The client
A pre-seed startup, building a new social network for a targeted audience.
The challenge
The MVP was being delivered by an offshore agency. Investor demo was due in a few weeks, but the agency deadlines were slipping and the founders were losing confidence.
The role
Initial 1-week audit of technical work done by the external agency showed a lack of quality and scalability in what had been delivered so far. The back-end was functional, if technically unsound, and the front-end was unusable and needed a ground-up rewrite.
I was asked to take on this short-deadline project to rebuild the MVP: a React Native app, to be released on Google/Apple app stores within 6 weeks. This was built with close consultation with the product leadership, using the existing PHP back-end with some modifications and fixes.
With the deadline hit, I reduced hours and we continued to build out functionality on a lower-cost schedule whilst I helped recruit a new agency to take over development.
Once a new agency was found, I worked part-time to monitor their work. I provided technical direction for the agency, reviewed code, and made sure the automated pipelines were in place to keep deployments clean and simple. This continued on a flexible contract basis for a number of months.