Custom Magento extension development for an American agency

Project background

Todd Lininger Design LLC, a web and graphic design agency, has been in business for almost 20 years. Todd Lininger successfully serves a versatile clientele ranging from small customers to corporations both in the US and globally.

A few years back the agency got a chance to work with Meissner Sewing & Vacuum Centers, a regional leader in sewing machine production based in Northern California.

As part of the project, the agency was tasked with custom Magento extension development to introduce class management functionality to the existing store.

Represented by a couple web pages with classes and corresponding sessions, the first version of the solution provided for nothing but the ability to sign in to a session and view the registration list.

Aiming to introduce a custom Magento extension, Lininger also conceived the idea of turning the solution into a commercial product to be distributed on a subscription basis among other customers.

The custom Magento extension was to allow admins to create and manage educational courses on the website easily, whilst users were supposed to have an ability to sign up for classes and educational events of their choice and keep up with their schedules.

When the final project vision was worked out, the customer turned to an offshore software development copmany for professional services. Unfortunately, the team failed to meet Todd’s expectations: the architecture of the delivered custom Magento extension was poorly designed, it lacked the required scalability and featured a range of defects, making the quality unacceptable for commercial use.

Disappointed with the outcome, Todd Lininger resumed his search for a Magento service provider. With the bitter experience of the previous engagement, the customer was looking for a professional full-service company that would ensure an end-to-end delivery of a commercial product in accordance with the official guidelines and best practices.

The major goal was to develop a Magento extension that would be reliable, efficient and highly scalable from both architectural and functional perspectives. The new architecture was to ensure proper performance under heavy load and be flexible enough to support further modification and adaptation to upcoming versions of Magento.

As we discussed potential collaboration opportunities long before this project, Todd Lininger approached Staylime again with a request for proposal for custom Magento extension redevelopment.

Prior to entrusting the project to a new vendor, Todd wanted to make sure he won’t burn his fingers for the second time in a row. Thus, he asked us to assess the existing solution’s architecture and present our vision on how to breathe new life into it.

Given our vast experience with Magento products and services, we proposed the most optimal approach, which Lininger fully approved. And that’s where our long-term partnership began.

Approach

To ensure efficient and flexible process control and overall project transparency for both our customer and the team, we chose the iterative development approach for this project and split the process into short 2-week iterations.

The previous vendor hasn’t used any tools for change management, so, prior to starting any development activities, we employed a version control system, which enabled all members to easily monitor and track the module’s progress throughout the delivery lifecycle.

Product features for each release were prioritized and included in the backlog, so that the most critical functionality was implemented first. Such an approach provided for a continuous feedback loop, making it possible for the customer to introduce necessary changes in the course of the project.

Aiming to automate the QA part of the process and reduce the manual testing and potential errors caused by human factor, we prepared a set of unit tests that were conducted prior to each release.

This allowed us to verify that all the delivered features function properly, ensuring the best possible quality of the final solution and also optimizing development efforts. The list of features to be covered by the unit tests was approved by the customer on every release. During the process, we continuously updated the initial tests so to support new features requested by the customer.

Challenges

Establishing a robust project management and communication framework is one of the key tasks for us to tackle in order to ensure successful project delivery.

Unfortunately, there is always room for challenges and bottlenecks. On this project, the customer had a clear vision of the product and its functionality. However, lacking the technical background in this particular field, he strongly underestimated the complexity of some of the business-critical features.

In view of this, despite our recommendations, Todd sometimes insisted on going for simple workarounds to deliver sophisticated product features that, in fact, required much more effort to be implemented properly.

But when building a solution that should be able to evolve as the business grows in the long run, these kind of means should be out of the question, as they would inevitably lead to:

1. Scalability and extensibility issues
2. Increase in TCO
3. Ever-growing technical debt
4. Integrity violation both in terms of extension functionality and its data structure
5. Decrease in commercial potential

Thanks to our strong expertise and hands-on experience with custom Magento extension development, we managed to explain the rationale behind the approach we proposed to the customer and make wise decisions during feature implementation. This approach helped us to ensure product scalability and significantly reduce the total cost of ownership.

Architecture

According to the plan, the new architecture was to inherit the key functional capabilities of the legacy solution, yet be based on the latest technology stack.

The key objective was to come up with a robust technical solution that would meet the performance and scalability requirements, also allowing for seamless implementation of new features. Compatibility considerations were on the table too: the new architecture was also supposed to be able to inherit the data of the Magento 1 version.

Thus, prior to hopping on development, we spent one month conducting a thorough audit of the existing product, its architecture and functionality specifics. Having defined the main advantages and pitfalls of the legacy architecture, we designed a highly scalable custom Magento extension to allow Todd Lininger not only release a newly made product to the market, but also ensure that it was flexible enough to support further functionality growth.

Results & partnership

We have been challenged with an environment of frequently changing product requirements while working on this project. However, Staylime managed to establish a robust delivery framework where product features were logically prioritized and gradually implemented with a clean and well-thought-through code.

Besides, our team came across an interesting challenge during custom Magento extension development: that is to find a way of transferring large sets of highly interdependent data of Class Manager when migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2.

To ensure data integrity and completeness, we developed a custom script that enables seamless migration of data from the existing version of the extension to its Magento 2 counterpart. The script will definitely be of help on further migration projects for Todd Lininger’s customers that we are planning to commence shortly.

Highly functional and scalable, the delivered extension has exceeded customer’s expectations.

It took nothing for the custom Magento extension to prove its promising potential: Todd Lininger is already reaping the commercial benefits from launching the solution among the existing clientele.

The final product reflected initial specifications because of Staylime’s detailed reporting and frequent communication.

Their transparency also extended to hours worked and estimate accuracy. Staylime displayed excellent professionalism and a strong desire to create an optimized product.

Todd Lininger Owner, Todd Lininger Design

As of now, Todd Lininger is almost ready for the commercial launch of the custom Magento extension, making final amendments to subscription tiers.

With ambitious plans for further growth, the customer is actively elaborating new functionality enhancements and integrations, whilst we continue to provide support, releasing updates regularly.

Satisfied with development results, Todd Lininger decided to keep on growing our productive partnership and enthusiastically engaged us into collaboration with some of his current customers. Being a full-cycle Magento development company, Staylime became a perfect candidate to help them perform Magento migration along with Class Manager extension installation, third-party extension setup, theme design, and frontend development.