Huge Project

Since Tuesday, I've been working on a very large React Native project that has been much anticipated. When I first started back on March 9th, my cohort was already working on this project and had been for some time. Unfortunately, he had been given quite a few other tasks that always seemed to take precedence, and he never got much time to actually make any progress on this project. Now, finally, we have wrapped up the current version of the payments application, and while it is far from complete, we are in a position to move forward with this React Native project. This project is sort of a portal for the sales representatives to be able to view their pertinent sales information. Right now, there is a system in place for them already, but it's written strictly with .Net, and the front end really isn't meant to see the light of day. 20 years ago, I suppose the current site would be seen as cutting edge, but now it's embarrassing, not to mention incredibly slow. We have worked out the entire wireframe, or nearly the entire thing, on Framer and it is going to look really good. I'm sure the representatives have grown accustomed to the old way of doing things, and change is always hard to accept. I expect there will be some pushback at first. But, once they get used to it, they're going to love it.

Not all of the representatives have iPads, but the goal of the company is for all of them to eventually have them. We have a stock of about 50 of them sitting in waiting to be shipped out to any representatives that want to purchase them. When they get the iPad, it will be equipped with all of the tools they need to successfully go about their business. The company's vision of the future for these representatives is of them having their iPads with them as a business companion at all times. So, they set off for the day to conduct their sales calls with their iPad in tout, checking it before, during and after meetings to get the information they need. They will have access to supplemental sales material on these iPads to help in the sale, they can connect with the customer through GoToMeeting, and they can keep track of all of their leads, appointments, and sales through the application. The layout is really professional and pleasing to look at, and compared to the old .Net code, it's going to be a breath of fresh air. From the company's perspective, this technology says a lot about the company itself. If your tools look like they are 20 years old, then it's difficult for the representatives to have any confidence in the product. The representative needs to believe they are working for a company that is thriving and that they are on the cutting edge in every facet.

They are really pushing hard for this application. Before I got started on it, they would ask my cohort in every meeting when he thought it would be done. Unfortunately for him, at that time he had no chance of getting it done on any time frame. Now that we're both working on it, we should start making some serious progress. However, the functionality of this application is massive. It's going to interact with the database in so many different ways and serve so many purposes; while it doesn't seem like that big of an application with just about 4 different screens, the scope of this thing is ridiculous. We had a meeting with the executives to talk over the wireframe and what they think should be in the alpha version of the application. This gave me a really good opportunity to understand the application a little better, but once I did, I realized how important it was that we do a bang-up job on it. This is a tool that will be integral to the daily lives of all the representatives, and as we progress, it's going to become a monstrosity. This basically replaces a system like Salesforce or the like, but it's just 2 of us creating it. It's going to be a lot of fun to develop, but I fear their timeframe of finishing it in a month is a fairy tale. We are both working incredibly hard to make as much progress as we can, but there's just so much to do. It's going to be a hard push to hit their soft deadline of June 1st, but we'll try our best. I would bet we could finish it by the end of June if we don't get sidetracked by any other projects. Regardless, I really enjoy working on it, and I'm learning a lot along the way.

Until tomorrow!