Budgeting MVP Application for NGOs

Compute Cycles works with NGOs and development agencies like the United Nations. The challenge, and the primary goal of our cooperation, was to build an MVP application from scratch. The software was supposed to be used by governmental institutions to track budgets and value generated by investing in improvement of living conditions or other positive actions in different regions of the world, particularly in Africa. We had to keep in mind that our end users had different knowledge of the system, from Program Managers who knew which indicators were most important, to people in the field somewhere in Africa (Implementation Managers) who were focused on implementing specific activities, for example drilling new wells. Based on various business factors, we had to include the following functionalities:

▸ To define country-specific programs.

▸ To monitor and visualize budgets and control expenses in programs, by setting targets, results per countries/provinces in defined periods, and also in 2D and 3D graphs.

▸ To monitor and visualize the progress of specific actions.

▸ To maintain various roles in an MVP application for limiting access to data and the application’s features according to the user’s rights – Implementing Partners, Regional and Program Managers, System Administrators.

▸ To integrate the payment processes with PayPal procedures.

▸ To establish and manage the process of CI/CD on a dedicated distributed cloud platform.

Scalac supported ComputeCycles at the following stages:

Stage 1 – Analysis (foundation for development):

▸ Gathering business requirements and translating them into particular Epics and User Stories to build the desired Product Backlog.

▸ Preparing wireframes to speed up the process of designing crucial elements of GUI.

Stage 2 – Development:

▸ Scalac applied an Agile approach to managing the process of building the increments of the MVP application. We included all of the existing Agile principles and introduced additional ones to facilitate the Sprint Review process.

▸ Building an MVP application from scratch, our team used the following technologies:

• Meteor • Node.js • React • D3.js • Deck.gl • MongoDB • OLAP Cubes (Data Cubes)

▸The stack choice was driven by a scalable solution and provided overall flexibility to the system development.

▸ The solution was based on dashboards and reports to ensure the best visualizations of the ongoing processes.

Stage 3 – CI/CD process:

▸ Scalac designed and implemented a complex solution for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment processes. This guaranteed a more stable and better product.

▸ Tech stack involved in the solution: • GitHub • Jenkins • Docker Hub • Ansible • DigitalOcean

The released application is the perfect answer to all of the business needs that were defined in the specifications. The app not only simplifies management, but also allows control of the budget, which is crucial in every money to value system. Finally, by identifying the needs and distributing funds accordingly, the application meets its ultimate goal – to make all of the life-improving actions undertaken by the organization happen.