Akeneo

At a glance

• Attribute inheritance between product families, shipped in the Summer 2025 release
• Full-stack React/TypeScript and PHP/Symfony on the product-hierarchy screens
• Incremental migration of the Backbone legacy to React
• Inheritance rules secured by PHPUnit unit and integration tests

PIM (Product Information Management) vendor based in Nantes: more than 900 enterprise customers, more than 400 employees, 8 offices in 6 countries. Helps companies centralize, enrich and distribute their product data across every sales channel.

Context

Full-stack PHP/Symfony and React developer in the “Complex Projects” team: 3 developers, 1 designer, \1

Starting point: flat product families, each defining its own attributes with no possible inheritance, which held Akeneo back against MDM solutions on complex catalogs; screens still in Backbone.

Goal: deliver a hierarchical model where child families inherit their parent family’s attributes, a key argument against MDM solutions, while migrating the affected screens to React.

Stack: front-end React/TypeScript with a Backbone legacy, back-end PHP/Symfony, CircleCI, Docker, PHPUnit tests.

Achievements

• Data model redesign: from a flat structure to a tree model with product attribute inheritance, positioning Akeneo against MDM competitors
• Full-stack development: React/TypeScript on the front and PHP/Symfony on the back for the new product-hierarchy management screens
• Legacy migration: incremental move of Backbone code to React on the affected screens
• Tests: unit and integration tests in PHPUnit to validate the inheritance rules of the new model
• Code review, agile ceremonies and close collaboration with the designer and product manager

Results

• Feature shipped in the Summer 2025 release as Attribute Inheritance: child families inherit the attributes and completeness requirements of their parent family
• Product-hierarchy management screens migrated from Backbone to React
• Inheritance rules covered by PHPUnit unit and integration tests