From one platform to three independent products

At Israel Electric Corporation, thousands of employees relied on a central platform for routine operations, emergency response, and large-scale drills. Over time, it also became the administration hub for two field products. Three groups with different responsibilities were now working through the same navigation, even though they needed different tools to do their jobs.

We held 6 in-depth interviews with managers holding permissions across fault management, field operations, and small repairs. We also observed tasks and reviewed system analytics. In the workflows we studied, users spent an average of more than 30 seconds navigating to a task. Field technicians sometimes opened the wrong module, and users with broader permissions had more sections to sort through.

The permissions model controlled which menu items people could see. The menu itself still mixed three kinds of work, making it difficult to tell where one product ended and another began.

The client wanted employees to sign in once and then choose a system from a shared portal. Only products they had permission to use would appear. This gave the organization one familiar place to send everyone.

I built two prototypes and walked the client through the same tasks as two types of users. One had access to a single product. The other worked across all three. Seeing both journeys made it easy to compare the steps each person would take and when they would know they were in the right system.

I used a separate architecture comparison to show what each permissions model would mean for administrators. Even with dedicated product entry points, the field apps could still depend on Core operations for access management. Full separation would give each product its own place to manage users, roles, and permissions. After seeing both the user journeys and the administration models, the client chose full separation.

The core platform was split into three independent products, allowing each to be updated and released without depending on the monolith’s release cycle.

I worked with the architect, developers, and QA to carry the decision through to launch. I specified product-specific navigation and a consistent header structure, then used color, labels, and visual cues to make each environment recognizable at a glance. In Core operations, distinct headers also helped users tell live operations from drills.

Each product manages its own users, roles, and access rules through a Management button that requires its own permission.

The three products are live and in use. The client reported that employees could reach the right system more easily, and that people with access to all three no longer had to sort through a crowded shared menu. The client also reported time savings and fewer internal disputes over who should have access to which system.