Hubject and a blazingly fast OICP implementation upgrade

A client in the public electric vehicle charging sector sought to update their custom Charge Station Management System. The platform already supported vital roaming features, including peer-to-peer connections and hub integrations. Because Hubject recently released a new version of its main protocol, the client needed to upgrade their implementation. As a leading roaming hub, Hubject uses the OICP protocol to connect thousands of charging points globally.

Challenge

The main challenge was to quickly assess the current implementation and provide the client with estimates and a viable upgrade path. The older version of the protocol, Open InterCharge Protocol (OICP) version 2.1, was being deprecated, necessitating swift action. The new version supported additional features and potentially differed in key areas. The deprecation of a protocol is a natural stage in its lifecycle, intended to focus development on newer features demanded by the community, which also created the challenge of mapping the differences between the two versions.

Inside the CSMS, the Hubject integration was closely coupled with internal business logic and impacted other roaming features as well. Therefore, our approach needed to be cautious, efficient, and prompt.

Solution

Our solution aimed to optimize for velocity due to the tight deadline imposed by the deprecation. We began by quickly assessing the current implementation and comparing the two versions of the protocol. We formulated a plan to implement only the minimal changes required to comply with the new version, deferring optional features and enhancements to the backlog and later stages in the product roadmap.

After breaking the project into tasks, we identified dependencies and parallelized the workload as much as possible using Metergram’s full roaming implementation team. While some developers worked on the business logic and necessary changes, other team members focused on implementing the protocol-specific updates.

Despite the tight deadline, we maintained high standards of quality. Early on, we involved a QA engineer and worked with Hubject’s QA environments to ensure the new implementation performed as well as the old one. We also updated the system documentation to reflect the changes.

Outcome

Within the given timeline, we successfully released the new implementation without any service interruptions, as the old version was deprecated. This achievement was a significant win for the stakeholders and the business side.

The immediate emphasis on Quality Assurance, even with constrained time and scope, was challenging but ultimately led to a very successful production release. This was all accomplished in just a matter of weeks.

The backlogged tasks, including new features enabled by the new protocol version, were later incorporated into regular development sprints and the long-term roadmap, providing future improvements as a benefit of this rapid-response initiative.