Planixs Talent

I was brought in as a consultant to guide Planixs through architecting and developing an isomorphically rendered React app for Accenture. The brief was to take 2 huge and complex Excel spreadsheets and distil the workflow down into a usable app.

I helped guide Planixs down a SPA route using JSON-API as the api standard and played an active role in promoting agile development. To keep up agile and lean we build and maintained tooling around API documentation in swagger, api mocks and React Storybook (for regular client demos).

Although not TDD, we focused heavily on unit tests and build out 80% coverage on our Front End. I also build out a Selenium framework using webdriver for the test team.

The target audience was a group of highly skilled Accenture employees, who’s responsibility it is to maintain and track the movements of their 300,000 employees. Below are some of the artifacts that came out of this process:

Development Methodology

I implemented a development methodology that focused on incorporating rapid feedback from the client. We focused on being lean, using sketches and whiteboards to model interactions before diving into React. I believe in getting into code as soon as possible and economising on the visual design stage. Allow the design to evolve iteratively with the development. At the end of the day HTML/CSS and JS is the only artefact a user sees.

I also composed a set of interview questions and regularly sat down with end users discussing their needs and profile to understand how we can best surface features for them.

Another key tool in the UX workflow was to see how users interact with the current tools (ethnography).

Example Archetype

I developed archetypes to help the team frame conversations and UX decisions around user types.

UML :o

To compliment the UX work I also developed a very slim set of UML diagrams to fleshout the unknowns and strike discussions within the dev team. I think I even managed to convince some UML skeptics that it can be useful in small well targeted doses.

System screenshots

Aaaannnndddd finanally some screen shots of the completed system: