Tesco & Codurance

Our Software Craftspeople helped Tesco to raise their code quality and to deliver value more frequently through Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery.

The Challenge

Tesco’s Supply Chain division would forecast product demand using a legacy mainframe application. Changes were made to the forecasts using external such tools (for instance, spreadsheets), which was having a negative impact on their ability to trace irregularities or opportunities in its warehouses. Without improvements to the existing application, the business was constrained in its ability to run discounted campaigns and special offers to its store customers.

Tesco wanted to build a new API that would help to solve this problem and to raise code quality within the existing development team. We were invited to work on this project based on our previous work in other projects at Tesco.

Approach

With two of our Software Craftsmen leading their existing team, we built the new API from the ground up. Working in conjunction with Tesco’s development team in Bangalore, we created a web application that would help demand planners to order the right amount of product from suppliers. The web application was connected to the legacy database through the new custom API.

In addition to the functional work, we also set up a Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline and infrastructure for running the application in production. Our day to day interactions with the team also saw us upskilling their developers on Extreme Programming techniques such as Test Driven Development (TDD) and Refactoring, whilst supporting the partner team in Bangalore to restructure their tests and establish a better Git workflow.

Outcome

We built a strong and sustainable solution that has enabled Tesco to greatly increase their forecasting accuracy. We had a positive impact on the technical and professional development of the team.