American Specialty Health
Optimizing the software development process.
The challenge
American Specialty Health (ASH) contracted DockYard for Ember.js consultation and staff augmentation to support the creation of their EmpoweredDecisions! pain management application.
The solution
01 Improve developer efficiency and knowledge
DockYard helped with overall front-end architecture decision making for the EmpoweredDecisions! application.
As part of this effort, we refactored the front-end model design using Ember Data more efficiently, allowing ASH to take advantage of relationships between different models.
To provide ASH developers with the tools to make their day-to-day efforts more efficient, DockYard engineers shared knowledge on a variety of topics, including Ember Data, error handling in Ember, Server Sent Events, and data loading patterns.
02 Establish best practices
To further solidify the software development process, DockYard helped ASH establish a RESTful API standard and Style Guide for the EmpoweredDecisions! application.
We also introduced acceptance and integration testing (standards and unit testing) into different applications to ensure the quality of all software developed met the ASH standard as well as minimized any delays in deployment or refactoring.
03 Ensure maintainability
To ensure that the application will be easily maintainable far into the future, DockYard helped ASH establish different data loading strategies including async loading, sideloading, and embedded data.
We also introduced error handling into different applications, supporting the longevity of the software. DockYard worked on standardized error handling, so that each application wasn't creating its own from scratch. This also required the API team to send errors in a consistent manner.
04 Feature development
DockYard also worked with the ASH team to implement a real-time messaging feature with Server Sent Event. With the other DockYard supports in place, this simplified the software development process and provided ASH with the tools it needed built on best practices.
