This application is designed to ease early-stage project planning, allowing users to structure and clarify project logic in a user-friendly way, aided by intuitive prompts and interactive tools.
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Elevator Pitch Page:
Provides four prompts that help users craft a clear and concise articulation of their programs' core activities, the challenge being addressed and intended outcomes. As users type, the full pitch paragraph is dynamically previewed in real-time. -
Line-of-Sight Page:
Helps users break down their projects into critical components, including activities, outputs, usages, and outcomes/impacts. Users have the option to drag and drop pre-filled suggestive 'answers' or type their own for each of the component fields. Each project can have many lines-of-sight on the same page. -
Home Page:
Allows for the display and management of users' projects. Projects are added or deleted from this page.
This tool was developed for Consulting & Implementation Services (CIS), a mid-tier management consulting firm that regularly assists clients with grant applications and other complex project needs. As the sole developer, I worked closely with CIS to ensure the tool met their specific requirements.
CIS needed a project planning tool that was intuitive, uncluttered and highly customised, addressing gaps they found in pre-existing solutions. Inspired by the University of Technology Sydney’s toolbox, I built this app to meet CIS's exact needs, featuring user authentication, project data persistence, and the ability to export completed plans to PDF.
This project uses a modern and scalable tech stack. Node.js powers the backend, while React ensures a responsive, dynamic frontend. PostgreSQL was selected for reliable data management, and AWS (EC2 and RDS) was implemented to provide a secure, cost-efficient hosting solution. JWTs are used to safeguard user authentication, session storage is used to persist user authentication. Nodemailer and JWTs are used for password resetting. Redux ensures efficient state management across components.
Building this project involved navigating technical challenges, which helped me grow as a developer taking on my first commercial project:
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Data Hosting Migration and Deployment (AWS): I had initially set up the database on Fly.io for development, but due to cost considerations and scalability needs, I migrated it to AWS. Having no prior experience with AWS, the transition presented a steep learning curve, especially in configuring and optimising services like EC2 and RDS, as well as ensuring the security of data. This enhanced my understanding of cloud infrastructure, and I gained valuable experience in setting up secure, scalable, and cost-efficient data hosting solutions.
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The Importance of CI/CD for Efficient Post-Production Changes: One of the biggest lessons I learned during this project was the importance of having CI/CD pipelines in place. Initially, I didn't foresee the need for such processes and ended up having to make changes directly on the remote EC2 instance after the app had gone live. This approach was tedious, time-consuming, and risky because it left room for manual errors and made testing and deploying changes much more difficult than needed. I now realise that implementing a tool like GitHub Actions during the development phase would have made post-deployment changes far easier to manage.
