Seven years ago, Knoxville Utilities Board built a large web presence using Java, Websphere Portlets, and a robust service based architecture. By 2015, that web presence was showing its age. Visitors of KUB.org using mobile devices were rapidly approaching 50%, but the site was built before Responsive Web Design had even been coined. Even on a larger viewport, visitors user experience was not where KUB wanted it to be. At the same time, Google rankings had begun to suffer as mobile-friendly content became priority, making life-saving KUB content less discoverable.

That’s when Sparkbox and KUB joined forces to build a modern, user-focused experience under the guiding principle that “Users should be able to come to our site, find what they’re looking for, do what they need to do, and get out and get on with their lives.” This new experience was founded in RWD, Atomic Design, Continuous Delivery, and collaboration. It was built on ExpressionEngine, Ember, Pattern Libraries, Heroku, and Github. And continues to be supported by a service architecture built years ago to coordinate a heterogeneous environment of Cobol, Mainframes, partner systems, and internet connected devices.

This presentation will share how these two organizations with different cultures and processes worked together to prepare, plan, develop, test, and launch the new KUB.org. We’ll explore the technologies, patterns, practices, and techniques used in delivering this leading energy industry solution.