Overview
VitalVaults, an emerging health-tech startup, approached bCubex with an urgent issue: their AWS Amplify builds were slow, unstable, and frequently failing at the final deployment stage. Their internal team believed this to be a DevOps bottleneck and sought our support to stabilise and accelerate their pipeline.
But at BCubex, our approach is not “fire and forget.” Every engagement begins with a structured discovery process to understand the root cause—not just the symptoms.
What we uncovered fundamentally changed the direction of the engagement.
Challenge
VitalVaults’ team was experiencing:
- Long, unreliable AWS Amplify builds
- Builds failing at the final step for inconsistent reasons
- Slow deployment cycles that impacted product momentum
- Lack of visibility into the failure patterns
- A belief that “DevOps fixes” were required immediately
During discovery, BCubex observed that the pipeline failures were not DevOps issues, but rather deeper engineering and codebase-level gaps.
Key Findings from Discovery
- Code branching and merge practices were inconsistent.
- Frontend and backend dependencies were not cleanly managed.
- TypeScript checks and runtime behaviours were breaking builds late in the pipeline.
- Architectural decisions did not fully align with Amplify’s best practices.
- The development process lacked senior engineering oversight.
Adding DevOps alone would simply mask the problem—it would not resolve it.
Our Recommendation: Engineering First, DevOps Later
Instead of pushing DevOps as the solution, BCubex proposed a different strategy:
Strengthen the engineering foundation first.
Only then would DevOps automation and scaling make sense.
We recommended embedding experienced BCubex engineers directly into VitalVaults’ workflow to:
- Improve the React + TypeScript architecture
- Clean up Node.js backend patterns
- Standardize versioning and dependency management
- Enhance code quality and test coverage
- Build predictable development and release processes
- Identify and remove Amplify-specific blockers
Implement better local validation to avoid late pipeline failures
This would allow the product to stabilise before investing in DevOps enhancements.
Solution Implementation
BCubex provided engineering augmentation tailored to a startup environment:
1. Senior Engineering Support
Our engineers worked alongside their team, improving structure and resolving root-cause build failures.
2. CI/CD Readiness Improvements
Instead of patching Amplify pipelines, we helped VitalVaults correct the dependencies and code flows that were causing unpredictability.
3. Full-Stack Best Practices
From React components to database access patterns, VitalVaults gained consistent engineering guardrails.
4. Product-Centric Collaboration
We didn’t just “fix a pipeline”—we helped uplift their engineering culture, development rhythm, and release velocity.
AWS Amplify Reference Architecture
Results
After onboarding bCubex engineers, VitalVaults saw immediate improvements:
- Builds stopped failing unexpectedly
- Deployment speed increased significantly
- Fewer regressions and last-minute failures
- Cleaner, more maintainable codebase
- Faster feature delivery and improved product stability
- Stronger collaboration between engineering and BCubex
Most importantly, VitalVaults gained clarity on what was actually holding the product back.
The issue was never just DevOps—it was engineering maturity.
A Long-Term Partnership
bCubex operates on a simple philosophy: We succeed when our clients succeed.
VitalVaults is a growing startup, and we treat the relationship as a partnership—not a transaction. By focusing on root-cause engineering improvements instead of selling unnecessary DevOps hours, we ensured their product—and business—moved forward.
Conclusion
For modern AWS-powered startups, issues appearing as DevOps failures often trace back to foundational engineering gaps. BCubex’s discovery-first approach ensures that clients receive the right solution, not just the expected one.
VitalVaults now has:
- A stable development environment
- Faster build cycles
- Improved engineering processes
- Stronger product trajectory
And BCubex continues to support them as they scale.
