Standardising Technical Excellence: OVO’s Development Ecosystem Transformation

Published: January 2024
Client Name: OVO Energy
Industry: Energy supplier. Gas and electricity provider.

Executive Summary

OVO Energy faced significant technical debt and inconsistent development practices, impacting scalability, productivity, and security. By implementing a standardised development ecosystem and best practices, Irysan transformed their processes, reducing technical debt, improving time-to-market, and enhancing system security. This strategic overhaul set a robust foundation for future growth and technological agility.Background

Founded in 2009, OVO Energy has grown to become the second-largest energy supply company in the United Kingdom, with around 5 million customers and over 8,000 employees and an annual revenue of over £5 billion (2022). OVO Energy is regarded for its innovative approach and commitment to sustainability: specifically, for the dedication to promoting green and renewable energy sources and the emphasis on a reduced carbon footprint. The company advocates and implements smart metre technology to empower consumers with real-time energy usage insights and improve energy efficiency. OVO Energy's focus on sustainability, innovative solutions, and customer satisfaction has positioned it as a notable player in the global energy market.

Client Background

OVO Energy, a leading energy supplier in the UK, was focused on enhancing its debt collection processes through advanced data services. However, rapid growth and evolving business needs led to significant technical debt and inconsistent development practices. The team faced challenges with a lack of standardisation, anti-patterns, and limited expertise, which impacted software development efficiency, knowledge-sharing, and onboarding. These challenges not only hindered software efficiency but also impacted OVO Energy’s ability to rapidly adapt to market changes and deliver exceptional customer experiences, posing risks to their competitive positioning in the dynamic energy market.

Challenges

The primary challenge was to overhaul the client’s development ecosystem to introduce standardisation and best practices while maintaining business continuity. Key issues included:

• Inconsistent project structures and lack of standardisation.

• Inefficient CI/CD processes and inadequate security measures.

• High technical debt affecting scalability and maintainability.

• Knowledge-sharing barriers and onboarding challenges.

• Securing buy-in from the existing team and ensuring collaboration during the transformation process.

Solution

To address these challenges, Irysan implemented a comprehensive standardisation strategy documented in Architectural Decision Records. We collaborated closely with the client’s team, actively addressing feedback in and sharing knowledge to ensure buy-in and smooth adoption. Our approach focused on five key areas:

Standardisation and Code Quality

Standardised Project Template. We developed a standardised project template using Cookiecutter, ensuring consistent project structure, preconfigured tests, and built-in CI/CD pipelines. This enhanced code maintainability and accelerated project initiation.

Coding Standards and Reusable Patterns. Introduced team-wide coding standards and reusable patterns like the Pipeline Pattern for exception handling and logging. A clearly defined branching strategy reduced merge conflicts and improved collaboration. We promoted the use of strongly typed languages, enhancing code quality and reducing runtime errors.

CI/CD and Security Enhancements

Scalable CI/CD Pipelines. Designed scalable pipelines for parallel execution with automated security and quality checks, reducing deployment time and increasing release frequency.

Secure Configuration Management. Centralised configuration and secrets management within CI/CD workflows to avoid exposure of sensitive data, enhancing system security.

Dependency Management. Adopted Poetry for consistent dependency management across environments, minimising version conflicts and dependency issues.

Developer Experience and Productivity

• Enhanced Local Development Setup. Implemented local debugging configurations that mirrored multiple environments (dev, UAT, prod), reducing integration issues and accelerating development cycles.

• Consistent Mocking Strategy. Established a unified mocking strategy for local integration testing, increasing test reliability and reducing debugging time.

• Knowledge Sharing and Onboarding. Centralised documentation in Confluence, improving knowledge sharing and significantly reducing onboarding time for new team members.
  
  Quality Assurance

Holistic Testing Strategies. Implemented unit, integration, and end-to-end tests with coverage tracking, ensuring robust and reliable code.

Automated Quality Analysis. Integrated SonarQube for continuous code quality analysis, proactively identifying code smells and security vulnerabilities.

Environment management and Infrastructure as Code

Modular and Reusable IaC. Utilised Terraform for modular and reusable configurations, enabling easy creation and teardown of environments to support agile development and testing.

Predictable Scaling. Designed infrastructure to facilitate predictable scaling, supporting OVO Energy’s growing data processing needs.

Implementation Approach

Thorough Assessment and Alignment. We conducted an in-depth assessment of existing systems and practices, including code reviews, documentation analysis, and stakeholder interviews. Our strategy was aligned with OVO Energy’s roadmap, ensuring immediate impact and strategic relevance.

Phased Implementation and Pilot Testing. Developed a phased implementation plan to minimise disruption, starting with a pilot project to validate the approach and refine it based on feedback.

Training and Knowledge Transfer. Offered comprehensive training sessions and pair-programming workshops, empowering the client’s team to confidently adopt the new tools and practices.

Outcomes Achieved

Consistent and streamlined development processes resulted in faster project initiation and reduced time-to-market. Centralised configuration management and secure CI/CD practices enhanced system security, which is crucial for handling sensitive customer data and scalable infrastructure design enabled easier and more predictable scaling. Our client saw a significant improvement in code quality, fewer bugs and a reduction in technical debt and time to market.

Conclusion

By laying a strong technical foundation, OVO Energy is now well-positioned to innovate rapidly and respond to evolving customer needs, reinforcing its leadership in the energy sector.