Client case: KNESS

How Did Kness Optimize the SDLC Process with GitLab?

About the client: KNESS is an international group of companies founded in Ukraine in 2009. KNESS specializes in the development of technologies and implementation of projects in the field of renewable and traditional energy. The companies within the group provide a comprehensive range of services in performing industrial solar power plant projects under general contracting conditions.

KNESS’s work covers all stages, starting from site selection for construction, collection, and preparation of initial permit documentation, and ending with the station’s commissioning, its connection to the power grid, and the provision of service maintenance. KNESS’s mission is to create and implement a new energy architecture that encompasses Ukraine and all worldwide.

Project start date: January 2023.

Project end date: June 2023.

Challenge: The KNESS company faced several problematic points that required urgent resolution:

• Lack of systematization in documentation organization: With clearly defined procedures and templates, there needed to be more consistency in the project documentation. Also, it was complicated communication, collaboration among developers, and the maintenance of up-to-date documentation.
• Instability in the development process: The lack of control and standardization led to instability and unexpected delays in development. Developers worked differently without an adequately configured workflow, which made debugging and code integration more difficult. As a result, the development process could have been more efficient and predictable.
• Lack of knowledge base and dependence on individual developers: Inconsistent documentation led to the loss of valuable knowledge and created a reliance on individual developers. If a developer left the company or encountered long-term issues, it negatively affected productivity and development speed.

Solutions: KNESS utilizes paid licenses of GitLab, which offer integrated solutions for the proper approach to the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). This avoids additional costs for setting up SDLC processes, as the GitLab workflow helps understand and implement best development practices. The KNESS team has successfully developed a strategy using GitLab FLOW that covers all stages from planning to deployment. This is highly convenient as a single system provides all necessary functions, GitLab, eliminating the need to switch between different tools, thus speeding up the development cycle and issue resolution. KNESS has experienced significant positive changes in its work, including improved responsiveness to issues and incidents and enhanced development process security.

The adoption of GitLab’s CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment or Delivery) has resolved several collaboration-related issues within the KNESS development team. This approach has significantly increased efficiency and organization. It has facilitated safe branch operations in the repository, reducing the time spent on conflict resolution. Additionally, clear branch policies and approvals have been established within the team, resulting in more streamlined, concise, and secure projects.

One of the key outcomes of implementing CI/CD within the GitLab context has been the ability to automatically integrate code from different developers into a unified project version. Instead of each developer working in their separate environment and manually merging changes, CI/CD allows for automatic code integration and performs compilation, quality checks, and testing at each stage.

Cloudfresh’s role: Cloudfresh identified the best solution for KNESS and helped address the problems and inconveniences associated with working in different systems they encountered. GitLab took on most of the configuration for various CI/CD processes. This allowed developers to allocate more time to code development and security. The chosen solution created the necessary conditions for efficient development for everyone involved.