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Carterra | Customer case

Carterra reduced their unplanned work by 82% over a twelve-month period

 

CodeScene helped Carterra, a leading biotech research company, pinpoint high-risk files of code under active development, and made refactoring recommendations to improve the code health and remediate technical debt based on high impact.

Challenges
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PointTechnical Debt

PointPoor Code Quality

PointUnclear Priorities

Solutions
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PointFile-Level Hotspot Maps

PointPull Request Integration and Quality Gates

PointAutomated Code Reviews

Results
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Point25% increase in Code Health

Point85% reduction in Unplanned Work

Project Overview: Carterra

 

Carterra, a biotech research company, is a leading provider of innovative technologies designed to accelerate the discovery of novel therapeutic candidates. A significant driver of their success is managing a healthy codebase for the software intrinsic to their research and innovative
instruments.

As a leading biotech research company, Carterra has a lot of code and an ambitious backlog of innovative new features that they want to introduce to the market.

Carterra

Challenges

Number one teal

Slow innovation

Coding innovative new features was more difficult and slower than it should have been. Software delivery became an exercise in managing uncertainty instead of rapid, high-value delivery.

Number two teal

Mounting tech debt

Carterra knew they needed to bring technical debt under control, but how do you go about addressing technical debt and delivering new features at the same time?

Number three teal

Unclear priorities

Knowing where to start and identifying areas to prioritise within a large codebase, was daunting. There was no way of visualising the business impact of technical debt.

Number four teal

Quality concerns

A remote software development team relied on pull requests to integrate their contributions into the main codebase, but there was no way of easily addressing the quality concerns before production.

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“Other similar tools don’t have the analysis of what files you are working with most and what code quality these files have. So, we can make sure that we are improving the files that we constantly need to update and that we don’t maybe need to update them as much in the future.”

Lauren Swanson
Lauren Swanson

- Lead Software Engineer at Carterra

Solutions

 
Portfolio

Interactive Hotspot Map

Carterra’s software development team used CodeScene’s interactive hotspot map to explore their codebase, which helped build a shared mental model of what the code looks like, and where the weak and strong parts are. They were able to pinpoint the exact files that are under active development and their associated code health. This helped Carterra prioritise their efforts.

Pull request

Pull Request Integration and Quality Gates

For Carterra, CodeScene’s pull request analyses have been a game-changer. Pull requests must pass CodeScene's quality gates before merging into the main branch, which helps developers address quality concerns before going to production. Over time, Carterra’s developers became proactive in recognizing, understanding and addressing code quality issues before merging into production. This was a way of ensuring that new technical debt was not being introduced.

Check-square

Virtual Code Review

The virtual code review helped Capterra improve code health. It lists all the code issues found and recommendations on how to fix them. CodeScene drills down to the exact few lines in a file that are the highest contributors of technical debt. Then, CodeScene makes refactoring recommendations to improve the code.

The gatekeeper of code quality

For Lauren, CodeScene’s pull requests analyses have been a game-changer. Pull requests must pass CodeScene's code analysis quality gates before the code can be merged into the main branch. With this, developers can easily address the quality concerns before it goes to production. positive effect on the whole organization and especially on the mindset, motivation and the well being of SmartCraft's developers. 

Website Unplanned Work Costs Visualization
refactoring-target-with-code-health-score

Making the impossible possible

Carterra, with the help of CodeScene, has overcome what initially seemed to be an impossible ask of improving code quality and delivering new features rapidly. The code quality of Carterra codebases has improved dramatically and precisely where it was needed. Their software teams are better aligned to the codebase, and have shifted to a sustainable flow for software delivery.vs daily work because they saw the value that they were getting. 

 
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“I would recommend CodeScene, especially to someone who is coming into a really large application and has poor code health. It feels really daunting to try to fix everything at once. CodeScene helps you prioritize what files to work on and which ones will have the most impact if you are to improve code quality.”

Lauren Swanson
Lauren Swanson

- Lead Software Engineer at Carterra

Taking a long term view of code quality

CodeScene enabled a shift from unintended degradations in code quality that progressively slowed delivery, to a sustainable software delivery strategy.

Technical debt
Rapid Delivery of New Features
Users
Better Team-Code Alignment
Select Findings
More certain estimates
Technical debt
Code Health improvement by approximately 25% over 12 months
Select Findings
Nearly 82% unplanned work reduction by using Planned vs Unplanned work tracking

Results

 
Code Health

Improvement in Code Health

Carterra improved the code health by approximately 25% over 12 months by using CodeScene's code health analysis.

Star

Faster Time to Market

The code to be improved was the code that needed to be changed for the next important feature under development.

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Reduction in unplanned work

Carterra reduced nearly 82% of unplanned work by using CodeScene's Planned vs Unplanned work tracking.

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Are you still not convinced?

SmartCraft enabled their teams to become more efficient, reducing stress and frustration in the process. They could finally align teams and management around real business metrics showing why code quality really matters.