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VidMob | Customer case

VidMob reduces unplanned work by 50% after only two months

CodeScene helped VidMob pinpoint how their all-remote teams are tied together. Knowing who works on what allowed them to optimize their on-boarding process and foster a culture of proactivity and transparency.

Challenges
Rectangle

PointTeam Coordination

PointOn-boarding Developers into Codebase

PointUnclear Priorities 

Solutions
Rectangle

PointHotspots Map and Refactoring Targets

PointPull Request Integration with Quality Gates

PointTeam-Code Alignment 

PointOff-boarding Simulator 

PointDelivery Metrics

Result
Rectangle

PointImproved Code Health

Point50% Reduction in Unplanned Work

Project Overview:

VidMob

 

Prior to adopting CodeScene, VidMob struggled with code analysis tools overwhelming the teams with data but lacked actionable insights. This led to reactive decision-making and difficulty prioritizing tasks, hindering progress and team cohesion. The transition to microservices worsened these challenges, particularly for onboarding junior developers and managing technical debt. Recognizing the need for clarity and guidance, Ben Holm, Director of Engineering at VidMob, sought a solution to optimize their codebase and cultivate a culture of quality code and confident teams.

CodeScene boosts VidMob's developer confidence by identifying pre-merge issues and showcasing positive contributions. The tool is used across all organizational levels to aid decisions and actions -  the individual contributor, manager and senior directors to make decisions and to guide actions. It helps VidMob reduce code complexity, focus on improving code health and gain a better visibility into team structure. 

 

VidMob

Challenges

Number one teal

Tackling uncertainty

Before CodeScene, VidMob struggled with other code analysis tools that provided plenty of data but lacked insights on where to focus time, budget, or priorities. Decisions were often made reactively, based on gut feelings or project schedules, leaving uncertainty on when it was safe to implement new features

Number two teal

Increasing visibility

Visibility into team-code alignment was necessary to transition to microservices and meet client needs. Prior to CodeScene, visualizing this alignment was challenging due to the size of the codebase and the influx of new developers, resulting in significant time wasted on coordination.

Number three teal

Improving cohesiveness

Onboarding junior devs onto code with technical debt worsened the issues. Poor code quality hindered their understanding and prioritization. Ben Holm, Senior Director of Engineering at Vidmob, aimed to instill code quality values, guide behaviors, and foster confident teams for codebase improvement. 

VidMob

“Everyone with big legacy codebases has developers telling them that “we need to rewrite all of these things”. But you can’t focus on everything at once. How do you make the right decisions around where to invest your resources? CodeScene helps prioritize development and refactoring efforts to areas that will have the biggest impact and return on investment."

Ben Holm avatar
Ben Holm

- Senior Director of Engineering at VidMob

Solutions

 
Code Health

Pull Request Integration, Refactorings Targets and Team Dashboards

Ben Holmes incorporated CodeScene into development workflow with training junior developers in clean code. This way, everybody learned not only what CodeScene was and how to use it, but junior developers learned coding at the same time and the importance of good code quality.

CodeScene was integrated in pull request reviews, which reinforces continuous learning and ensures a level of quality.

Prior to team programming sessions, hotspots with low code health were identified. During these sessions, team members engaged in public group refactoring, which not only helped improve their code quality but also encouraged teamwork.

CodeScene is also used across teams during sprint reviews, and those who have implemented recommendations from CodeScene to refactor code have ended up with maintainable and scalable solutions.
Coordination needs

Team-Code Alignment and Off-boarding Simulator

CodeScene reinforced some good decisions and highlighted instances where teams are becoming disconnected. It aided teams in untangling complexities and working more cohesively.

It visualizes areas where some problems may develop, so that the managers can react on time.

CodeScene's Off-boarding Simulator is a big benefit for engineers who want to grow their careers.

If a key contributor in one area wants to move into another team, managers can with the help from CodeScene, simulate the impact of their request. It helps the teams understand where they have knowledge gaps and onboard new developers to those areas in time of transition.

It allows managers to be proactive and visualize the impact of a developer leaving a team. On rapidly growing teams, it is important to see where those knowledge islands and risks are.
Pull request

Improving Developer Experience and Confidence

Developers, especially those just starting their career, were faced with this large codebase that they need to take ownership of and make positive changes to.

Prior to CodeScene, they didn't really know much about code health in the specific code they were working on. Things would break and they would run into unpredictable dependencies, resulting in just growing an existing problem.

CodeScene identifies potential problem areas so that developers can approach their tasks with more certainty and confidence. Providing actionable feedback before code is merged and then showing the positive effect their contributions have on the codebase has certainly increased developer confidence. It pushes developers to learn and get better, together.
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.

 
VidMob

 

“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.”

Ben Holm avatar
Ben Holm

- Senior Director of Engineering

CodeScene embedded the value of high quality code into the core

Ben Holm, Senior Director of Engineering at VidMob, has seen a positive cultural shift since using CodeScene. It has embedded the value of high quality code into their organization and brought confidence to development teams.

Technical debt
Business case for Refactorings and Technical Debt remediation
Users
Improved Developer Onboarding and Training
Select Findings
Improved Team Cohesion and Team Coordindation
Retrospective
50% Reduction in Unplanned Work After Only Two Months

Results

 
Code Health

50% Reduction in Unplanned Work

After only two months, the team has seen an overall decrease in code complexity and a 50% reduction in unplanned work. This extra time is freed up for delivering new features.

Coordination needs

Improved Onboarding

CodeScene helps developers find their way in a new codebase. PR integration reinforces continuous learning and ensures compliance to high quality coding standards. 

Trending-down

Shift to Data-driven Decision-making

CodeScene has made it possible to base decisions on data, rather than gut feelings. CodeScene prioritizes refactoring efforts based on how the organisation works with the code.

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Are you still not convinced?

VidMob 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.  

VidMob

VidMob provides the industry-leading Intelligent Creative platform that helps brands improve their ad creative with actionable, AI-driven creative data and insights. VidMob is the only company in the world to receive a certified marketing partner badge from every major digital ad platform, delivering creative that works on a global scale.

Ben Holm avatar

Ben Holm
- Senior Director of Engineering  at VidMob