Implement automated testing and continuous integration to ensure the quality and reliability of the architecture, identifying and fixing any issues early in development.

As part of the consulting process, Itransition performed some development activities to demonstrate the practical application of our recommendations. We implemented NPM packages with reusable modules developed from scratch to extend the individual brand’s functionality. Additionally, we introduced new practices, including CI/CD practices with GitHub Actions, to streamline the development process. We also implemented integrations with various payment systems, speeding up end-client sales, and structured the customer’s front end by implementing a reusable FE application framework.

Our developers created a new approach for loading parameters for sales funnels in end-client apps to speed up processes, reduce errors, and improve app response time to solve the issue of thousands of lines of code for each load configuration. Itransition added a server that loads and caches data only for a separate brand used at the time. Not returning the entire configuration for all brands and sales funnels allowed us to resolve this bottleneck and build a stable system with distributed requests. 

Code

Itransition’s team determined that the legacy code negatively impacted the business by hindering growth, raising maintenance costs, increasing the risk of errors, reducing  flexibility, stifling innovation, and lowering productivity. We advised on which parts could be refactored and which modules should be rewritten from scratch to ensure smooth system operation, gradual modernization, and future-proofing. During the analysis, we reviewed the documentation, traced code execution flow, and identified potential dependencies, recommending the following best practices:

• Gradually develop new code for each system component 
• Refactor the code to improve its readability, maintainability, and performance 
• Remove duplicate code and follow style guides 
• Write unit tests for critical functionality to verify that changes do not introduce any new bugs or regressions, the code behaves as expected, and is resilient 
• Make incremental changes instead of overhauling the entire codebase at once to minimize risks and make the process more manageable 
• Document all changes to streamline future development efforts and help other developers understand the codebase 

Tech stack

Itransition’s consultants analyzed the customer’s technological stack and defined the following inefficiencies:

• The backend using Java and NodeJS suffered from convoluted, unreadable structure 
• The front end written in an outdated version of Angular 
• The Ionic UI toolkit deployed inefficiently

The fragmented front end, made up of multiple separate applications and legacy tech solutions, imposed limitations on platform improvements, which hindered the achievement of the customer’s primary goal of continuous growth.

To solve this, we suggested: 

• Adding Code NodeJS frameworks to systematize the backend 
• Optimizing the settings for the customer’s sales funnel, customizing packages by adding APIs, and tweaking the Salesforce TouchCR plugin 
• Adding new Angular libraries and keeping all tech stack updated 
• Rewriting system parts using Ionic and substituting Ionic with different libraries 

QA

Itransition’s team suggested that the customer use the Split-Testing approach for sales funnels running on apps with different content and written with different technologies, such as Angular (SPA), WordPress, and pure HTML. Test results would be used to build marketing strategies and plan application improvements. 

Itransition’s QA specialists suggested testing new functionality, conducting performance testing, and covering all new code with unit tests. The following toolset was suggested: 

• Jest for unit tests, chosen for its simplicity and ease of use, fast execution, built-in mocking and test doubles, and snapshot testing capabilities
• BrowserStack for cross-browser testing, testing on various devices and OS versions, chosen due to its extensive device and browser library, AI-powered testing, and easy integrations 
• Postman for REST API testing, picked for its intuitive API development, efficient API debugging and testing, team collaboration and sharing functionality

Process optimization

Itransition analyzed the customer’s processes and identified opportunities for streamlining and improving efficiency. To achieve maximum productivity and team satisfaction, the customer needed to simplify the intricate project structure, clearly define roles for all team members, and establish effective team management.

We suggested Kanban since the customer’s priorities often change and there are almost no hard deadlines for new tasks. The product vision is shaped by the main stakeholders on the customer’s side, the technical director of marketing, and the business departments. They determine the project roadmap, establish basic high-level requirements, and create and prioritize tickets for new feature development for in-house and third-party developers. Under this framework, the customer’s developer team creates a pool of tickets, prioritizes tasks, and implements them. Developers are encouraged to hold refinement sessions with the customer, demonstrate new functionality upon completion, and have quarterly internal retrospectives. Also, on an ongoing basis, PMs and technical leads should carry out project health checks.

To foster transparency and seamless collaboration, Itransition suggested creating a knowledge base and developed a framework for it, which includes a concept library and communication flow to keep all parties connected and avoid misunderstandings. The knowledge base featured documents standardizing ticket creation and resolution, step-by-step instructions on various aspects of project management, team descriptions, team member roles and responsibilities charts, etc. To ensure consistency, our BAs developed a shared concept library to describe new ideas and synchronize internal communications. The process map serves as a single point of truth, updated to reflect changes in teams, tasks, and flows. The knowledge base is also now used to onboard new team members.

Optimizing the development of new feature ideas  

Itransition analyzed the process for generating new feature improvement ideas for the backend and front end and identified two main challenges. 

The first was an uneven load for the client development team, which complicated planning. Improper workload distribution resulted in wasted efforts and developer overload during peak sales periods and holidays while causing development pauses during slower times.

The second issue was unclear feature specifications, leading to undefined project goals and problematic task allocation. The influx of innovative ideas from various stakeholders for new feature development necessitated carefully prioritizing approved features.

We consulted the customer on a more efficient new feature development approach incorporating best practices such as WSJF prioritization, a strict protocol for gathering and defining project requirements, refining and iterating features post-development, and ongoing monitoring, maintenance, and support.

Itransition also suggested developing easily maintainable features by implementing modular design, clear documentation, standardized coding practices, automated testing, version control, and feedback loops.