Why is MarControl Crewing software so flexible? A dive into the technical weeds
Welcome back to our on going series diving into the dynamic partnership between Shipnet and MarControl.
In my last blog post, I explained how our market position was to be the most flexible platform out there, and I mentioned that some early technical decisions enabled this approach. So, what are these technical factors allowing flexibility where the competition is rigid?
The main one is our heavy use of automated testing. What this means is that every time our developers make any changes to our application, we have bits of test code that make sure that every part of our application is still returning the correct, expected results. We have thousands of these tests that run for every single change in our code, ensuring that we're not playing whack-a-mole with bugs. This is called having good test "coverage," where most functions of the application have their corresponding automated tests for correctness.
Typically, software that doesn't use automated testing will be very hard to modify, especially in its existing parts, as making changes in one place will cause bugs to appear in other, unexpected places.
Get in touch to find out more about MarControl >>
Speedy deployment of new features
Another advantage of this approach is that it allows us to deploy improvements and new features very frequently. MarControl customers are often surprised to see their feature requests appear within the week. Conversely, the use of old-fashioned manual testing instead of automated testing is why you see many software products releasing new versions every few years only. They have to accumulate changes and go through a massive manual testing cycle before they're able to confidently release a new version.
What are some of the complex problems we've been able to approach this way?
• We built a fully integrated union management system for Canada's largest marine union, on top of our crew management platform.
• We adapted our timesheet system for a company paying crew bonuses based on cargo volume discharged, and individual seafarer participation to the unloading process.
• We support seafarers having more than one position, on the same ship or on another ship, on the same day, for complex ship-to-ship trans-loading operations.
Adaptability and capability to give seamless deployments
The upshot is that we can confidently handle whatever you throw at us, and we can deploy customizations in an iterative, progressive way that reduces risk and gets you usable functionality as soon as possible.
Get in touch if your current crew management solution is unable to adapt to your operational realities.
I hope to talk to you soon.
MaximeCamirand
MarControl / Maritime Logical Systems Inc.