Sounding Board 2.0

The story behind Sounding Board

When the client came to Zazmic Inc., he was looking for a reliable technology partner to build a leadership development platform that offers scalable, personalized coaching solutions for enterprises to grow the next generation of leaders. The platform provides professional coaches in 29 countries speaking 14 languages in total. Every coach is a top-notch specialist in a particular sphere, which lets them delve into each case and bring the maximum results.

After negotiating with Sounding Board, we defined the project’s vision, goals and core challenges, which were introduced to our top developers and their solutions.

Business Challenges

Our primary challenge was to build the initial web application for leadership coaching and ensure seamless work of the platform. We were also responsible for extending the app safely by building microservices around monolith API to support various coaching programs. In a nutshell, the client needed to have a stable application, improve core features, and add new functionality. Among other challenges we had to cover were:

• Speeding up the web app performance;
• Support application code base within adding new functionality;
• Support production stability;
• Technical support.

Solutions Delivered

First of all, we started extending the application by building microservices around monolith API to support coaching programs. We added:

• Email microservice;
• Messaging using Slack Bot microservice;
• Notifications microservice;
• Templates and Forms creations microservice.

Then, our developers migrated the fronted app from Angular to React for several reasons. React.JS has a simple API, lightweight components, and unidirectional data flow, which blends greatly with JavaScript. Further, we added new functionalities to the platform to make it even more convenient for the users. Our team added the following features:

• Notification service;
• Slack bot integration;
• Multiple roles implementation;
• Admin Panel for platform management;
• Fluid forms creation;
• Leadership Roadmap.

We used JavaScript as the primary programming language, React.JS for frontend, Node.JS for backend, GCP Kubernetes as a cloud service technology for main API and microservices, and Mongo as a database. This technology stack allows maintaining the proper web app performance and seamless scalability in the future.

Outcomes

From our side, all the work was done in time as it was estimated in the very beginning. As a result of our cooperation with Sounding Board, the project received several rounds of investments and considerably extended its customer base. The solutions we implemented made this platform an advanced and convenient business skills development platform for people worldwide. Moreover, collaborating with our client, we will launch the SaaS platform based on this web app in 2021.