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SmartCraft | Customer case

SmartCraft reduces technical debt through data driven insights 

CodeScene helped SmartCraft to handle technical debt, uphold code quality, and streamline workflow automation. Additionally, it enabled efficient internal communication among teams and with non-technical stakeholders and management

Challenges
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PointTechnical Debt

PointPoor Code Quality

PointUnclear Priorities

Solutions
Rectangle

PointHotspots

PointQuality Gates

PointAutomated Code Reviews

Results
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Point35% Increase in Code Health

Point25% Reduction in Unplanned Work

Project Overview: SmartCraft

 

At SmartCraft, the team recognized the importance of addressing technical debt and tracking progress visually and over time. However, the market couldn't provide a tool for that. Technical debt discussions relied on intuition and desired direction without tangible metrics to show impact, progress, and meaningful recommendations. Because of this, there was a natural spread of different code quality scores across their platforms.

CodeScene emerged as an elegant solution, replacing intuition with concrete metrics and practical use cases and recommendations, presented in an easily accessible manner. This enabled teams to access a unified, data-driven source of truth, empowering them to prioritize code quality in their daily tasks.

 

SmartCraft

Challenges

Number one teal

Tackling Technical Debt 

SmartCraft, with teams in Finland, Sweden, and Norway, were looking for a unified, data-driven solution to address technical debt. Before adopting CodeScene, they relied on various code review tools, lacking a centralized tool for actionable insights and code quality improvement over time.

Number two teal

Using Data-driven Insights

Christian Saleki, SmartCraft's CTO always felt that there must be a better way. Non-technical and technical management should be able to make decisions based on data driven insights and metrics around code quality and code health.

Number three teal

Reducing Uncertainty

SmartCraft wanted to improve delivery pipeline and at the same time motivate developers in their daily work. CodeScene enabled a very different conversation between developers and managers, resulting in less stress, reduced uncertainty and more realistic deadlines.

SmartCraft

 

“No tools on the market could help us tackle technical debt in a data driven way - until we came across CodeScene.

Explaining technical debt is very frustrating, and not having metrics or data to refer to is even worse. CodeScene solves this in a very elegant way by visualizing the problems, costs and risks but also offering solutions - in so many ways, not just technical debt."

SmartCraft avatar
Christian Saleki

- CTO at SmartCraft

Solutions

 
Code Health

Improvement in Code Health Project Dashboard and File-Level Code Health Map in Retrospectives

With CodeScene the discussion between developers and management became a totally different one. Using Code Health maps and other visualizations, problem areas were visualized in a very tangible way. This empowered the team to strategize feature implementation, and if it involved a risky code segment, they could alternate the approach. It helps the team find better solutions, reduce uncertainty, and set more realistic expectations.

CodeScene helps development teams in their day to day work and enables them to do good work, both faster and smarter. The teams frequently use the dashboard insights in their retrospectives and sprint planning.

Coordination needs

Business Metric - Aligning Non-Technical Stakeholders

SmartCraft could show and explain the business impact of code quality to non-technical stakeholders using CodeScene. 

The organization as a whole could now understand that this is important and that we need to focus on these metrics if we want to scale. CodeScene makes it easy to visualize and explain the implications of technical debt.

Pull request

Pull Request Analysis and Quality Gates

The team is utilizing CodeScene on a daily basis. SmarCraft's development teams enabled pull request integration and have automated their code review process. 

Automated Code Reviews

Virtual Code Review

The virtual code review helped SmartCraft 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.

Effects of reduced unplanned work go beyond numbers

SmartCraft could reduce unplanned work and allocate more time to make improvements on the platform itself, introduce new technologies and experiment wirameworks. The effects of unplanned work being reduced go beyond numbers. It has had a very 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
Website Unplanned Work Costs Visualization

Effects of reduced unplanned work go beyond numbers

SmartCraft could reduce unplanned work and allocate more time to make improvements on the platform itself, introduce new technologies and experiment wirameworks. The effects of unplanned work being reduced go beyond numbers. It has had a very positive effect on the whole organization and especially on the mindset, motivation and the well being of SmartCraft's developers.

 
refactoring-target-with-code-health-score

Adoption that naturally evolves

The team members began to recognize the value of improved code health in complex areas, after addressing issues highlighted by CodeScene. The news spread throughout the teams, leading to the gradual resolution of previously stressful and frustrating issues. 

Developers saw the value and made CodeScene a valuable part of their workflow. SmartCraft could quickly adopt a sustainable way of working, focusing on high quality code without delaying any tasks. Refactoring code became a natural task in devs daily work because they saw the value that they were getting. 

 
SmartCraft

 

“CodeScene visualizes and captures the core problems, in a perfectly elegant and simple way. It removes all the fuss that you don’t really need. It explains and educates at the same time.

It educates the teams at the same time to become more quality aware and gives the recommendations that you need, helping you grow as a developer but also keeping your software code quality intact.”

SmartCraft avatar
Christian Saleki

- CTO at SmartCraft

From gut feelings to valuable business metrics

CodeScene enabled data driven insights and metrics that are based on business value and impact. Everyone could understand red, yellow and green code and recognize that red code is very costly, yellow code can become red if not looked into and addressed, and green code is maintainable, easy to evolve and something SmartCraft should aspire to.

Technical debt
Technical Debt Reduction
Users
Aligning non-technical stakeholders with management teams
Select Findings
More certain estimates
Technical debt
35% Code Health Improvement Without Compromising or Delaying Delivery of New Features
Users
Unplanned Work Reduction

Results

 
Code Health

Improvement in Code Health

Using CodeScene daily and enabling Pull Request integration allowed teams to work in a more sustainable way while focusing on delivering high-quality code.

Coordination needs

Aligning around business metrics

The insights and metrics available within CodeScene allowed developers to set and discuss realistic deadlines with non-technical stakeholders and management.

Trending-down

Reduction in unplanned work

SmartCraft reduced unplanned work and spent more time making improvements, introducing new technologies and experimenting with certain frameworks.

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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.  

SmartCraft


"The great thing with CodeScene is that whether you are an organization of 5 people or 500 people - it’s a great tool to keep you going in the right direction."

SmartCraft avatar

Christian Saleki
- CTO at SmartCraft