SimplePractice decreases total build time by 15-20% & CI Costs by 25%
π Before Semaphore:
- βοΈοΈ CI/CD feedback loop speed was insufficient
- βοΈ Lack of flexibility in building fully configurable deployment pipelines
π After adopting Semaphore:
- β Decreased total build time by around 20%
- β Applied a fully configurable build/deploy pipeline
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The Challenge
SimplePractice was looking for a platform that supports parallelism and the ability to manually deploy a particular branch to a particular server with a 100% configurable build/deploy pipeline.
They were also looking for ways to optimize and decrease their build time since long feedback loops are frustrating for the development team.
As a part of this quest for optimization and speed, they started using parallel_tests
Ruby gem for a year or so before they discovered Semaphore Boosters.
The Solution
Their main challenge with the parallel_tests
gem they had was that it was tricky to set up efficient balancing with it. However, when they discovered Semaphore Boosters, one of the obvious benefits was that they didnβt have to worry about setting anything up and the parallel test balanced pretty neatly with zero configuration.
“Semaphore is a pretty intuitive platform that has all the features you might need (manual deploys!) which allows for easy parallel test workers setup, so one has fewer things to set up and maintain down the road.β

Dmitry Krasnoukhov
Engineering Lead at SimplePractice
The Results
Semaphore Boosters decreased total build time by around 15-20% comparing to using parallel_tests
in βgroup by file sizeβ mode. Since the development team has been already using parallel testing it was a very nice surprise to see that it can be done even more efficiently with Semaphore Boosters.
βI can definitely say that shorter build times lead to better time utilization, which means we can ship more stuff faster!

Dmitry Krasnoukhov
Engineering Lead at SimplePractice
SimplePractice is a platform for health and wellness professionals. It allows their customers to manage all aspects of their business, such as scheduling appointments with clients, writing documentation for them, bill clients with credit cards and insurance, etc.
www.simplepractice.com
Industry
Healthcare
Engineering team
20+ developers
Stack
Ruby on Rails
Ember.js
React
Real Results. Real Impact. π―π