The recently completed “Silverlight removal” for the protocols modules was a large project that we began in January of 2018. To ensure that we got off to a good start and achieved high velocity throughout the project, we engaged consultants from Modularis to augment our own in-house developers. This was also to ensure that we utilized an appropriate architecture.
This group of experts had experience working with some of our sibling companies within Volaris and brought their own architecture framework to speed up the initial phases of the project.
The Risk
Still, re-architecting a product is a risky project. The possibilities of cost and time overruns are well known in the software world. To help us further manage this risk, we set the team a simple goal–make it look and behave just like the old version! We did not want to change the interface design, workflow, or business rules. This was partly because the system is so well liked by our customers, but also to avoid the added complexity and risk of additional changes to the project.
We broke this rule only once! Based on customer feedback, the one part of the protocols module’s interface design that sometimes caused usability issues was that the display of review comments for protocol answers were lengthy. In some cases, this could lead the reviewer to have to scroll back and forth between the answer and the comment they were writing.
The New Feature
In the new version, review comments are in a re-sizable sidebar that interacts with the main form window. We think this will help both reviewers and PI who then must respond to comments on these lengthy text answers.
In the weeks ahead, will host an informational webinar for our customers to show the new version, including this new interface design feature. Everything else will look similar to the old version! We hope to see you there.
