Earlier in the year, Last Call Media worked with the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance on a project in which we implemented automated testing and other automation processes. Word of the successful outcomes traveled through departments. When it came time to enhance the DFML’s program with DevOps automation, they contacted LCM.

What the DFML had was a team of teams each optimized to their own workflows and working on individual pieces of one greater product. The component-based team model increases efficiency as the larger technical foundations of a product are built, yet the integrations between those components can become a blind spot needing special consideration: integration testing was a known need in the project strategy. Last Call Media was brought on to be the integration testing team, and we knew from experience that concentrating testing of all functionality to a separate group, and as a final “phase” all work must pass through, leads to surprise issues arising too late in the life of the project. This was important as the timeline was one of the most important factors of this project: constituents needed to be able to apply for PFML benefits on January 1, 2021, no matter what.

As we began to work with the existing teams, we saw exactly what we could bring to the table: a strong strategy, clear approach, and defined process for integrating all work across every team, and systematically testing that work, as early in the development process as possible, so that fully tested product releases could be done with confidence and ease.

There were four main aspects of this project that needed to be considered in order to achieve success:

• The claimant portal, built using React, where constituents would be able to submit PFML claims and receive updates about the status of those claims,
• The claim call center, where customer service representatives would take calls from claimants and enter their claim information into the claimant portal,
• The claims processing system, the tool in which customer service representatives can process PFML claims via a task queue (and which is fed information from the portal, call center, and other third-party tools), and
• The API that would bring all of these parts together to work seamlessly.

Then, of course, there’s the testing. LCM began our work by establishing three types of tests that all project work would need to pass in order to be considered complete:

• End-to-End (E2E) testing: automated continuous verification of the functionality and integration of all 4 systems.
• Load and Stress testing: verifying the E2E functionality and integration under substantial strain to see what the system can sustain, where it breaks, what breaks it, etc.
• Business Simulation testing: verifying if the people behind the scenes who will be doing this work on a daily basis can effectively perform said work with the systems and functionality that have been put into place, and whether this work can be performed when there is a substantial amount of it.

As we worked to set up the proper tests for the product, we found many opportunities to gain alignment across all of the development teams with our overall testing philosophy: it should be a part of each team’s workflow instead of a final phase removed from the team(s) performing the work. We helped coach each team on delivering value incrementally, and their eventual ownership of where the E2E testing suite impacts their work. LCM brought testing to the program and enabled the teams to absorb it as their own.

Earlier in the year, Last Call Media worked with the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance on a project in which we implemented automated testing and other automation processes. Word of the successful outcomes traveled through departments. When it came time to enhance the DFML’s program with DevOps automation, they contacted LCM.

What the DFML had was a team of teams each optimized to their own workflows and working on individual pieces of one greater product. The component-based team model increases efficiency as the larger technical foundations of a product are built, yet the integrations between those components can become a blind spot needing special consideration: integration testing was a known need in the project strategy. Last Call Media was brought on to be the integration testing team, and we knew from experience that concentrating testing of all functionality to a separate group, and as a final “phase” all work must pass through, leads to surprise issues arising too late in the life of the project. This was important as the timeline was one of the most important factors of this project: constituents needed to be able to apply for PFML benefits on January 1, 2021, no matter what.

As we began to work with the existing teams, we saw exactly what we could bring to the table: a strong strategy, clear approach, and defined process for integrating all work across every team, and systematically testing that work, as early in the development process as possible, so that fully tested product releases could be done with confidence and ease.

There were four main aspects of this project that needed to be considered in order to achieve success:

• The claimant portal, built using React, where constituents would be able to submit PFML claims and receive updates about the status of those claims,
• The claim call center, where customer service representatives would take calls from claimants and enter their claim information into the claimant portal,
• The claims processing system, the tool in which customer service representatives can process PFML claims via a task queue (and which is fed information from the portal, call center, and other third-party tools), and
• The API that would bring all of these parts together to work seamlessly.

Then, of course, there’s the testing. LCM began our work by establishing three types of tests that all project work would need to pass in order to be considered complete:

• End-to-End (E2E) testing: automated continuous verification of the functionality and integration of all 4 systems.
• Load and Stress testing: verifying the E2E functionality and integration under substantial strain to see what the system can sustain, where it breaks, what breaks it, etc.
• Business Simulation testing: verifying if the people behind the scenes who will be doing this work on a daily basis can effectively perform said work with the systems and functionality that have been put into place, and whether this work can be performed when there is a substantial amount of it.

As we worked to set up the proper tests for the product, we found many opportunities to gain alignment across all of the development teams with our overall testing philosophy: it should be a part of each team’s workflow instead of a final phase removed from the team(s) performing the work. We helped coach each team on delivering value incrementally, and their eventual ownership of where the E2E testing suite impacts their work. LCM brought testing to the program and enabled the teams to absorb it as their own.

Seramount is the result of a consolidation of three businesses: Diversity Best Practices, Culture@Work, and the events and research divisions of Working Mother Media. Since they also focus on research and consulting, they were looking for an improved membership experience with their gated content and membership portal. They also needed an improved search functionality and tagging system as well as improved ways to track site metrics. 

Our Approach

Seramount engaged Last Call Media to deliver a more focused and compelling narrative to tie the products, tools, and services from those three disparate lines of business together into an end-to-end solution for purpose-driven leaders and teams at Fortune 1000 organizations. 

