Core API - Stability, Test Automation & Continous Integration
Enhancing Kafka implementation and test automation on CI pipelines to boost reliability and delivery velocity
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Enhancing Kafka implementation and test automation on CI pipelines to boost reliability and delivery velocity
THE 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.
THE SOLUTION
1 • 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 %.
2 • 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.
3 • Observability & KPIs
- Datadog dashboards: latency, error rate, throughput, and deployment health.
- SLO alerts give ops a 15-minute lead on customer impact.
4 • 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
THE 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
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