Polish Software Devs Railwaymen Establishes 100% Test Coverage As Quality Standard

How would you describe Railwaymen in a few words?

We are an enthusiastic team of talented and detail-oriented technology geeks who are committed to building software that is as smart as it is functional. We specialize in Ruby on Rails for web development and both iOS and Android for mobile app development.

Software development is a hard-fought environment, the competition appears to be fierce. What makes Railwaymen stand out of the crowd? What is the key differentiator?

Code quality! We have our own quality standards which we scrupulously follow and algorithms applied to our development process. Hence we have fully automated deployment while crafting a software product for our customers. Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery aren’t secret for us, basically, both became our standard.

You’ve mentioned that you established your own quality standards – what can you tell us about them and your work process?

We constantly follow community guidelines for code styling and make use of Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD). Our work process allows us to quickly deliver high-quality code and looks as follows:

1. After appropriate issues assignment, our developers are ready to code, and that’s actually a genuinely broad-concept. In most cases, it means writing new functionalities or revamping those existing. We’ll focus on the first case scenario.
2. When new functionality is written and the test coverage ratio is satisfying, our devs are pushing commits to the repository.
3. Once commits are listed on the server, the tests are running. The CI goal is to maintain the code cohesion once merge is done to the important branches. We have an automated deploy, so we can update the code as long as the code coverage is at the 100% level and tests are passing.
4. The next step is to create a pull request. Developers review it together to check if everything is done correctly and subsequently deliver the highest quality.
5. When the new piece of code is accepted and merged, the CD process follows. Tests are running again and if everything goes as expected, then deploy on staging is ready.
6. After the whole process, an app is ready for our Quality Assurance – to make sure it meets our client’s requirements.

Currently, most of our projects have 100% test coverage and we use our internal tool to track it.

Apart from technology, Railwaymen focuses on transparency and trust. How do these core values influence the quality you provide to your clients?

Our clients often become our friends and partners for a long time cooperation. Very often they visit us in our Polish office. A lot of projects we carry out come from referrals. It’s not a coincidence! To become a reliable company we have previously delivered many successful software projects. Railwaymen was established in 2009, thus our experience helps us understand each customer’s business needs. We are still involved in building digital tailor-made products that users love.

To every project, we have an individual approach and there is no place for following all previous concepts – we want to show our partner’s uniqueness. We are aware of the fact that company success begins with customer satisfaction.

What is the biggest challenge that the company has faced?

Working with the newest technologies on ambitious, very often untypical, projects always brings some challenges. However, we love them! Some challenges are related to the project scope and its uniqueness, which follow with prototyping and finding the best solution before final coding. The other is related to very specific industry, which carries gaining some additional business knowledge. One of such projects is ProEst – a leading estimation software in the construction industry. We have been working with their San Diego team to create a brand new, cloud based system with a unique takeoff module.

What is the most memorable moment throughout the history of Railwaymen?

Not so long ago, we had a chance to work together on our promo video. Everyone at the company was involved in the production. Although we are constantly evolving for 8 years, we can say that it is the most memorable event as of now. Why? Creating this video concerned every person from our team and we wanted to present the atmosphere prevailing at Railwaymen.

Naturally, we have other episodes in our memory as well, for example, our first award and distinction as Top Web & Software Developers Poland 2017. We always try to foster the team culture and organize loads of inner events (We can’t wait for the next DevDay at our office!).

Poland hosts Wolves Summit, an annual conference for everything tech. How do you think that influences the local scene and do you think should be improved?

Such events are significantly important in the technology world and there is no doubt that being there is a great experience for everyone. We are proud of Wolves Summit’s organizers and amazed by their work and think this is an amazing way to promote Poland as a thriving place for startups, business owners all over the world.

As a tech team, we actively participate in such events seeing that we love to use every occasion to meet people with similar interests, enhance the number of possibilities to learn something new and exchange already gained knowledge as well. For the next month, we are planning to join the Digital Conference in Tel-Aviv, Israel. It is going to be an exciting event!

What’s one piece of advice you can give to fellow founders for their startup?

As entrepreneurs, we make mistakes. The essence is to draw conclusions. Our CEO – Lukasz Mlynek, shared some of his thoughts below:

• Think big, act small – even it sounds like a cliché, it really works
• Do one thing at the time. Concentrate on the most important ones. There will be a lot of distractions, although you have to learn how to separate real opportunities from time absorbers
• Don’t afraid to ask for advice more experienced folks. However, make the decisions on your own, it’s your business and it’s your responsibility
• Push hard, experiment, work with passion. Success will come!

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