Back

VUB. Vrije Universiteit Brussel Assessment of Product Quality and Architecture Review

Duration: 2020 – ongoing

Customer location: Brussels, Belgium

Industry: Alternative Energy Sources

Services: Product Discovery and Consulting

Tech stack: Python

Dedicated team behind the project

Vitalii

Team Lead

Daniel

Head of Engineering

Ali

Senior Data Engineer

The client

Vrije Universiteit Brussel has a rich history spanning more than 50 years, marked by an unwavering commitment to addressing the challenges of the future. This commitment is realized through the pursuit of high-quality research, the delivery of customized education, and a strong dedication to societal progress.

The institution is firmly rooted in Brussels and Europe, guided by the principles of fostering critical thinking, promoting free inquiry, and embracing humanism. This project executed by a university team is focused on providing alternative energy sources tracking.

The challenge

We presented the client with a comprehensive report analyzing their existing project’s codebase and management principles. Additionally, we provided them with Development and Management solutions to enhance product performance. Usually our audit is focused not only on code quality but also on interface audit and security aspects, considering the identification of vulnerabilities as crucial during the assessment.

Though this time it was a collaborative solution and the web interface was done by another partner, it remains an important part of each of our audits.

What was done

Building a complex IFE ecosystem demanded a strategic approach. Ralabs partnered with Inflight Dublin’s team to establish a collaborative environment that fostered open communication and knowledge sharing. This joint effort ensured optimal solutions were identified and translated into a robust and scalable architecture.

Implemented features:

Code, infrastructure, and architecture review

Code review & Antipatterns report.
Infrastructure & CI/CD review. Report on the current state and list of recommendations.
Tech Quality review with SQM report.
High-level architecture review and recommendations.

Development best practices suggestions

Unit/Integration/e2e testing review and list of recommendations to follow.
Code review process suggestions.
Selection of successful branch model to follow.
Contribution rules definition and documentation.

Management best practices suggestions for

Project backlog management and work delivery process.
Team collaboration methodology.

Results

The audit successfully identified problem areas and facilitated improvements in the quality and speed of development. The deliverables included detailed artifacts and recommendations on practices to:

Increase code efficiency and development speed by approximately 20%.
Implement Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) and unit tests.

Although it would require an investment in infrastructure, DevOps, and time for writing unit tests (approximately 70 hours), the long-term benefits, in terms of time saved and decreased bug-related issues, would make it worthwhile.