ABOUT THE CLIENT
Our client is a team of talented students called INKVI. They won a grant from Upshift, a global program of the United Nations Children's Fund, and with their support, created 2pnk, an educational website for developing knowledge in physics and mathematics. This platform was developed by interns from the NetLS .NET Full Stack Engineer Boot Camp and became their final practical assignment for the end of their programming course.
CHALLENGES
The real challenge for us was the budget and time constraints. In less than 2 months, NetLS specialists had to train the trainees in all processes and ensure that they knew and worked with all the necessary technologies in practice. We had to organize the boot camp approach to learning programming in a C# course so that their skill level was sufficient for the project. Given the constraints, the size of the project, and the client's uncertainty about the final vision of their platform, we approached the task as a Startup Development and adapted the interns in the same way.
HOW THE WORK WAS CARRIED OUT
SELECTION OF THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM
We took a responsible approach to the selection of future developers. The company's specialists carefully selected candidates for the Boot Camp.
Firstly, candidates were told about the terms of the internship and asked general questions to understand whether a particular person was a good fit for us.
After that, they were tested on their written English and math skills with the help of Olympiad-level tests. The final stage of the selection process was an interview with a .NET specialist and HR, where candidates had the opportunity to demonstrate their technical orientation and soft skills.
As a result, the top four out of almost a hundred people were selected to start a three-month free training program under the guidance of experienced professionals. The internship involved the trainees in short-term projects of medium complexity to improve their knowledge and skills for further work on long-term and more complex projects.
TRAINING ACCORDING TO AN INDIVIDUAL PROGRAM
Before starting the project development, the interns were given the necessary theoretical material with practical consolidation. They began to adapt to the culture of their customers, which always guarantees the best result by working in a single direction.
They studied the main aspects of OOP, including classes, inheritance, access modifiers, data types, interfaces, exceptions, working with collections, attributes, design patterns, working with databases in C#, and technologies such as RazorPage, ApiController, JS Ajax, .NET Framework, Bearer Authentication, CSS, HTML, SQL, and REACT. The interns also learned how to look for problematic code in a large project and how to solve possible problems.
An inspanidual approach to each trainee allowed us to see the strengths and weaknesses of each of them and improve their skills more effectively.
For the successful training and development process of the 2pnk website, NetLS provided all the necessary conditions and constant supervision from the outside:
- Mentor: Acted as a project manager; monitored the status of tasks; assigned tasks to interns; monitored the regularity of team meetings with clients
- Project manager: was involved in launching the project and keeping the timeframes on track
- Technical lead: a .Net System Architect was involved to control the quality of the code and explain the best practices of IT solutions development.
Also, before starting the project, a roadmap with step-by-step stages was drawn up to organize the work. This allows us to maintain discipline and efficiency.
The roadmap included:
- Discovery stage — to properly define the tasks and start the project, because a good start creates a good foundation. To do this, the project manager and mentor collected all possible client requirements for the project. This phase included the process of researching a design solution for the website after receiving new details from the designer.
- Development stage — high-quality development of the agreed functionality. The technical leader developed the project architecture based on the collected and structured requirements.
- Delivery stage — timely delivery and implementation of the undertaken obligations. At the end of the project, a release, and stable version of the website was released.
DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
The website development started on November 13 and was carried out on a volunteer basis.
The mentor distributed tasks for the interns to Back-end, Front-end, and testing, according to their capabilities. The server side of the site (Back-end) was written in C#, an object-oriented programming language, using AspNetCore MVC for web applications and Entity Framework for database access. Thanks to this, the internal part of the site has a flexible, modular implementation. The use of these tools is cheap, affordable, and of high quality, so the site works quickly and correctly. The public part of the site (Front-end), with which the user can interact, was created using React, a JavaScript library for creating user interfaces. It allows developers to create dynamic interfaces that are easily updated when data changes. The external part of the site is user-friendly, as users prefer a clear system that they can understand on their own.
The educational platform was designed in a way that users' data, and historical changes, as well as all tasks and their results, are stored in a database. The platform has implemented the Claims-based authorization principle, where the decision to authorize or deny access to any action is inherent in the administrator. It is the administrator who creates tasks and determines their timing and complexity. The administrator can edit user information and grant permission to use the platform.
The development team organized daily meetings to monitor progress and weekly demos of the platform to customers following the Agile methodology introduced by the project manager. The interns completed work on the platform on December 15, 2023, meaning that it took them only a month to complete the entire development process. The company also offers a month of warranty technical support.
RESULTS OF WORK
NetLS has applied the practices of team building, task formation, team layout, production process, delivery, and distribution of responsibilities both when working with Website development and Startup development, which are always used to solve the following business needs of clients:
- a professionally designed website or cross-browser application that can efficiently handle a large volume of traffic, requests, or users, and meets all modern standards and requirements;
- customized UI/UX design of your website or web application, which will provide an excellent visual impression and easy use for users;
- use of modern technologies and tools that will allow the client to get a ready-made website or web application using the latest technologies and solutions;
- support and maintenance of the website;
The 2pnk project fully meets the customer's requirements and fulfills all its functions. Students can solve problems, get points for correct answers, and compete with other students.
NetLS, in turn, has its own Junior-level developers who have been trained under a special curriculum and gained experience on a real project. These developers are involved in working on other projects for our clients under the Dedicated Development office setup cooperation model. This model involves the involvement of juniors with experienced specialists while maintaining an effective team layout with a minimized blend rate.
For the client, this model is good because it is one of the cheapest on the market. Due to the low-cost price of Juniors, the work of the entire team does not rise sharply, and this does not affect the quality or efficiency. Younger developers increase their competence and gain experience, and accordingly, they grow in value. That's why the development team has rotations, where Junior Developers without experience take the place of experienced Junior Developers to keep the price low for the client.
A Dedicated Development office setup is a rational solution for business if you need a qualified team for the best price. After all, learning all processes of developing web solutions in the .NET Boot Camp hardens specialists and allows them to get acquainted with the main stages of work on their own experience.
Taras Hasiuk, Co-Founder of INKVI Youth NGO, on cooperation with NetLS:
The overall work process was perfectly organized and well planned. For many of us, it was the first experience of working on a project of such a scale as a UN-supported project. The clear adherence to the processes by the IT company's training center allowed us to organize and work more easily to achieve the goal.In particular, the NetLS team was ready to quickly get in touch with us whenever we needed to communicate and resolve issues that arose during the work.Also, constant periodic meetings allowed us to see the development process at all times, which greatly simplified the process.Although there were certain limitations and short deadlines for completing the project, they managed to complete all the tasks on time. The whole team thanks NetLS for a great experience, we will continue to cooperate!
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