Problem

Services evolved organically, each with different conventions and no clear migration path. Releases were risky and time‑consuming due to limited automated testing.

Approach

• Wrote API standards (naming, pagination, errors, versioning) adopted across PHP and Node services.
• Containerized local dev with Docker Compose for fast onboarding and parity with staging.
• Added unit + integration tests (PHPUnit, Jest) and smoke tests on CI.
• Implemented a changelog + semantic versioning process with release notes and tagging.
• Added structured request/response examples to developer docs for common endpoints.

Results

• Faster, safer releases with green CI and predictable versioning.
• New developers onboarded quicker using Docker + consistent docs.
• Fewer production regressions due to automated tests and smoke checks.

Tech Stack

• PHP, Node.js
• PostgreSQL
• Docker, Nginx
• PHPUnit, Jest, CI/CD