Our work began with an assessment of the three lines of business through interviews with Seramount leadership and employees who support the delivery of Seramount’s products and services. We then completed a series of structured customer interviews to learn more about how Seramount meets the needs of its customers. We then used that data to build a product roadmap to gain alignment on the customer opportunity and product vision with Seramount leadership. 

We approached building the new Seramount iteratively. Once we had a working prototype, we met with customers again to show them work in progress, to test our vision and to refine it based on their feedback. 

Challenges

Some of the challenges addressed involved building an easy-to-use online portal for Seramount customers and employees to access and update gated content only available with a Seramount membership. We solved one of the major customer challenges by eliminating the need to use passwords to access gated content. On the new Seramount, customers enter their work email and if their employer is a customer, they get an email inviting them to login to Seramount. By requiring employees to use their own accounts, Seramount now has additional data to demonstrate the value of their membership to existing customers. 

DocuWare, in the midst of a rebranding effort and needing to refresh its online presence, contacted Last Call Media to update its content management system. Its massive website, with multiple integrations to external servers and an outdated proprietary .ASP CMS, could no longer serve the company’s needs and was not flexible enough for DocuWare’s expected growth trajectory. 

Last Call worked in cooperation with DocuWare’s web services teams in the US and Germany to manage collaboration efforts between four firms in different global locations. This project allowed Last Call Media to take the Drupal panels module to new limits—develop a custom content creation workflow, import content from multiple distinct systems, and build a fully-functional online community. Each firm contributed individual elements of the design, content strategy, and brand development, making this a truly exciting collaborative process.

LCM has been assisting HIAS with site-wide User Experience and Design improvements, with services including card sorting exercises, site navigation strategy, and overall recommendations and prototyping.

Additionally, we’ve provided new feature development, such as adding Events listing and browsing capabilities.

We also provide ongoing support to maintain their existing Drupal, WordPress, and other PHP web systems.
 

We already knew that USM.edu was an aging Drupal 6 site that was slow and difficult to update under the hood, but furthermore, site admins had little to no visibility into the performance of the platform, coupled with limited functionality and almost no reporting tools. Beyond Drupal 6 quickly becoming end-of-life from a development standpoint, USM agreed that from the marketing ROI perspective, it was time to move to Drupal 8. 

Due to Last Call Media’s long-standing working relationship with the University of Southern Mississippi, we were able to break ground quickly. The marketing and IT teams on USM and LCM agreed to work iteratively by first focusing efforts on launching a pilot site on Drupal 8 and prioritizing additional departments and colleges after the initial launch. This allowed the LCM team to formulate a focused yet creative digital strategy that would get into the hands of the USM audiences faster and allow for user feedback to inform future, more complex, development and content needs. Additionally, USM was able to communicate directly with the Acquia Certified Drupal 8 developers and architecture consultants at LCM, to provide expertise on best practices and development techniques. This direct line of communication with our certified team gave USM confidence in their ability to develop the new Drupal 8 platform alongside us. Some Acquia technologies we used on USM.edu are Acquia Cloud, Acquia Cloud Shield, Acquia Cloud Edge, Acquia Search, and Acquia Ready. The Acquia platform allowed USM to maintain a homogenous interface to their new Drupal 8 product and the workflow tools have allowed internal and external developers to collaborate in building new features and has made the quality assurance and release process consistent and seamless.

Since the relaunch of USM.edu on Drupal 8, feedback on campus has been overwhelmingly positive. The community was engaged and involved along the way, so it was a huge moment on campus when the site went live. 

There have even been some tangible technical results that the school benefited from almost immediately. One of the key results the site achieved was a sub-second page load for the homepage, despite using a video in the hero region. To accomplish this, we worked with the USM development team to obsessively reduce and minify front end assets, prefer CSS over images for presentational styling, and to lazy-load large assets not required for the initial pageview. Throughout the process, we tested using a front-end performance benchmarking tool (Phantomas) to keep us on track and efficient.
 

CreativeGround is a free online directory of profiles for cultural nonprofits like libraries and theaters, creative businesses like recording studios and design agencies, and artists of all disciplines. They came to LCM looking to escape a pattern that many organizations find themselves in: the design, creation, hosting, and support of their website had been handed off multiple times between different agencies, and some things had been lost in a long game of telephone; they were in a support contract, but didn’t feel supported; they knew they needed to make some big changes to their site, but needed guidance on where to start. They needed a partner that would be both capable and transparent, and help them take their site to the next level.

Understandably, CreativeGround was wary of jumping into another agreement with yet another dev shop, so we started off slow. Through concise communication, thorough support, routine site updates, and honest recommendations over the course of several months, LCM was able to show CreativeGround that it’s possible to have an expert team of developers on their side, with all of their best interests in mind. 
 

We developed an eCommerce solution that compiles classes from from FITiST-connected gyms into a member-facing scheduling interface, as well as a recurring token payment system to handle class registration purchases.

We developed and implemented an upgrade and migration path for the site with 85 modules, including 35 custom modules, to bring the site to a fully functioning Drupal 7 build. The upgrade was fully developed and its deployment was seamless. The Rainforest Alliance site went from Drupal 6 to 7 with zero downtime.