DeltaRail
Rail signalling screen design tool
It was approved with the feedback that they were impressed at the progress made in a short time period
Project Synopsis
DeltaRail (Now Resonate), who specialise in providing innovative solutions for the rail industry, required Yobibyte Solutions to assist with an existing internal web application. This application provided functionality for in-house signalling designers to design railway layout screens for their existing rail signalling control system platform. This required further functionality adding to support screen design for DeltaRail's new rail signalling control system platform.
The Challenge
The existing web application was, in some areas, lacking in performance and usability and required a number of bug fixes and enhancements.
After the initial bug fixing and enhancing phase of the project, Yobibyte Solutions was to assist in the extension of the existing web application to support DeltaRail's new rail signalling control system platform which required new railway screens to be designed using the existing tool.
The application used the Dojo framework making extensive use of its SVG capabilities. This was a new technology set to Yobibyte Solutions and would, therefore, require us to get up to speed as quickly as possible with not only a new technology but also the existing web application to start adding value.
The Process
We began with research and lots of it. We liaised with the relevant developers, business analysts and users to understand the existing web application whilst gaining an understanding of the new technologies involved.
Working with the business analysts and end users, we helped to understand and prioritise the bugs and enhancements that would most benefit the end users.
We reacted quickly to support the end users where something was impacting business as usual. We worked with the end users and the business analysts to understand the problem and find a solution such that it could be tested and a patch applied to the production environment as rapidly as possible.
Working with the business analysts, we investigated how we could modify the existing web application to support screen design for the new rail signalling control system platform. During this investigation, it soon became apparent to us and DeltaRail that the existing solution had limitations and was not going to support the requirements of the new generation of the rail signalling control system platform.
Yobibyte Solutions was tasked with investigating possible solutions to support screen design for the new rail signalling control system.
The Success
In the early phases of the project, Yobibyte Solutions quickly understood the existing framework code and technologies and made quick progress fixing bugs and developing enhancements that provided the most business benefit. We liaised with the end users to drive forward the enhancements to maximise the usability and performance of the application providing a maximum cost benefit.
We provided first level production support changing priorities as needed when business as usual was impacted. Being responsible for the code merging and release deployments to production this meant it was possible for a quick turn around minimising the impact on the end users.
As for the solution to support screen design for the new rail signalling control system? We were solely responsible for investigating possible solutions. We worked with other developers and architects working on the new rail signalling control system to see if we could reuse components from it in the screen design tool using the same technology.
Indeed we could.
This resulted in the production of a prototype to showcase what could be done providing the same look and feel as the new rail signalling control system. This solution was presented to the end users and the technical director so they could approve the approach.
The result?
It was approved with the feedback that they were impressed at the progress made in a short time period. The end users were happy with what they saw and had several ideas of functionality they would like to see.