Success Story is a serial report aiming at sharing successful experience from TSC Nanjing IT employees, and hoping to exchange and share experience with IT professionals in the market.
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WebClaims is DB Schenker Logistics´ global online application for reporting and handling of claims regarding customer goods. This year, WebClaims team has successfully implemented DevOps methodology. Thanks to that, now the team is able to deliver faster application releases with more stable service. Here comes good practices and experience from WebClaims TSC Nanjing team.
What is DevOps and Why?
DevOps is a set of practices combining software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) strengthening the cooperation between both. It is also a systematic methodology that not only improves coding efficiency, but also helps to provide more stable product in a short time period.
How WebClaims team implemented DevOps step by step?
Following the requirements of methodology basic structure, WebClaims team started its DevOps journey.
- Divide a full product into micro-services
Currently, we broke down WebClaims into several micro-services based on functions. The number of the services may be higher in the future. - Build CI/CD Pipeline
We constructed AWS Cloud platform based on TSC Cloud. Then built Gitlab CI/CD Pipeline, deployed microservices and finally started daily operation and monitoring. - Optimize daily operation
Because the operations work needs certain technology skills and WebClaims team was fresh in this field, a new cooperation approach was brought up. We separated WebClaims TSC Nanjing team into different operation sub-teams, each including developer and Quality Analyst (QA) or Business Analyst (BA). Developers are responsible for analysis and modification, QA/BA for coordination and communication.
All sub-teams took turns to be on duty and take charge of product monitoring and problem-solving. We also kept communication with internal Cloud team for related knowledge and solutions.
DevOps tips from TSC Nanjing team
- How to be quicker?
In DevOps, developers change code in each micro-service separately which reduces the impact to other parts of the product. This could not only improve the efficiency of developers and testers, but also shorten the time period from development to release.
The release period for WebClaims has been shortened from every month to every week. Now, the team can also help to deploy a fix immediately in case of any special request and such short response time contributes to better user experience. - How to guarantee stability?
By involving in both development and operation, WebClaims team can start to deal with questions as soon as they find them, faster and more accurate. When release becomes more frequent but with less change, it will also improve success rate of release. What is more, WebClaims team members become more engaged in the product life cycle, and hence in how to make it better! - How to cooperate efficiently?
The efficient communication is key n DevOps – Webclaims team make great use of tools such as JIRA Kanban and Teams. Kanban boards could increase the visibility of team cooperation and tasks arrangement, while Teams helps a lot in global communication and cooperation. To ensure efficient and smooth cooperation, the team members update everyone’s progress and exchange experiences during daily “teatime” and other regular meetings.
WebClaims team is still walking on the way of DevOps. We believe that the WebClaims team will always be curious about future changes, and through continuous innovation and self-challenge, it will continue to harvest and grow on the road of DevOps. Keep following us to read more IT Success Story!