M.Video automated testing of completions for online store

2018: Test automation of completions for online store

On December 20, 2018 it became known that the network of electronics and home appliances of M.Video together with Jet Infosystems automated testing of completions for online store. Along with other measures it allowed the retailer to accelerate start of program updates for 30%. Within the project the volume of a test coverage was increased at the expense of what the quality of work of online store considerably increased.

M.Video regularly updates elements of the user interface and structure of the platform of online store, timely responding to the requests of the market and doing client experience by the most comfortable. Software development for implementation of these changes is conducted in parallel by several commands on Agile methodology. Acceptance testing of changes significantly slowed down release of the following releases of software for the website, and in the company made the decision to automate routine transactions of testing and also to use them at an early stage of development.

Together with Jet Infosystems the specialized platform of autotests was created. In addition, process of interaction of group of the automated testing with five development teams which consistently make the changes to a master branch was built. Now after each local change the autotest for regress of the website is started. Upon completion of the main changes the general acceptance testing is held.

Such approach allowed developers to reveal and correct practically at once defects in the updated system, without waiting for final acceptance testing. At the expense of it it was succeeded to reduce quantity of errors in functioning of online store.

This project – a striking example of how especially technology process has a direct impact on business. In 2018 online sales occupy 20% in turnover of M.Video. Any change in filling and functionality online of the platform can influence conversion, traffic and sales level. Test automation allowed us to accelerate release of changes and to increase quality of work of the website that already brings positive results. We are going to extend this experience and to other technology sections connected with software development. Roman Desyatov, Head of Department of development of information systems of a brand of M.Video

According to the results of the project the Jet Infosystems company is responsible for acceptance testing of updates and also performs support and development of the specialized platform of autotests.

Techniques of Agile, DevOps, certainly, can significantly accelerate product development, ensure harmonious parallel operation at once of several commands. However high-speed development quite often 'rests' against 'a bottle neck' which manual testing of changes is. Developers should wait occasionally for the whole month of results of the done work before they are able to correct the revealed errors. As a result all this brakes an output of products and services. Automation of process of testing are those 20% of efforts which at the exit yield to business 80% of result. Vladimir Molodykh, director of development and deployment of software Jet Infosystems

2015: Creation of the modular virtualized IT infrastructure

On February 27, 2015 the Jet Infosystems company announced creation by request of M.Video company of the modular virtualized IT infrastructure for work of a software platform of online store.

Project Results

"Online store – a resource business and critical. Its unavailability leads to reputation losses and a lost profit, – Dmitry Postnikov, the head of group of architecture and quality control of web developments of M.Video company told. – Now our online store copes with peak loads during high seasons, and the IT platform can flexibly be transformed under changes of traffic. The period of New Year's holidays when 3-fold influx of users was observed became demonstrative. Thanks to flexible architecture and fast reaction of specialists of a support service the operability of online store was provided even in these conditions".

M.Video, 2014

IT infrastructure consists of several standard modules solving different problems: providing static information, dynamic generation of content, processing of search queries, addressing databases, etc. Separation on functional roles allows to reveal bottlenecks regarding performance and to scale only specific problem sections. The deployment templates preconfigured for each module help to accelerate this process.

The most part of IT services is placed in virtual environment and is redundant according to scheme N+1. Services, the most exacting by the time of a response (processing of search queries and the addressing databases, requests in a cache), are located on physical servers.

The fault tolerance is provided with a cluster configuration.

The integrity of sessions is provided with network balancers who are also clustered. For example, having postponed goods, the buyer can continue search in the website – the status of its basket will not change.

In addition to a productive IT landscape, development environments, testings and stress testing are created. At the same time within several days all computing powers can be transferred to the productive mode – for direct service of online purchases.

The Jet Infosystems company performs outsourcing maintenance of IT infrastructure:

• monitoring of availability of the website,
• hardware environment
• system software.

"The buyer seldom announces malfunctions in work of online store – it just passes at once to other resource. Our task – in advance to consider a possibility of sharp jumps of traffic, to take pro-active measures on a case of failures at software updating, accurately observing the SLA parameters", – Alexander Skorobogatov, the head of department of corporate solutions of the Center of design of computer systems of Jet Infosystems company noted.

