(FEG)’s OpenApply product needed to accommodate increasing demand, but the code contained a multitude of bugs. Internally, FEG wasn’t equipped to address the growing issue or to meet customer demands for a better UI experience. We were hired to stop regressions, build a foundation, scale feature development for faster growth, and build out FEG’s internal team. Seamlessly Connecting Schools with Prospects If you’ve ever gone through a school admissions process, you know just how arduous it can be. You have to deal with paperwork, essays, tests, interviews, and likely much more. It can be overwhelming – and that’s not even considering the anxiety of waiting to find out if you got in. With all of that in mind, FEG created OpenApply, an online platform to help simplify the admissions and enrollment processes for applicants around the world. OpenApply supports international schools by providing a paperless, integrated, and seamless online system that helps ease the stress of everyone involved. MLS merge and move to own solution Our Work to Build the Product & Team Growth came relatively quickly after OpenApply’s initial launch, and the founder was soon inundated with issues related to product expansion, emerging bugs within the code, and a user interface that had quickly become outdated. We were hired to debug the product, develop an entirely new user interface, create additional features, and streamline their internal project management processes. Because of our success, they also asked us to build their internal development department in Ukraine. MVP based on Angular moved to Rails How Did We Do It? To begin, we had to tackle the unstable code containing hundreds of bugs. We ensured quality work by treating it as if we were constructing a complex tower, knowing that each line of code was like a brick – and each brick was crucial to the overall stability of the final product. In the end, with better efficiency and a more user-friendly product, FEG experienced an immediate increase in existing customer satisfaction and retention, as well as new customer growth leading to profits directly tied to our work. MVP based on Angular moved to Rails New User Interface + Internal Features We rewrote and redesigned the entire user interface, contending with a very tight timeline, and we upgraded the existing code within Ruby on Rails, including all dependencies that were previously unsupported and thus creating security risks for the product. Additionally, we created a backend solution enabling new features and/or new changes to go live within two days (improved from the existing two-week period, which significantly reduced operational costs for the client). MLS merge and move to own solution Streamlined Project Management Processes OpenApply was bogged down with a variety of technical bugs and no real process to efficiently address them. We added performance analytics so the FEG team can assess interface performance and prevent regressions. We also established project management processes that eliminated role-related confusion and allowed managers and developers to work within realistic time- and workload-frameworks. One of these processes involved optimizing the automated customer workflow, which resulted in a direct boost in customer satisfaction, while another reduced project setup time for new employees from two weeks to just 20 minutes. Release mobile version based on Rails with Built OpenApply’s Internal Development Team After successfully restructuring OpenApply’s development processes, FEG hired us to build out its internal development team for the product. As a result, the team doubled in 3 months (from 10 to 20 developers), and the level of Bus Factor was raised from 1 person to 5. Additionally, we reduced the time required to onboard new employees and initiated a plan to make a softer barrier of entry so that developers could not only get hired but also add safe and tested code very quickly. This helped reduce the client’s training, development, and support costs without sacrificing quality.