BAEKEN & Delta Onboarding Tool

Project description

Main research question:
How could an IT-solution streamline BAEKEN’s onboarding process and make it more reliable?

Context

This project is centred around the project management consultancy company BAEKEN. They help their customers to gain insight in time, quality, costs, risk, stakeholder and change-management. BAEKEN uses specific software for managing these projects, and is a redistributor of this software. Due to the broad scope of services BAEKEN offers, the onboarding process for new clients is extensive and complex. Thus, creating the need for a dedicated onboarding management tool, with a focus on optimising the onboarding business process.

Results

Last semester a basic web-application was produced, this application served as a solid proof of concept but would fall short in a production context. The work carried out this semester focused on bringing this proof of concept to a production worthy level. To achieve these goals the backend was refactored, the frontend underwent a major UI redesign and refactor, along with further investigation and research into the validity and plans for cloud hosting this tool.

The backend refactor was guided by expert feedback, knowledge gained from last semester’s tool, and new insight brought by our new team members. This refactor was validated within the team, and externally via expert feedback.

The new UI was designed through iterative user focused design, employing multiple user test and feedback sessions with BAEKEN employees, further expert feedback, and internal team knowledge. The results of this UI design were validated via further user testing sessions, internal reviews, and expert feedback.

Cloud hosting was researched using knowledge gained from hosting the previous semester’s tool, and BAEKEN’s current infrastructure needs to form a set of requirements. A full cloud environment design and cost analysis was produced, validated and iterated with expert feedback, and will serve to guide the shift from development to production.

In combination with a large set of minor incremental improvements, the tool has been practically rebuilt, optimising both function and form to the onboarding process.

About the project group

A continuation of the prior semester's project, we are dedicating another semester to improve the tool for production. Divided into two teams (Frontend & Backend), our members are:

• Iván Sándor - Semester 4, Delta Excellence Programme – Backend Development Lead, DevOps
• Joy van Rijn - Semester 4, Delta Excellence Programme – Backend Software Developer, Business Specialist
• Marcos Palacios Gimeno – Semester 4, Delta Excellence Programme – Project Lead, Infrastructure Engineer
• Margarita Fedulova – Semester 4, Delta Excellence Programme – Frontend Developer, UI/UX Designer
• Rens van Krijl – Semester 4, Delta Excellence Programme – Frontend Developer, UI/UX Designer, Database Architect
• Yasmin Abhrao Kfuri – Semester 6, Delta Excellence Programme – Frontend Developer, Business Specialist

The team worked using the Agile Scrum methodology, with 2 week sprints for a total of 8 sprints, utilizing a hybrid approach of on-site and off-site work and semi-fixed working days to best adapt with each member’s schedules.