Challenge

Client came to us with an idea to create a system, similar to Uber, but for in-city commercial cargo transportations. This project determined four components – service itself, drivers, on-line sellers and buyers. Service task was stated as following: to provide online stores with an alternative to existing delivery service and owned auto-parks, thus decreasing price and increasing transparency and quality of service.

Speaking about advantages of such service, sellers would get an opportunity to deliver their product on the same day, drivers would get a fee, users would receive low-priced delivery on the same day, while service would make money on commissions.

It sounded simple and clear to us, but there was one concern: limited amount of drivers. In order to increase efficiency with small amount of drivers during the initial step, we made a decision about possible group cargos. We were required to build iOS/Android and web apps for both service administrators, clients and sellers and mobile apps for drivers.

It was interesting that in the client’s country the address system didn’t work properly, and the shipping address or receipt frequently had no address at all. This issue had to be fixed as well.

It was also necessary to provide possibility of quick response to abnormal conditions (stolen goods, damage in transit, and return of goods by client).

The key requirements were clear; therefore, details required serious consideration and depended on the client’s choice of business model.

Our Solution

Before starting our work, we conducted technical analysis with the following results: • Glossary • Entity relationships diagram • State diagram

During our next step we developed the interfaces for all the apps: operator apps, store apps, driver mobile apps. According to our estimation, it allowed us to correspond to the declared estimation of project working hours.

We’ve selected React/Redux as a main component for building both web and mobile parts. Project’s distinctive feature was significant re-use of logic between different apps (web and mobile parts), which allowed to decrease development time up to 20%-30%.

All business logic both on the server side and on client’s side had test coverage that provided stability while making changes and refactoring.

In order to control the development process, each week our client received a presentation with video record of all changes that happened to website during this week. What was special about this project was the need to record 5 videos (3 for web-parts, 1 for iOS and 1 for Android).

And to stay constantly updated we were holding daily meetings with the team. During each meeting, we received new information that allowed us to quickly react to challenges and rapidly adjust our plans to them.