Case Study
UST’s software product engineering services accelerated new feature releases for a global technology manufacturer
OUR CLIENT
Founded nearly a century ago, this technology company designs and manufactures mobile devices, modems, networking components, and industry-specific telecommunications solutions. With a mission to create innovative, intuitive products and services that help people and businesses connect with each other and make life easier, the company employs more than 20,000 people across its global operations.
THE CHALLENGE
Ensuring software quality and reliability in mission-critical public safety communications devices
The client faced several business challenges related to embedded software development for public safety and mission-critical devices, specifically for two-way radio communication accessories. The challenges included:
- Creating flexible, scalable software—One of the primary challenges was ensuring that the software could accommodate multiple product lines with diverse feature sets while catering to customers with varying needs across the globe.
- Developing automation tools—These tools were essential to rapidly deliver new features and functionality in the ever-evolving public safety sector.
- Resolving customer issues rapidly—Given the mission-critical nature of two-way radio products in public safety environments, any issues or unexpected downtime could have severe consequences. This situation necessitated a swift, efficient debugging process to resolve issues as quickly as possible.
- Testing and certification processes—With such a wide range of products and features, ensuring robust testing coverage was challenging, particularly to identify and resolve feature issues during test cycles. Product development teams needed to minimize bug leaks and resolve issues before reaching the end user to ensure product reliability and bolster the company’s reputation.
- Automating validation processes—IT leaders wanted to create efficient scripts to accelerate validation processes across all product features with fewer errors and less manual effort.
The technology company needed a skilled partner to address these challenges and avoid product delivery delays, unresolved issues, and dissatisfied customers.
THE TRANSFORMATION
Providing end-to-end software development, testing, and validation services
UST delivered a comprehensive feature development solution for the technology company to create, test, release, and enhance software functionality, taking ownership from design to delivery across multiple sprints. This approach ensured seamless integration of new features aligned with the company’s goals for every sprint cycle. By providing specialized defect resolution services, particularly for critical areas, such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, we helped the company resolve feature-specific issues swiftly and effectively to ensure reliable product functionality.
Following a holistic development approach, we helped the company ensure that every product layer, from low-level embedded code to firmware to the UI, was optimized and fully functional. Meanwhile, comprehensive box testing across the entire testing lifecycle, from design to validation reporting, ensured that products met quality standards at every stage of development.
For each feature set, specialized test plans were designed for both functional and non-functional aspects of products to validate new feature capabilities. This targeted test-design approach reduced potential risks during testing and minimized bug leaks. Our firmware-to-end-product coverage gave company leaders peace of mind that every aspect of its public safety communications devices was scrutinized and optimized for reliable performance in mission-critical environments.
The company can now successfully deliver public safety communications devices to the public-sector marketplace that meet the highest standards of performance, safety, and usability.
THE IMPACT
Delivering mission-critical public safety products by increasing software development efficiencies and collaboration
Our comprehensive software development approach helped the company streamline its software engineering services, enhancing operational efficiencies, improving product reliability, and accelerating new feature delivery. Improvements included:
- Thorough vetting of all code changes—By using the Bitbucket code review, which was integrated with Git, the company’s development team is assured that all code modifications were validated, leading to better code quality, fewer errors, and adherence to development standards.
- Real-time visibility of project status—The integration of Jira for activity tracking across various sprints provided up-to-the-minute progress of tasks, enabling project managers to manage workloads efficiently and ensuring that potential issues or delays were identified and addressed promptly.
- A flexible, multi-skilled team—The UST team could dynamically scale up or down based on project needs, allowing the company to allocate resources effectively according to the project roadmap. This flexibility helped meet tight deadlines, allowed the team to spread focus across various critical areas without sacrificing quality or performance, and ensured that the team’s focus was always aligned with the company’s business priorities.
- Better collaboration across development teams—Streamlined processes and robust project management enhanced inter-team communications, fostering a more efficient workflow.
If your company wants to enhance your software delivery ecosystem to meet evolving customer demands, UST’s software product engineering experts can help you.