Migrate the development environment for visualization and efficiency of development

As a 100% subsidiary of SoftBank Corp. Corp., SB Payment Service Corp. is responsible for the settlement operations of group companies. It is used for “online payment services” at stores and “terminal payment services” at physical stores. We are developing a comprehensive payment service with customer-oriented one-stop support, such as complicated procedures and operations related to payment, and contract work with various financial institutions.

Mr. Harutoshi Kato, Manager of the Operation Planning Section, System Operation Division, System Headquarters, said, "In order to be able to respond quickly when new payment methods and services appear, we should think about the logic of the mechanism according to the solution plan and promote in-house development. We are pursuing both development speed and payment processing speed.”

The company started modernizing its software development environment in 2016. We have newly introduced the distributed repository type version control system "GitHub Enterprise" and started the migration from the centralized repository type version control tool "Subversion" (hereinafter referred to as SVN).

Regarding the background, Mr. Junya Suzuki, Manager of the Operation Planning Section, System Operation Section, System Headquarters, explains that there were two major issues. One is development project management. “While many development projects were running in parallel, the rules for organizing hierarchies and repositories were different for each project, so source code and documentation were scattered in various places.”

The other is development efficiency. “With SVN, there was a tendency to proceed with development without branching, because once branching is done, merging becomes a heavy burden later. We had to reconsider our operations,” says Suzuki.

GitHub Enterprise that can realize a modern development environment while ensuring the quality required by the financial industry

When changing the development environment, we compared products on the premise of introducing Git. Among them, we proceeded with the selection with an awareness that there would be no human costs such as introduction and operation. The free version of GitHub was also used and the effects were felt, but as a financial company, the company has a strong reluctance to entrust the source code to the cloud side. Therefore, we thought it would be desirable to prepare an in-house server and introduce GitHub Enterprise, which allows in-house development members to manage the source code in-house, and operate it on-premises, even if it costs a certain amount of investment. The fact that GitHub Enterprise is the industry's de facto standard also encouraged the introduction.

Mr. Kato also agreed with the introduction of GitHub Enterprise. “Because the Company are a service provider, we used to focus mainly on operations, but a few years ago we started developing software in-house. Releases and catching up with the latest technology are also required, so we thought that GitHub Enterprise would be able to provide a 'modern' development environment while ensuring the quality required by the financial industry."

In October 2016, we officially decided to introduce GitHub Enterprise from Macnica, and currently we are using GitHub Enterprise for almost 100% of our new development projects, and we also plan to change our operations team to the GitHub Enterprise environment, so we will It is expected that it will be completely integrated into GitHub Enterprise.

Mr. Kohei Yamada, Operation Planning Section, System Operation Division, System Headquarters, gives his impressions of GitHub Enterprise from the user's point of view. “It is very different from SVN in that it is easier to send pull requests to other people's repositories and merge when there is a conflict. You can also visualize the source code and insert comments into the source code, making it easier to share and review.

Realizing a virtuous circle that leads to constructive communication leading to the next design

On the other hand, Mr. Suzuki said that he was satisfied with the functions that he did not expect. “I really like the fact that GitHub Enterprise allows you to point to all resources with URLs. Any range of source code, comments, pull requests, etc. can be expressed with URLs. It's more active, takes less time, and makes fewer mistakes.I felt this was a great change."

In addition, as a result, tools that were buried in the repository of veteran engineers can be shared and reused, so constructive communication occurs one after another, realizing a virtuous cycle that leads to the next design.
Mr. Yamada says he feels the same way. "The change to GitHub Enterprise has increased opportunities to see other staff's source code, and communication has become more active, where questions and opinions can be exchanged. Outside of code reviews, I was curious about other people's code. By casually discussing via Slack, I have more opportunities to fix bugs and mistakes that I didn't notice, and I feel that the quality of the source code is improving."

In recent years, the financial industry has been actively introducing FinTech (technological innovation that combines traditional financial services with the latest IT) to promote financial innovation by innovating financial products and services that were conservative and stagnant. . Mr. Kato analyzes that it is no longer possible to fight the fierce competition without GitHub Enterprise, as technology cycles will accelerate and speeding up and automation of development will be essential.
“In the future, the number of development projects will increase and service requirements will become more diverse, so we will continue to increase the number of GitHub Enterprise users as we increase the number of Macnica members. We look forward to your support.”

As the domestic e-commerce market expands rapidly, we will continue to proactively propose payment methods that are optimal for the trends of the times while making full use of the ecosystem centered on GitHub Enterprise.