Challenge

I joined Packative during the development of their new version. The company urgently needed to release this version to attract new clients and address customer needs, which is why I was recruited. Joining in the middle of a sprint required a great deal of flexibility in my work. I had less than a week to familiarize myself with the packaging industry, understand how the company operates, learn the main features of the software, and get up to speed with the codebase.

Work

As a freelance web developer, I played a key role in developing an innovative e-commerce platform using Next.js and Medusa.js. My responsibilities included designing and implementing the core platform, enhancing the admin dashboard, integrating a sleek new design, and building a custom sizing system tailored to packaging needs. I also worked on a sophisticated 3D editor to provide users with an interactive customization experience. Throughout the project, I adhered to rigorous Test-Driven Development (TDD) practices, leveraging Zustand for robust state management and maintainability. My primary mission was to help the development team complete and release the new e-commerce application. After discovering that the entire application lacked tests, I decided, with the CTO's approval, to implement and manage a unit testing system. I also trained the development team on the TDD (Test-Driven Development) approach and how to apply it to new features. Since TDD encourages developers to adopt clean architecture principles (also known as onion architecture or hexagonal architecture), I explained these concepts to the team. After redesigning the architecture and integrating Zustand as a state manager (despite using Next.js), we were able to release new features on the front end quickly and with confidence, avoiding unexpected issues in production. On the backend, most of the work was handled by Medusa.js, a headless e-commerce framework. While Medusa provides a stable system with extensive features for e-commerce applications, the packaging industry's unique requirements necessitated the creation and customization of certain features to better serve our users.

Result and impact

• Successfully released a new e-commerce application.

• Increased front-end test coverage from 0% to over 70%.

• Shifted 90% of user actions from being server-handled to client-side handling using Zustand.

• Maintained full SEO compliance with excellent Google indexing.

• Reduced reported errors from approximately 20 per day to fewer than 1 per day, as tracked by Sentry.

• Migrated the Next.js application from Vercel to AWS, cutting server costs by more than half.

• Trained 2 developers in TDD and clean architecture principles.