Talent Development Solution Audit, Refactor, and Design Overhaul

The product was developed by Odin Company, whose headquarters are in beautiful Nijmegen – the oldest town in the Netherlands. The idea behind ODC stems from an observation that people only use up to two-thirds of their talent, while 35% is a wasted opportunity. The platform aims to unleash this unused potential.

Organizations also use ODC. Coaches and consultants can get insight into the inner strengths of teams and individuals. Teamcasting is a part of the Odin platform that is used for leadership development. Based on a series of questions and data analysis, the app helps organizations identify people with the best talent, skill, and experience match for a particular assignment.

Netguru was responsible for auditing and refactoring the code, as well as redesigning the UX and UI of the Teamcasting module.

Scoping the product

Odin already provided value to customers but the app's UX and UI needed to be improved to gain traction among users.

The Teamcasting feature was so innovative that it was quite challenging to design a user interface that would be understandable for people seeing it for the first time.

Before reaching out to Netguru, Odin had worked with several teams to resolve the issues, but to no avail. As a result, the ODC platform consisted of 20 different apps deployed on external hosting. Each of them had a separate database and source code. Besides that, virtually every application was at a different deployment stage. Some had their last deployment a month before our project kick-off while some hadn't been updated for a year and a half.

The UI needed a design overhaul to make it possible for Odin to add any new features to the ODC application.

How we did it

Once the team employed Netguru’s product development methodology, we were able to audit the code and review the current UX, taking into consideration a user-centered perspective and the central business goals. We prepared a ranking of recommendations and fixed the UX issues.

We started with a kick-off call and discussed the overall vision of the product to quickly identify the main objectives. ODC needed to:

• Stabilize the app before being able to move forward with new features
• Complete an in-depth design overhaul of the Teamcasting module
• Create a UX design with the right methodology, embracing the company’s future business goals with a focus on a user-centered perspective

The team began by introducing a data visualization module for Teamcasting.

The module is focused on discovering the best talent, skills, and experience mix for each team member. This would include predicting what kind of leader a person would make for a specific group of teammates.

Odin's Teamcasting is a five-step process that leads to forming a team with assigned tasks, as well as a PDF report with all the information about the newly formed group. The five steps are:

• Selecting tasks for the newly formed team
• Choosing roles and number of team members
• Preselecting candidates
• Assigning roles to candidates
• Creating a team and summary report

The users' core interaction with the app is running tests where they answer a series of questions and receive insights into their strengths.

I'm happy with Netguru and the way their project manager took over – she has a marketing background and it really feels she is collaborating and thinking inline with our customers.

Willem de Jager Founder at ODIN

As for designing the interface, we faced quite a challenge in designing the last step of the process. The reports had to have a similar composition, however, the data they were showing was very different.

We had to visualize each candidate's profile so that a manager could understand it quickly by scanning the report. We designed the interface where people and their strengths are visualized on a bubble chart. With additional filters, the user can isolate the most critical data.

Migrating to AWS infrastructure

At the same time, the Netguru team ran a full audit and report of the current app's quality and upgraded the old Ruby on Rails components and "gems."

We were able to replicate the existing architecture, where each app had a standard code but a separate database, and migrate it to Amazon Web Services. Continuous delivery and integration solutions ensure all the applications are at the same stage.

We also introduced several fixes and improvements:

• Multiple new user functions
• Easy data management

We also helped create consistency and provide clarity on how the data would look best visually.

Achieving the business goals

We delivered a future-proofed application ready for Odins’s next stage of business development.

The app stands out among other analytics solutions as it uses a beautiful and functional UX design, including clear data visualization with dashboards and reports that conclusively show the most crucial information.

Taking over a legacy system is always a big challenge.

Using our experience, combined with a technical and design approach, we were once again able to take on a large and complex legacy app developed by several companies, and:

• Fix and take full control over the ODC system
• Establish a sound product design process
• Migrate the app to a modern AWS environment
• Prepare the product for future development and scaling up

We successfully helped Odin unleash the full potential of their idea and repaired and stabilized the ODC platform.

Now it's ready for future development; making the client's business goals a reality.