Digitising clothes orders in five weeks

About the project

Our client is a high-profile, non-profit global organisation that wishes to remain anonymous. For this project, they asked for help to digitise the process to order team wear for their events.

The solution had to be fully responsive and needed two main components:

• Back-end development for product catalogue configuration, driving the invitation process and order tracking
• Front-end development for taking body measurements and ordering team wear for events.

The purpose was to make the order and body measurement process easier and quicker, compared to the manual order processing.

The challenge

The main project challenge was the short deadline. Most projects have some flexibility in terms of deadlines, but this was not the case this time. The date of the first production release was as fixed as the date of the organisation’s global event.

The system had to be operational eight weeks before the actual event, to allow enough time for the clothes to be manufactured and delivered to the event venue. As the project start was delayed, the team was left with the challenge to deliver a working version of the product in just five weeks.

Our approach

The time constraints explained above required both rapid development and a flexible approach. The team used a set of Agile practices to deliver the project. The development used weekly iterations and every week ended with a review meeting that always included one or more actual users. With only five weeks to deliver the MVP to production, it was also vital to collaborate closely and communicate regularly with the customer.

The back-end part was based on the Virto Commerce solution – a flexible .NET based e-commerce product. After some customisation, it became the perfect tool for event administrators responsible for the ordering process.

The front-end part of the system was intended for event participants. Designed to be responsive (used for desktop as well as for mobile devices), it guided the user through the measurement process, presented the different team wear options and allowed the user to make the actual order.

Result

The implementation of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) started in August. Five weeks later, a responsive solution had been designed and integrated with the client’s internal ecosystem.

The main business benefit was related to saving time. Previously, staff had to run the whole process manually. As a single system was used for everything (e.g. Virto Commerce allowed the user to configure team wear but also to invite participants), team wear delivery became faster and more reliable.

The app was also a way for our client to show that they are able to create a modern and user-friendly digital application within a short time scale.