Background
A government agency that makes higher education more accessible and affordable for families and individuals wanted to evolve its end-to-end customer experience. Doing so would require redesigning the technology suite and architecture with flexibility and nimbleness in mind. The client was also in pursuit of significant gains in speed (public facing website, investment processing, etc.). In terms of efficiency, they were unable to perform unit testing in the current setup and could only test once the code was deployed. Moreover, the agency’s tech stack was significantly outdated (Tomcat, Maven, Shogun). Given that they had been planning to transition everything to Angular since 2018 but only reached a 40% completion rate over the course of just under four years, the need to bring in an outside voice was apparent. That voice, SingleStone, knew early into discovery that moving to a modern, cloud-based architecture was the appropriate measure for them to take.
Response
SingleStone set out to strategically migrate the agency’s existing infrastructure over to AWS services. Using a Domain-Driven Design (DDD) approach, a framework was created to rearchitect in a way that was optimal for the cloud. The DDD approach led SingleStone and the client to establish a common language around technology, business architecture and investment criteria for prioritization decisions.
As a result, workplace culture was noticeably more engaging. Team members were more connected to the customer experience, business value, and business purpose. The pathway to a swift, agile, and nimble future was clearly laid out for them. The government agency moving to a cloud-based architecture and realigning their organization structure to match all bounded contexts has led to better customer satisfaction, increased employee retention due to a modernized approach, and an overall more collaborative culture.
Result
- C1 and C2 level diagrams were created using the C4 model (Context, Containers, Components, Code)
- Bounded contexts and message flows were created through DDD
- A roadmap containing robust future state recommendations
- An all-hands Miro board used to boost multi-team collaboration
- A proposed organization realignment to mirror our bounded context suggestions