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 2 May, 2023  //   

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 #  Engineering Excellence 

 #Advice 

 #Insights 

 

 

  ![Barry Fisher, Founder and CEO at Pivale Drupal agency - a man with dark hair, a neat beard, moustache and glasses.](/sites/default/files/styles/square_sml_1x/public/2024-02/barry%20copy.png.avif?itok=p39Gsg9x)  *Written by*   Barry Fisher    Founder &amp; CEO Barry is our founder and CEO, responsible for delivering on our [mission statement](/about "About") and ensuring successful digital transformation for our clients. Barry oversees the majority of our consulting and digital transformation projects.

 

 

 

 

 

 ##  Creating bespoke web solutions you need to Pivot and Scale 

*Pivale’s commitment to you*

Like any great business, we hold ourselves to a high standard. That means every client benefits from our core services that combine to create websites and web based applications that help you thrive online.

In order to do this, our delivery model is built around six core pillars that apply to each and every project:

- Customer analysis
- Digital transformation
- CMS development
- Multi-site solutions (if applicable)
- Engineering excellence
- Pro-active support

In this article, you’ll learn exactly what engineering excellence means to us and how that benefits you.

 

 

 

##  What exactly is Engineering Excellence? 

For us, engineering excellence relates to the processes and systems applied for every client project. It’s integral that our web solutions are:

- Secure
- Fast
- Resilient
- Responsive
- Up-time monitored

These aren’t optional extras when you engage Pivale to develop your digital estate - but non-negotiable factors to ensure your business enjoys the best possible outcomes.

Put simply, without these core features, we won’t publish your website.

By default, Pivale applies best practices and test-driven development principles to our projects. This means that before your website (or new feature) is ready to go live it will be built, emulated and evaluated in a safe “staging” environment. The benefit of this is that we can identify issues and fix them quickly without impacting on your customer’s experience of using your website.

During development and once the site is live, strict version control of code changes and content updates are put in place. As a result your websites are kept secure and are easy to roll back in the unlikely event that is necessary.

Furthermore, we use “code smell” detection tools to identify errors and problems before they occur. It’s important to not only test the expected website behaviour (the so-called “happy path”), but also to make sure edge-cases can be handled gracefully. For example, when a third party system that your website interacts with goes down, understanding and planning for how this should be handled is important to make sure you’re not frustrating your users.

Finally, our continuous integration and continuous delivery or CI/CD processes means code changes are tested and made for each new code update, without upending your site and increasing the risk of bigger problems as a result of small changes.

 

 

 

##  What it means for you 

Thoughtful planning, good frameworks, and well written code combine to create great websites. Engineering excellence is found in multiple processes across our website builds, but a use case where it’s notably important is testing changes to live websites.

Websites always need changes at some point in the future - that’s totally normal. But that’s also why it’s important that we understand the implications and “domino effect” of making the *right* changes, without risking damaging your website functionality.

We create code that simulates changes to user behaviour to discover exactly what the results will be on your live website. With pre-testing, clients can be reassured that when changes are rolled out to their live site, they’re going to work and not cause any negative impact.

Here’s an example:

Your website is the customer-facing platform for your business’ e-commerce function.

Behind the scenes, complex integrations link your customer records, ordering, stock control, logistics, and finance systems. For your customer to have a great user experience buying from you, all the systems must reliably talk to each other, updating if items are delayed or out of stock, triggering fast dispatch of items and taking payment quickly to keep your cash flow nice and healthy.

The chances are these systems will be from a range of software houses and reliant on integrations to make them work together. So when one software house makes a change or upgrade to your sales platform, it is likely to impact how your suite of systems communicate with each other.

Our job is to test before implementation so your customers and business are not adversely affected by an unexpected bug or glitch.

 

 

 

##  Why organisations choose Pivale 

Pivale is a small team that delivers a big service. The business has been structured to ensure we’ve got the time and capacity to do the right thing for every project, building optimised websites and web-based applications that achieve agreed goals, measure success and future-proof the investment of our clients.

Once live, our websites are typically supported for around 6 years, and thanks to our in-built engineering excellence, clients have complete confidence that their site is upgradable and editable over time, without any risk of downtime or errors occurring.

The team at Pivale are subject matter experts who thrive on complex briefs that require out-of-the-box thinking. For this reason, our clients benefit from the peace of mind that their digital strategy conundrums can be solved creatively, consistently and competently.

 

 

 

##  And what about that thing everyone is talking about…? 

Put simply, AI is only just getting started and will be capable of *a lot*. But one thing is for certain - it has the potential to significantly alter and improve the way websites are created.

Don’t believe us? [Check this out](https://twitter.com/AlphaSignalAI/status/1635747039291031553?s=20). Chat GPT4 codes and creates a website from the notes on the back of a napkin - in seconds. As mind-blowing as this is, it’s only part of the picture. Until AI reaches the point where it can replace human decision-making on small and large business considerations, people will still need traditional expertise to make informed choices and a means of accountability.

 

 

 

##  What does this mean for you? 

Today, we’re making good use of AI tools in our day-to-day projects that help us innovate faster and remove repetitive aspects of coding meaning we can spend more time focussing on resilience, thorough testing, and systems architectures that serve our customers well over time.

As mentioned above, highly complex sites often have to integrate with multiple back office systems. Pivale builds systems that continuously monitor those integrations and, instead of problems going unnoticed until a customer has a bad experience, those systems let our developers know so we can deal with them.

For this to work effectively, monitoring takes account of more than just your website functionality which is made infinitely easier with the help of modern tools, including AI.

 

 

 

##  Ready to experience excellence? 

We aren’t like typical website developers. And we’re proud to say we don’t build websites like our competitors.

Typically websites are built for the here and now, with little thought for the future. Pivale builds web-based digital hubs that deliver immense value for organisations today, tomorrow and long into the future.

If you’re looking for a proven and trusted digital partner for your websites and applications, [we’d love to hear from you.](#contact-us)

 

 

 

  ![Barry Fisher, Founder and CEO at Pivale Drupal agency - a man with dark hair, a neat beard, moustache and glasses.](/sites/default/files/styles/square_sml_1x/public/2024-02/barry%20copy.png.avif?itok=p39Gsg9x)  *Written by*   Barry Fisher    Founder &amp; CEO Barry is our founder and CEO, responsible for delivering on our [mission statement](/about "About") and ensuring successful digital transformation for our clients. Barry oversees the majority of our consulting and digital transformation projects.

 

 

 

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 ##  Related articles 

    ![Illustration of a cog with surrounding technical drawings](/sites/default/files/styles/widescreen_xs_1x/public/images/engineering-excellence.webp.avif?itok=pHjWqroQ)  

  Article ##  Engineering Excellence Explained: Customer Analysis 

            1 June, 2023  #Advice 

 #Insights 

 

Engineering excellence is the processes and systems applied for every client project that the Pivale team undertake.

 

 [Read the article ](/resources/blog/engineering-excellence-explained) 

 

 

 [See all articles  ](/resources/blog)