Quality Consulting Services

Better safe than sorry

Instead of going all in with the development of a new project, Oxagile’s full-spectrum audit can build your confidence in every action within all aspects of product creation and make sure you start strong and stay on the right track.

Holistic audit to cover all the bases

And if despite your best efforts the processes underway don’t go as expected — the 6-zone audit of every single component involved will find whatever’s holding you back and equip your team with the details on what needs to be fixed.

Quality

How can our audit detect all perils within your delivery process? Glad you’ve asked!

Requirements management
Agility
Architecture
Engineering
DevOps
Quality Assurance

Requirements management

Definition of “Why and for whom are we building a product?”
Definition of the requirements management process (early stages of the project)
Status and version control
Prioritization and maintenance control
Traceability (e.g., requirements connections and correlations are defined)
Change management

Agility

Artifacts: DoR procedures are defined and followed, Agile dashboards and Scrum boards are always up to date and easy to use, backlog is split to releases, etc.
Events: Actual team velocity is measured, demo/review is conducted by the team every sprint, retrospective meetings happen on a regular basis, to name a few
Product backlog: User stories are created according to INVEST principles, acceptance criteria serve as a basis for tests, requirements are invariable during sprints
Roles: One product owner acting as a decision maker and sufficiently available for the team to give answers on time, a cross-functional team involved, team members following Agile values and principles

Architecture

Design: Defining project layers structure using framework or architecture patterns, applying dependency injection patterns when applicable
Process: Thinking through architecture during project preparation, defining components, interaction before estimation and start of implementation
Practices: Choosing appropriate technologies (frameworks, tools, protocols) and deployment approaches (cloud, on-premises, hybrid/multicloud)
Documentation: Description of architecture and deployment diagrams, as well as keeping them up to date, documenting main non-functional requirements (like performance, scalability, security)
NFRs: Auto-scaling systems based on current load on backend tier, encrypting data on transfer, using Key Vault for sensitive configuration data, implementing authentication/authorization in secure way

Engineering

Code quality: Setting coding standards, guidelines, best practices, programming styles, and conventions and measuring all code quality metrics (e.g., cyclomatic complexity, coupling, class hierarchy, code duplications)
Code review: Peer code review on Pull/Merge Request basis, using code review checklist as a guide on what must be reviewed, validating business logic
Unit tests: Measuring code coverage for unit tests, executing unit tests as a part of CI: build is broken if unit tests fail
Knowledge sharing: Using a handbook or guide for newcomers to learn about systems, teams, the development process set up
Technical debt: Measuring technical debt (e.g., code smells) using static code analysis tools, allocating time to address technical debt found by static code analysis (e.g., every sprint, every several sprints)

DevOps

Application deployment: Fully automated on all existing low (DEV, QA) and high environments (UAT, STAGE, PROD)
CI/CD: Possible to trace all production builds and release candidate builds to the source code revision; there are policy/rules on how to deal with a broken / “red” main branch
Infrastructure management: Low environment infrastructure creation and configuration are done via automation scripts
Operational support: There are separate service accounts for non-production and production environments. The backup process is appropriately set up, and infrastructure and application monitoring tools like Zabbix are employed
Release process: The team has a tested recovery strategy to rollback previous build, and formalized specifications for the production/runtime environment
Security: Least privileges principle is followed, access is provided only by keys or specialized tools

Quality Assurance

Test strategy: Leaked defects root cause analysis is performed on a regular basis, planned regression testing is executed in each release cycle, non-functional requirements are tested regularly
Test cases: Designed as a set of actions executed to verify a particular feature
Quality metrics: Measured automatically and regularly; action items/improvements are defined based on metric results and are implemented on the project
Defects: All regression, customer, in-sprint defects are tracked in a single specialized tool, the description of each defect’s severity and priority is formalized
Automation: Test automation code follows as strict coding standards as production ones, all test automation suites are executed and analyzed at least weekly

If you sometimes feel like your service or product could do better – you’re always right. Though slow performance, server crashes, or high maintenance costs can be a lot of fun, if businesses across any industries opt for the good old-fashioned reliability and cost-efficiency – Oxagile’s tailored consulting lends a helping hand and finds all weaknesses in their systems.

The diversity of consulting is at your disposal

Achieve T - for total cost of ownership reduction

Pompous buzzwords aside, Oxagile’s clients and big numbers can do the talking.

Performance boosts for a Media Asset Management software provider

hours/year per dev time savings

system reliability (less errors and crashes)

decrease in deployment costs

Our consulting services through the client's eyes

“Anatoly and his team were instrumental in helping us significantly improve the performance and reliability of our eCommerce platform. We can now serve our fast-growing customer base and handle traffic spikes much more efficiently. Another important bonus — we now save almost 40% on infrastructure costs.”

— Mike D., VP of Engineering

Quality consulting in action

Here’s how we turn our audit expertise into a product's fresh start, optimized process flows, or tenfold infrastructure cost savings.

360-degree performance audit for an OTT platform →

Oxagile played a crucial role in enhancing the in-house development process, boosting performance, and optimizing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for an OTT platform that provides a wide range of content with the help of:

PostgreSQL database performance audit
Architecture performance audit and code review
Hardware and software configurations audit and optimization
High fixed load testing that assessed and reduced response time
Longevity testing that identified resource leaks

AWS-based live streaming for a seamless phygital experience →

Consulting on frontend performance to let the solution deal with peak demands

Outbound calling solution enhancement →

UX audit and consulting, which resulted in the set of UX enhancements suggested to our client

WebRTC broadcasting platform →

Our client experienced tenfold cloud infrastructure cost savings, without affecting the solution’s performance

Social network for educators →

Consulting services as part of the end-to-end delivery of an EdTech platform

Turning MAM system complexity into clarity →

To solve the inconsistent code issues, problems with dependency configuration, and concerns about the solution’s ability to handle high loads, which deterred the MAM system scaling attempts, our team suggested performance testing and devised an optimization plan based on:

Architecture revision to ensure smooth compatibility among all components
UX consulting to develop an effective user experience and clear interface
Workflows structuring to assist end users in achieving rapid media processing and delivery