Our cooperation started with a product design workshop. At this pre-development stage, our team of both backend and mobile developers, product designers, a QA specialist, and a PM joined efforts with the client’s representatives, including SafeEx’s CTO, Development Manager, and a frontend dev. Together, we aimed to analyze the current solution structure, define the core functionalities and the value proposition of the product, as well as identify users’ needs. During the workshop, Merixstudio’s squad was proactive in suggesting improvements to the existing tool and discussing the software’s impact on the client’s business strategy for the future. In the end, we agreed to focus on performance enhancements and following the path of gradual modernization.

What’s unique about SafeEx’s tool is that its mobile component is meant to work in a highly challenging environment where the internet connection is poor, e.g., on oil rigs. To ensure that no data synchronization issues bother the tool’s users, we chose to cache the data with Redis. This way, Ex Inspectors can be sure there will be no lost connections and server errors, regardless of whether they chose to synchronize at sea or on land.

Our goal was also to enhance the user experience of SafeEx’s tool. We did that, among others, by speeding up the loading times, as well as minimizing the amount of data to be sent – thus shortening the time needed for exporting and importing them. Driven by the desire to bulletproof the system further and provide seamless UX to current and future customers, we’ve also engaged in refactoring the codebase.

During the development process, we adopted the team augmentation model. Although ours and SafeEx’s engineers worked hand in hand, Merixstudio’s developers didn’t refrain from suggesting alternative solutions once they spotted room for improvement. One example of our team’s proactivity was designing the change of infrastructure from on-premise servers to cloud and drafting the comprehensive plan of migration to AWS. Another one was implementing a microservice-based solution to increase the app’s stability. 

When discussing collaboration with SafeEx, it’s also worth mentioning the overall flexibility. As the project progresses, the client’s priorities change – and so does the team composition on our part. Since the onset in May 2020, our team’s been powered by backend developers and DevOps engineers, the number of which fluctuates according to the current needs.