Core API - Stability, Test Automation & Continous Integration

Enhancing Kafka implementation and test automation on CI pipelines to boost reliability and delivery velocity

linkTHE CHALLENGE

• Legacy bugs & tech debt – Core endpoints produced intermittent 5xx errors that were hard to reproduce.
• Low observability – No centralized logging or KPIs to diagnose issues.
• Glacial releases – Manual regression testing meant a six-week deployment cadence.
• Knowledge gaps – Sparse documentation made it painful for new hires to contribute.

BetterTrucks needed a reliable, observable, and testable API layer—without halting daily operations.

linkTHE SOLUTION

link1 • Stability First

• Error budget defined: target ≤ 0.01 % failed requests.
• Hot-path refactors in C# (.NET 7) eliminated race conditions and N+1 queries.
• MySQL tuning (indexing, read replicas) cut P95 response times by 38 %.

link2 • Test Automation & Coverage

• Introduced NUnit + FluentAssertions for unit tests; SpecFlow and Postman for integration scenarios.
• Built a contract-test harness to validate external partner integrations on every PR.
• Reached 85 % coverage, catching regressions before they hit production.

link3 • Observability & KPIs

• Datadog dashboards: latency, error rate, throughput, and deployment health.
• SLO alerts give ops a 15-minute lead on customer impact.

link4 • Continuous Delivery

• GitHub Actions workflow runs linting, build, tests, security scan, and blue-green deploy to Google Cloud Platform.
• Feature flags let product managers toggle functionality without redeploying

linkTHE OUTCOME

• Five-nines mindset: 99.99 % uptime sustained over the last 90 days.
• Deployment velocity tripled: shipping every 2 weeks with near-zero rollbacks.
• Confidence at scale: Automated suite prevents 75 % of previously recurring production bugs.

NetForemost turned our Core API from a black-box liability into a measurable, high-velocity asset. We ship more often, break less, and sleep better.

Mike Koleno, CTO, BetterTrucks