Project Development

On March 11, 2015 it became known of transfer of 350 specialists of the central office "M.Video" to jobs in technology VDI^[1].

Joint efforts of the company M.Video and "Jet Infosystems" unrolled jobs of users on VDI technology:

• in data center virtual failsafe IT infrastructure for connection to VDI workstations is constructed
• on places of employees so-called "zero clients" are set
• data with the PC of users are transferred to the data warehouse.

M.Video, 2013

Due to consolidation of the user and server computing resources on average by 5 times energy consumption decreased, costs for administration and upgrade of jobs were reduced.

As a part of IT infrastructure of VDI:

• cluster virtual computing platform,
• the data warehouse with a possibility of multichannel access to disk arrays,
• dispatching systems of requests (broker of connections) and balancing of loading.

Reservation of components of IT infrastructure allowed to increase significantly reliability of processing and storage of the user information. VDI Wednesday is integrated with an IT landscape of M.Video:

• systems of antivirus protection,
• backup,
• monitoring.

The developed templates of virtual workstations facilitate connection of new users.

"Zero clients do not demand service, work on average by 1.5-2 times longer than traditional system units, and if necessary are replaced in a few minutes. Thanks to their use support of end devices is minimized and considerably load of system administrators decreased, – Nikolay Ftodosyev, the Head of Department of information systems of M.Video company emphasized. – Besides, the architecture of VDI offered by specialists of Jet Infosystems company based on the certified technical means allowed to increase the level of personal data protection from unauthorized access. Now they are processed on the party of servers of DPC and not transferred to jobs of employees".

"At transfer of employees to new infrastructure we applied individual approach. In addition to the software standard set, profiles quite often contained additional appendices and data which were transferred in full, – Alexander Skorobogatov, the head of department of corporate solutions of the Center of design of computer systems of Jet Infosystems company told. – Especially I will note that moving happened in a short time and had no negative impact on workflows. Including, for such divisions as the accounting working with strictly certain cycles".

Project of outsourcing

On June 21, 2016 the company Jet Infosystems announced the project of technical support internet- shop M.Video.

According to the plan Jet Infosystems completely is responsible for functioning of the platform of e-commerce of M.Video – from IT infrastructure to the application software – in mode 24*7.

According to business needs the applied landscape of the website constantly changes that increases risks of failures. The Jet Infosystems company spends a full stroke of testing of the releases provided by developers, implements check both the new, and existing functionality (regression tests) and incurs financial liabilities for quality of testing.

Territory of M.Video, (2014)

In the field of responsibility of the IT partner – processing and elimination of incidents, control of correctness of the made program changes, monitoring of a system. About 500 incidents a month, during the peak periods – about 900 are on average processed. In case of program failure a response time on the arrived incident – no more than 15 minutes, elimination of a problem in difficult situations – within 4 hours, the guaranteed level of availability of the website of 99.9%.

Internet trade at the end of 2015 made about 11% in turnover of the company, and its share constantly grows. Today the M.Video online store processes 25 orders a minute and services more than 300 thousand unique visitors a day. Ensuring smooth operation of the Internet platform – a problem of the first priority. Having transferred her to our old partner, we closed several questions at once. Thanks to cooperation with Jet Infosystems company we managed to reduce costs for support of online store, despite the permanent growth of traffic on the website. Also services of the partner allow us to control quality and terms of the solution of incidents that is especially relevant in the conditions of dynamic development of a segment of Internet commerce of our business. Arseny Soldatenkov, head of support group of the IC of e-commerce of M.Video company

Requests on incidents arrive from a monitoring system and also from the technical support team which is directly interacting with users. Problems of an outsourcing command include operational elimination of a problem or implementation of the bypass solution for the period while developers of technical support create a required program patch. Specialists of Jet Infosystems company check all offered changes on test environments then execute installation on industrial Wednesday.

We interact with representatives not only IT, but also M.Video business divisions – marketing, logistics and other departments. Weekly joint meetings allow us to understand better business requests, to find effective technological solutions and more precisely to prioritize tasks. Alexey Uchamprin, associate director of the Service center for service quality of Jet Infosystems company

Notes