Event Management Software Development Team Extension
Specialists from Mbicycle have implemented features to significantly enhance the clients’ multifunctional community and event management platform through development team augmentation.
Client & Context
In this project, our team worked with the client’s team to enrich their local multifunctional platform for community and event management with a set of features. The client was looking for full-stack developers for their distributed teams to fully integrate event management software in the Israel region and scale it further.
The client decided to cooperate precisely with the Mbicycle company due to the following solid grounds:
- We could offer specialists with the required skills and expertise: full-stack developers with PHP / HTML + CSS + JS / Drupal (CMS) experience.
- The client requested a reference from another Israeli-based client we’d previously collaborated, and he described his experience with our company in a very positive way.
After the approval of our company, we provided the client with several suitable, in our opinion, candidates. The client held an interview and approved the one who passed the interview successfully.
Our main task was to improve the already existing functionality of the client’s platform and implement several new features. Since the client’s event management platform was already launched on the market and performed as a stable business solution, our team was required to enter the project as soon as possible.
Challenges & Requirements
Initially, the project lacked documentation, and the delivery team mainly included a product owner and a designer. Dedicated project teams worked remotely and mostly didn’t overlap.
The main challenge for our team focused on creating tagging algorithms for the end-user groups, communities, and events. To implement such a large-scale task and speed up the process, we engaged another full-stack developer from Mbicycle with solid knowledge of the Yii PHP framework.
In addition to the main task, the client set a few more challenges for our team, as follows:
- Assure fast onboarding of our specialists into the primary project team.
- Investigate the project architecture and connections between objects quickly.
- Extend the functionality of the client’s current community management software for nonprofits.
- Research and Integrate a third-party service from Google Maps.
- Make the solution improvement and Implement all designated features as soon as possible.
- Refactor the code of existing functionality and provide bug fixing.
Process
Initially, several small teams worked on this project. Only two full-stack developers carried out the technical side of implementing services and features. The event management software development team also included a Tech lead, Lead designer, and DevOps from the client side. The company CEO and Lead designer often managed the development process as Product Owners.
We chose Waterfall as the development methodology, as the client required frequent implementation of new features. At the same time, a horizontal management structure is applied in the client’s company as well. To manage the development process and communicate with the client effectively, we used several specific tools, such as Figma for creating mockups and prototypes, Trello for task management, Slack for daily meetings, and the GitHub version control system.
After a month of work on this event management platform, we provided the client with another full-stack developer from Mbicycle. He started with the refactoring and bug fixing of the existing functionality. After that, he joined the refinement of the group functionality. For example, he created a specific page to edit the group subscription form. Our full-stack developer also completed group customization tasks, including adding fields, editing buttons, and creating and configuring macros for templates.
Solution
In this project, the client highlighted two main functionalities for users — Communities and Events. Communities can create detached events to gather participants for various activities. Communities can be public — with unrestricted access for each user, and private — available only by invitation of community members.
Users can set several parameters for each event, including their date, start and end time, as well as set the frequency – one-time or recurring events. Each community has administrators who can edit the properties of the community and each event. Also, administrators can set participation in paid events, so the event management platform provides in-app payment functionality.
Here is the list of additional features the Mbicycle developers implemented into the client’s solution:
- Set tagging between events, users, and communities.
- Added and adjusted the hierarchy for events.
- Extended page with a bunch of inputs and parameters for creating events.
- Added icons for events on the integrated API from Google Maps. Plus, community managers could create specific icons for different events by adding .svg images.
- Build handy filtering by events and participants, etc.
Technologies & Tools
Frontend
JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, CSS
Backend
PHP
Database
MySQL
Third-party library APIs
Yii
Results
The client is delighted with the functionality delivered by the Mbicycle experts and continues to enhance their event management solution involving specialists from our company. In the next phase, we will add API v2 integration using such programming tools as Node.js and MongoDB.
At the moment, all the goals initially set by the client have been successfully fulfilled by our specialists, and we continue maintenance and modernize this event management platform.
