Qantas is making use of the open source Polylith software architecture and tooling to make it simpler and less resource-intensive to make changes to websites for itself and subsidiary Jetstar.
Software engineering lead Felix Barbalet wrote in a Medium post that Polylith had been introduced ahead of “a large piece of work” that “was going to require changes that were spread throughout multiple key services”.
Polylith’s purpose is neatly characterised in a Reddit post as a way “to help … organise projects as they grow bigger”.
Barbalet wrote that his team oversees “more than 20 microservices that run parts of the Hotels and Holidays website for Qantas and Jetstar.”
“One of the consistent challenges we had was keeping all of our services up to date and in sync,” he wrote.
“Our services have been built over a number of years …and there was not an overarching approach, nor strong conventions that guided how they were built.
“This resulted in a high cost of switching context for our software engineers as, more often than not, they worked to make coordinated changes across multiple services.”
Barbalet wrote that Polylith had been used to “refactor… common business parameters” shared across microservices, so that they could be more easily and consistently changed.
The team also refactored its CI/CD processes – the steps used to deliver new code to production – to also be more consistent.
The end result is “improved… efficiency and effectiveness at delivering business value.”
“Polylith has given us tools that allow us to make changes across system boundaries and rapidly understand the impact of those changes for the system as a whole,” he wrote.
“We’re able to make bigger changes more rapidly and with increased confidence about the result.
“We’re excited to see how we can leverage this new approach to continue to improve our systems.”