From project to project, development teams struggle to come up with the most efficient solutions to constantly arising technical and management challenges. A team of ISD professionals has been working on a complex embedded systems solution used for animal health management for some time now.
We want to share with you how our team made choices in finding the right tech stack and a suitable framework to ensure an empowering environment. How could you make it work? It is easier said than done, but all the efforts placed on the project are worth it and results can be sensed right away both by the client and the team members.
Embedded Systems Serving Farmers
Modern farmers face numerous challenges diverse in nature that require multi-level innovative solutions and implementation of cutting-edge technologies, like satisfying the rising demand for high-quality products and enhancing the efficiency of their production process.
The client approached us with the idea to develop special medical equipment and a cloud-based software solution invented to facilitate the monitoring of farm animals. It is a complex automation system that covers multiple purposes:
- Allowing farmers to control the spread of infections;
- Keeping evidence of animal health;
- Monitoring the administration of medication.
In this case, choosing a relevant tech stack and an applicable project workflow determine not just the successful outcome, these factors mark the benchmark of how well the team manages to meet the clients’ needs and expectations.
A High-Performance Enterprise Solution
Despite our client’s project still being at the start-up phase, it is a fully functional enterprise solution. The Health Management System is implemented using the latest tools and frameworks. This tech choice ensures high efficiency and endorses the delivery of high-performance solutions:
- For the backend layer, we opted for .NET 5 and Kubernetes;
- The mobile development is based on React Native;
- The React technology stands behind the Web client;
- The embedded part is built on C++ and C.
This tech choice ensures high efficiency and endorses the delivery of high-performance solutions.
When it came to selecting the appropriate framework, Scrum was the most obvious winner as our project is in the active development phase and the client plays a huge part in the process. This approach allows us to receive almost instant feedback from the business owner and it ensures transparent communication with him while increasing flexibility in responding to changes. We adjusted Scrum to the particular features of this project to keep achieving milestones in the most efficient way, as well as to continuously improve and refine the solution.
The Health Management System
The delivered solution comprises of the following elements:
- The hi-tech gun injector that is used for injecting medication to farm animals;
- High-performance cloud back-end solutions (API);
- The Mobile application that is the gateway between the high-tech gun injector and the back-end layer, all the relevant data can be accessed through the application (including tasks for farm employees);
- The web client that is used mainly by the farm management and veterinarians to supervise the administration of medication and to monitor the health of farm animals;
- The animal chip that is scanned by the gun injector to register data regarding the administration of medication to each animal;
- The NFC printer is used by veterinarians to print labels for each medication vial that afterward is administrated to animals.
On this project, team roles are clearly defined and divided – this way we avoided any possible misunderstandings within the team and fostered an environment where everyone takes responsibility and is accountable for delivered results. Meanwhile, team members do not resort to emotions, they rather stay focused on their business roles, which by default eliminates personal conflicts.
As a result, we managed to create an effective and solution-oriented project workflow that allows us to achieve business owner’s goals on time while leveraging the power of cutting-edge technologies and embedded systems. This project is an example of how you can achieve successful collaboration, set and achieve goals, use the most suitable tools, while keeping all parts involved happy.