PDS provides custom-built applications for field service teams across Australia’s mining sector. Their flagship application, originally developed in Xamarin, was rebuilt in .NET MAUI. A critical release for a key client was approaching, and the date had already slipped more than once.
PDS’ development team was small and punching well above their weight, however getting new developers means training them up in a new complex system which was not an option given the deadline. To make matters worse, the PDS team were running into hardwarre API problems, such as camera and sync failures. All of this made the app unreliable in the field, and limited logging meant these problems were nearly impossible to reproduce consistently. Additionally, their back-end platform was beginning to buckle under load, and performance bottlenecks needed to be addressed. Some early design choices were impacting their critical workflows and required immediate attention.
SSW began with a structured technical audit, conducted by Gert Marx and Ben Neoh, to get a clear picture of the application and map the delivery risks that had built across the environment. The audit found that testing coverage was the biggest gap. There were too many unknowns for the team to feel confident about what was release-ready, and that uncertainty was driving the unpredictability more than any single technical issue.
From there, SSW worked through the issues methodically. Camera crashes and sync failures were resolved, addressing the most disruptive problems affecting field users. Image storage was migrated from SQL Server to Azure Blob Storage, reducing database load and improving overall performance. Testing coverage was lifted so that breaking changes could be caught before reaching production, and logging was improved to make future issues easier to trace and diagnose.
SSW began with a structured technical audit, conducted by Gert Marx, Luke Cook and Zach Keeping, to get a clear picture of the application and map the delivery risks that had built up across the environment.
The audit uncovered several major improvement areas that would set them up for future success. Notably, implementing a more robust testing pipeline to protect against regressions and improve release confidence would be the number one improvement to feature delivery. Architecturally, there were some clear improvements on infrastructure and data storage strategies that would greatly enhance platform performance, and several gotchas with the .NET MAUI hardware APIs were flagged. From there, SSW worked through the issues methodically. Camera crashes and sync failures were resolved, addressing the most disruptive problems affecting field users. Image sotragte was migrated from SQL Server to Azure Blob Storage, reducing database load and improving overall performance. Testing coverage was lifted so that breaking changes could be caught before reaching production, and logging was improved to make future issues easier to trace and diagnose.
The major release was delivered on time. The application was more stable and performant than it had been at any point previously.
For field workers using the app day to day, the improvement was clear. Photo capture and audit navigation, which had been sources of crashes and frustration, worked reliably. The migration of large data files from SQL to Azure Blob Storage also put the architecture on a more scalable footing, with the separate data stores able to efficiently handle what they were designed for. Crucially, the mobile app performed reliably when being used in remote areas, giving users peace of mind when they really needed it.
“Out of all the developers I have used in the past SSW provide the most complete solutions and best outcomes. Thanks for your attention to detail once again.” - Peter McCurdy, PDS