• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Chintu Gudiya Foundation

Bringing Smiles – Transforming Society through Philanthropy, Technology and Volunteering

  • What We Do
    • Blog
  • Who We Fund
  • Projects
  • Grants
  • Financials
Project Tech4Dev

Glific – Setting up the right foundation

You are here: Home / Blog / Glific – Setting up the right foundation

twitter sharing button Share this on Facebook

Glific – Setting up the right foundation


June 15, 2020 by Vaibhav Rathore
Leave a Comment

The strength of a building is heavily influenced by its construction process. Planning and plotting of the site determine its fitment with the terrain and the society. Well, it’s the same for software too.

Like buildings, the foundation of software determines its longevity and adaptability in the world. To sustain, it should be able to cope up with the needs of the people it is built for. And for that, the base work needs to be solid.

A recap of the first month which had been the most crucial time for us. Everyone had a single target to work on: Starting It Right. Like any other project, Glific too had a lot of abstract areas and the team not knowing where to begin.

Here’s what we did to overcome these challenges.

Devising a process

We knew that each phase of the project has several unknowns. Be it requirements, research, design, tech, processes, tools, customers,… everywhere. Breaking down complex items into smaller pieces helped to set a direction and get the action items ready.

The first step was to set up a process to tackle these unknowns. A communication channel and regular team meetings were set up to keep everyone in sync and foresee anything going off track.

Conquering abstraction

After breaking down the areas of abstraction, the teams were ready to work on all the unknowns.

Content team targeted the following:

  1. Documenting requirements
    A clean and detailed requirement will guide the team on what to build.
  2. Release plan
    A comprehensive release plan setting up direction on where to begin.

The tech team worked on the following:

  1. New frameworks, languages, and tools
    Getting familiar with the building blocks to leverage the advanced concepts and utilizing various design principles.
  2. Setting up best practices
    Coding conventions and guidelines will be there with the project forever. Important to have them in place from the beginning.
  3. Planning the architecture
    Both the backend and frontend teams had been rigorously focusing on shaping a robust architecture.
  4. Integration with external services
    Most of the rework is needed here if things go haywire. Flexibility to switch third-party services was the target.

Aiming for the long run

While it’s always exciting to work on new areas and deep dive into specifics, it’s important to not lose focus on the larger picture. With the following items, the team ensured we’re there for the long run.

  1. Naming the project
    Everybody wants their software to stand out from the rest. That’s why we put so much effort into getting it right. Read the story behind naming Glific.
  2. Planning for community engagement
    An open-source project will thrive if people find it easy to contribute. Documentation and guidelines were priority from the beginning.
  3. Bringing in automation from the beginning
    Be it as simple as code formatting or complex as Continuous Integration, reducing manual work would definitely help.
  4. Understanding the market
    Weekly demos with the various non-profits helped to understand the accurate use cases.

It had been pretty much the first month of Glific. A lot was covered and still a lot is remaining. The team had been persistent and patient to cover this milestone through small steps.

As of now, most of the unknowns have been resolved. We’re progressing towards the first release with a strong foundation in place with the hope to contribute to a greater cause.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Category iconBlog Tag iconGlific,  Tech4Dev Project Updates

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Recommended reading

    Make It Work, Make It Right, Make It Better

    The title is a slightly modified version of KentBack’s original statement “make it work, make it right, make it fast”. This is a popular statement in the software world, which simply means to finish a complex problem break it down into three phases. I’ll try explaining this with a recent software problem I worked on in

    July 28, 2020 by Vaibhav Rathore

    WhatsApp Simulation within Glific

    Glific aims to empower non-profits to take their communications to the next level through seamless integration with WhatsApp. While the larger goal is to help various organizations solve severe social problems like illiteracy, climate changes, gender oppression, etc, we also need to make sure that the tool is getting utilized to its best. This means

    October 28, 2020 by Vaibhav Rathore

Tags

#Tech4Good 66A analysis analytics architecture ASHWINI Avni conference Coronavirus COVID-19 crm-platform dataexplorer design research Discounts freespeech FundImpact github badges Glific Google governance hasiru dala ideation internetfreedomfoundation Jan Swasthya Sahyog Koha Koha Challenges Koha configuration Koha features Lastmilesupport library medha-stpc openchs opencity opendata open source Partnerships sesta Social Change Software Team Collaboration tech Tech4Dev Project Updates whatsapp Work from Home Yenepoya

Categories

  • Blog
  • Essays
    • 2015
    • 2016
    • 2017
    • 2018
  • Focus Areas
    • Organisations Funded
      • Education
      • Environment
      • Health
      • India
      • Open Source Software
      • Other
      • Philanthropy
      • Sanitation
      • Sports
      • Women Empowerment
    • Tech Work
  • Projects
  • Pune 2018 Unconference
  • Tech4Dev Project Report
  • Uncategorized

Footer

  • What We Do
    • Blog
  • Who We Fund
  • Projects
  • Grants
  • Financials

Copyright © 2021 Chintu Gudiya Foundation. All rights reserved. | Photo Credits