SoftTeco - Blog

Challenge

Blueprint’s CTO contacted SoftTeco with a request to help them with Storyteller admins’ panel development. A team of 2 backend developers, 2 frontend developers, 1 QA, 1 PM was assigned to meet the initial customer’s requirements. A trial version was provided quickly. Relying on this experience, a few enhancements were brought in the development process. A new methodology implemented allowed to reach higher level in the development. Due to the success in task completion, the customer had decided to expand the team and it became three times larger.

SoftTeco was responsible for the full development cycle:

Requirements clarification
Business Analysis
Technical Design
Implementation
Quality Assurance
Technical Support

Solution

Storyteller was created to help enterprises scale to Agile and enjoy the clear alignment between the business goals and IT deliverables. Storyteller is a feature-packed solution that provides visual modeling, automation and standardization of numerous manual processes, an option to reuse artifacts and many others. The main benefit of the solution is seamless task management and easy assignment tracking alongside the convenient creation of the requirements. Advanced functionality and intuitive design make Storyteller the leading product on the market.

Technology Breakdown (Components and solutions)

Frontend:

Angular 1.5/6
TypeScript
RxJS
SCSS
Jasmine
Karma
GoJS
Webpack

Backend:

ASP.NET Web API
NUnit
MS SQL

How It Works

Backend details

ASP.NET Web API was used as a backend platform. The application uses the basic protocols and formats - HTTP, WebSockets, SSL, JSON, and XML. The application architecture is organized on the three-level basis (Controller-Service-Repository). All application modules are complied with the principles of SOLID which maintains good flexibility and scalability. MS SQL Server DBMS is used for databases management. The application code has high test coverage. We handled the unit and integration tests and, due to their simultaneous use, achieved the maximum level of components’ reliability. The basic technology used for tests is NUnit. This tool is an open testing environment for .NET applications which is convenient for creating automated tests.

Frontend Details

The project consisted of two modules: administration portal and a separate module. The portal is the main product for creating business process artifacts, when the module is responsible for reviewing business processes. The library of common angular-shared components was created to ensure the appropriate behavior of shared components in all modules and helped to reduce the development time afterwards.

The technology stack was as follows:

Angular: 6. *
Typescript: 2.8.2
RxJS: 5. *

Ngx-formly library was used for forms creation. The canvas-based gojs library was used to build the complex interactive diagrams. The code was covered with unit tests via jasmine and karma. The angular-shared code coverage was 80% for the common components, and at least 60% - for the rest of сode base. The project was built using webpack version 3. Code minifiers and obfuscators, postcss, rollup were configured. Linters were implemented to make work easier for both teams involved in the project:

tslint - for typescript code
stylelint - for scss styles
htmlhint - for html markup

That allows to keep the code in the same style, alongside with code readability improvement and members entering process simplification.

Results:

The successful collaboration of BluePrint and SoftTeco resulted in a unique product management system - Storyteller. A well-coordinated team of 18 people met all customer’s requirements on the frontend and backend parts. In September 2018, the collaboration with SoftTeco was temporarily stopped.

Projects

COVR

Blueprint

C2 Smart Light

Golf Club

BubCon

RoadLab