The Complete Guide to eCommerce Development 2024

Daniil Bazhenov: "Code review, or why I personally guarantee high quality of our development today"

Daniil Bazhenov^ Why I guarantee high quality of CS-Cart development

Hello!
My name is Daniil Bazhenov. I am the Chief Strategic Planning Officer at Simtech Development. I manage the development process, drill the technical skills of our developers and manage complex projects.
I am going to tell you in plain words how development is performed in our company, how our experts and developers work. I will explain why I can personally guarantee the high quality of our development.
For instance, just 3 years ago, we were the first company who started performing Code review of 100% of tasks and we are still the only company who does that.

But what is “Code review”?

It is compulsory checking of all written code for security and compliance with the established standards of CS-Cart and Simtech Development. Thorough testing is carried out by the most skilled experts and Senior developers. “Why?” you ask. A web store is not a simple site or a blog – the quality and security directly influence your revenue.
I want to say right away that it wasn’t easy, however, it was worth it. Why it wasn’t easy? Well, Simtech Development is the largest company developing on the CS-Cart platform. When there are 50+ employees in a company, it is more difficult to introduce changes rather than retrain a team of 3 developers. I am lucky to have a team of professionals who enjoy learning new things and working on increasing their effectiveness.
Code_review
To introduce Code review, we had to work really hard, learn new methodologies and tools:

  • Brought 100% of tasks under version control using the GIT system and Feature branching practices (global development standards)
  • Standardised development of the backend and frontend. We are the only company on the market developing in compliance with the CS-Cart established standards (in form of add-ons in compliance with the standards).
  • Introduced the Kanban and Scrum methodologies, where necessary.
  • Delivered advanced training to all specialists.

Now every client’s request undergoes the following workflow:

  1. Idea – you have an idea or a problem, or our manager may come up with an idea.
  2. Gathering requirements – our manager clarifies all the details, wishes and requirements.
  3. Analysis and planning – the manager assigns estimation of complexity and project development to a technical specialist.
  4. Development – backend developers write code and front-end specialists create layout and integrate design.
  5. Code review – experts check the code for compliance to the standards.
  6. Quality assurance –  QA specialists test functionality.
  7. Demonstration – the manager demonstrates results to you.
  8. Installation – a developer or release engineer installs modifications.
  9. Warranty period.

At each of the stages, an experienced professional delivers high-quality work and controls the quality of work on adjoining stages. Sometimes there can be 5 -10 specialists working on one task. Like in hospital, there is no universal medical specialist, every specialist does their own job. If you order development services from a small company or a freelancer, all these stages will be performed by one specialist.
You may wonder why to complicate things. But if the code is not under control, it might not work properly, or, what’s worse, it might:

  • Break and scare clients away.
  • Leak your data to competitors (just one bug inserted into a line of code can steal important data).
  • Confuse a new developer as the code is impossible to support or expand.
  • Be impossible to be upgraded.
  • Be impossible to be used with different settings or in a different store.

All these issues are resolved by Code review.
Who can be against the idea of Code review? The one who hides something. By the way, I should say that Code review helped us single out developers who are not qualified enough, who had to leave our company. So they left for the company that has no Code review.
As a result, Simtech Development is now:

  1. The largest company (we have more developers than any other CS-Cart development company).
  2. The most experienced company developing on the CS-Cart platform. We have common roots with CS-Cart, CS-Cart developers are working in our company.
  3. The most technological company developing for CS-Cart. We are the only company who provides development services on the global level and uses the most up-to-date methodologies.
  4. The most humble company, which did not mention this yet.

And this is only the beginning. We are constantly learning and improving our capabilities. If you have any issues with the quality of development, you can contact me directly.
If you like this, please give it a thumbs up and leave comments down below, I will keep it on and tell you something else.

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