The Background

The Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) is the Australian grape and wine industry’s research organisation. It supports a sustainable and successful grape and wine industry through world-class research, practical solutions and knowledge transfer. Established in 1955, the AWRI is governed by an industry-led, skills-based Board and is a member of the Wine Innovation Cluster located at the Waite Research Precinct in Adelaide.

James Anthony Consulting (JAC) was initially approached by AWRI to make enhancements to their ShowRunner System, which eventually led to an engaging and profitable relationship for the two firms.

The ShowRunner Web Application

The “ShowRunner Web” application is used to manage wine events. Event organisers are able to set up and manage all aspects of an event from orders to the scheduling of judges through to final results. Wine producers have their own profile containing their portfolio of wines which they can simply enter into an event. The application integrates with additional software used during an event to produce an all-in-one solution for managing wine events.

The Challenge

AWRI presented us with the challenge to take a hard look at their digital asset, and analyse a set of collaboratively identified requirements. The "ShowRunner Web" application was authored in Symfony 1.4, a legacy PHP framework. This framework mandates the use of PHP 5.6 (as opposed to PHP 7.2+), and it no longer receives official security updates, which meant that security updates had to be manually handled. This task is inefficient, costly and resource consuming. 

JAC proposed to migrate the website framework to Laravel 7.2. This PHP framework is a mature, modern, well-supported and continually-updated framework, supporting many web applications, and with a well-understood upgrade path from Symfony. Laravel is considered the safest choice by most PHP developers and provides an abundance of tools which are useful to expedite development.

Our Role

During this project, JAC was responsible for the redesign, building, testing, and release of the freshly adapted ShowRunner application. Additionally, the company would provide ongoing maintenance and support for the web application.

Our Approach

Under the Laravel Framework, JAC followed a SCRUM methodology. The company performed a series of development sprints, each delivering a piece of the overall product. Each sprint began by deciding on delivery priorities for the next two weeks (placed on a Trello board), a period of requirements clarification, developer estimation of priorities, then followed by construction and testing. While this was ongoing, the Product Owner worked with the Project Manager to refine and review priorities, always taking special attention to the project resources. New features were implemented and enhanced until the client's expectations were met. After the launch of the new product, JAC articulated a three-tier service strategy to make sure the web application is always up and running. This service includes Levels 1 & 2 support and ad hoc developer resources for bugfix support.

The Outcome

JAC was able to fully satisfy AWRI's expectations, delivering an upgraded and functional web application. During the project, we were able to:

• Successfully migrate all legacy ShowRunner code from Symfony to Laravel framework. 

• Ensured all functionality remained unaffected in the change.

• Improved the AWRI ShowRunner website security.

• Lowered the potential costs of future enhancements to the system.

• Delivered an application that enables greater scalability.

• Improved data analysis capabilities, delivering increased value to existing customers.

• Provided a program of continuous support and improvement that responds to the dynamic landscape of the wine industry. 

The positive outcomes of this project have allowed JAC to work alongside AWRI successfully for the past three years on several additional projects, with new, more exciting ventures to come.