How Axolo helps Prepared save lives

Amirata, a senior software engineer at Prepared, shared his experience with Axolo in a recent conversation. His insights give an interesting insight into how Axolo has transformed their software development workflow.

Prepared: Life-saving Technology and Agile Development

Amirata works for Prepared, a company whose primary mission is to bring lifesaving technology to 911 centers across the U.S. "Our mission is to improve the lives of dispatchers and ultimately save more lives," Amirata states, with innovative features like live streaming and a robust text platform, they aim to improve the efficiency of dispatchers and ultimately, save more lives. As a full-stack developer, Amirata is part of a dedicated team of twenty-something individuals working tirelessly to develop and improve this critical service.

For a company like Prepared, there's no room for downtime, making streamlined and efficient communication within the team essential. And this is where Slack plays an integral role.

Overcoming Communication Challenges with Axolo

Prepared found its communication solution in Axolo. As Amirata puts it, "Slack gets the most attention. Slack is always open on my computer. Like I want to see everything that's important. I want it to go there, not email."

Before Axolo, Amirata and his team grappled with the notorious 'bad notifications' of GitHub. A developer might open a pull request (PR), ask for a review, and follow up on comments, but the disjointed communication often resulted in delays and unnecessary back-and-forth conversations on Slack or Huddle. Axolo, according to Amirata, addressed these issues by consolidating the notification process, routing all critical information to Slack, where developers naturally spend most of their time.

Axolo and the Development Workflow

Amirata shares that at Prepared, they keep updating their process to stay nimble and responsive to all challenges. The journey from feature ideation to implementation involves various stakeholders, including product managers, designers, and developers. PR reviews play a significant role in this process.

"In our setup, we just need one reviewer per PR. Usually, it's people with expertise in a certain area," says Amirata. He added that before Axolo, they had to 'chase' their colleagues to get a PR review or a reply on a comment. With Axolo these problems are a thing of the past.

Axolo: a Game-Changer

Axolo is a Slack-integrated tool that streamlines code review by creating dedicated Slack channels for each GitHub or GitLab pull request. It enhances team communication, expedites the merging process, and helps manage notifications effectively.

With Axolo, Amirata no longer has to chase after his colleagues for reviews or replies to comments. It's all routed directly to Slack, where he spends most of his work time.

“I think for me, the problem Axolo solved is the notification issue. I mean reviews are a big part of my daily communications. I want to either write code or review code and I want to discuss the code.”

— You want to write a comment on the exact part of the code in GitHub, but for the rest, it just makes a lot of sense for Slack to facilitate these discussions. That's the problem Axolo solved for me - Amirata

A Tool for Developers, by Developers

The verdict? Axolo is a game-changer for software development teams, bringing cohesion and reducing unnecessary context switches. As Amirata's experience at Prepared demonstrates, Axolo can be instrumental in enhancing workflow, boosting productivity, and ensuring that teams can focus on what truly matters - the code.