Abt Associates needed to transition the development of TB STARR (a USAID-funded project) to a local software development agency. With development work already in progress, it was important to find an agency that not only has the skills to take over the project but also possess the capabilities to evolve the app to meet the project’s goals. 

We worked closely with the initial development agency – Every1Mobile, in order to understand what they had built so far. Based on our understanding we sat with the team from Abt Associates to capture what their goals for the project were. This is what we call the “Imagine” phase. We also held numerous workshops with existing users and potential users.

When we had enough information we studied the existing architecture and redesigned it in such a way to accommodate the new project goals. We decided to go for a loosely coupled backend architecture. These are some of the typical things we do in the “Design” phase.

Then we set out to work. Implementing new features in the Android app and refactoring the existing codebase where necessary. All this was done while testing internally and sending out user acceptance tests, and carrying out regular app deployments. We redesigned and built a new data portal aimed at enabling management to make informed decisions based on real-time data. A new iOS app was designed and built from scratch. This is the “Create” phase.

One of the major things we did was transition the whole platform from one cloud service to another and we choose AWS as the new cloud hosting service.

We held weekly check-up meetings to brief the team on our progress and share plans for upcoming work.