The Lohika engagement started with the MVP implementation of the new web application. The goal of the app was to collect additional data points that would improve the quality of the automated ML models. The app needed to be available for internal users under very short deadlines.
At the time, the existing front-end stack was outdated, since it was based on Angular 1.x. A decision to implement the new application leveraging a new tech stack was made. The Lohika team proposed a cohesive set of libraries for implementation: React, Redux, Material-UI, Cypress, Jest and Enzyme. The team implemented the MVP version based on the new stack on time. Afterward, the Lohika team started adding new features to the main web application for process management.
At that time, there was no mature test automation practice in place: automated test coverage was minimal, and slow test execution depreciated their value to engineers. Also, the number of bugs found in production every month was significant. To make the situation even worse, engineering leadership had little belief that investing in test automation was worth the effort under current circumstances.
Despite that, Lohika proposed a strategy on proving the value of test automation. The team implemented a simple PoC that showed that UI test automation can accelerate development in this setup. Quick feedback on quality helped engineers implement features and changes the right way from the start. Once the teams adopted the test automation practice, updated the old test scenarios, and implemented the new ones, the number of production bugs decreased from 15 per month to just a few.
After several months of engagement, the Lohika team started architecting and implementing a new product’s web application in tight collaboration with our client’s back-end team. The front-end team used the new tech stack of TypeScript, React, Redux and Material-UI.
After a few sprints, it was clear that the front-end implementation velocity was much higher than the back-end, since the front-end engineers often urged the back-end API team to unblock the development of their stories. At that point, Lohika augmented the team with a couple of back-end engineers. As a result, Lohika’s holistic full-stack team moved full speed ahead, covering the stories end-to-end: React/Redux on the front-end, Scala/Java API on the back-end, and test automation using Cypress.
