Refund automation service*
* Real name obfuscated because of an NDA
Started in as a part of my work as Ruby developer, UI designer and tech lead for Speed & Function
Business role
The project was to reduce most of the costs for the call center that supported the client refund process which was run manually.
What it was about
The company business was helping its customers acquire the “emotional support animal” license for their dogs and cats.
A web-site on Ruby on Rails with periodic synchronization with another service + API service for refunding transactions.
Challenges
We worked on this project directly with the business owner, and it was rather hard to sync regularly to show updates.
My responsibilities
I was the only engineer on this project, working with a project manager on our side, and the owner of the company on the client side
- Advice & guidance on better UX in the web interfaces
- API design
- Authoring background jobs for Sidekiq
- Authoring purchase flows
- Creating & deploying Ruby on Rails web apps from scratch
- Customizing forms & index layouts in ActiveAdmin
- Designing web pages (in various graphic editors)
- Front-end develpment (HTML / CSS /JS)
- Integrating data from API providers
- Participation in creating project roadmaps
- Writing feature tests with Capybara
- Writing internal documentation and tech manuals
- Writing unit tests with RSpec
What I discovered while working there
Sometimes the clients will avoid answering important questions necessary for architectural decisions, and you’ll have to nudge them (we had to start tracking Q/A in a shared document)
Team
Besides me, the team had only a project manager