Key ingredients to a successful project

There is no better motivation than working on a project that has a relatable, compelling purpose and with a client that is so engaged and passionate about their cause.

This was our experience working with Danny Hui from sameview. In short sameview is an app to help the families of kids with disabilities manage and communicate with the plethora of medical professionals that are involved in their care.

Danny had been invited into the Remarkable Tech Accelerator program which provided support and funding and we were tasked with enhancing his app. The main objective of the project was to improve the app based on feedback from users and to have a new version ready for sameview to expand and support more families across Australia and New Zealand.

Cutting to the chase, the project has been a huge success, albeit still in its infancy, and as a company we have all enjoyed being part of the sameview journey.

What are the ingredients for success?

As a business owner I wanted to get a better handle on the critical ingredients that allowed us to go from concept to execution with some big constraints around time and money!

1. We started by understanding the vision
   Whilst everyone knew, including Danny that we were never going to be able to get everything done in the initial project, it was really important that we understood Danny’s big picture vision, how everything fitted together and what was important to the users. Knowing and understanding this at the beginning helped us plan for future iterations and features as we went about the here and now development. We have already seen the benefit of this as some features initially down for future phases were brought forward with little-to-no fuss.
2. Prototyping
   We keep banging on about the importance of this, but sometimes it can feel hard to invest so much of your time and budget in the upfront design of the system. But it pays off! By the time the first line of code is written the interactions, workflows, features and functions have already been hashed out with the client, in detail. Modifications to the prototypes can be done easy-peasy and at significantly less cost than if done in production. More and more we are leaning towards a 50% allowance of a project budget in the upfront design and prototyping.
   
3. Commitment from the team
   We are fortunate to have a pretty awesome team that frequently go above and beyond. The sameview project really got them excited and Danny’s passion to help kids and their families infected us all. Off their own bat, several of our team invested a decent chunk of their own time to get Danny a bit more bang for his buck.
   
4. Good tools
   Making good technical choices is another critical part of the success on any project, but there were some definite big wins on the board for sameview. One of these was using Stripe for the payment gateway. It saved a truckload of time as so much comes right out of the box; recurring billing, payment reminders, invoice emails, receipts and management of expired cards. Much of this would historically have been custom built at significant cost.
   
5. An open-minded, adaptive and engaged client
   We know through experience that projects have the best chance of success when the client is fully engaged from start to finish. We might bring the technical chops, but it’s the client that has the vision and the understanding of where the priorities should lay. In this respect, Danny was the unicorn of clients. Open to different ideas, organised, available, engaged and better still, a decisive strong communicator. He was happy to change approach if there was a better way, but equally happy to let us know when he didn’t like something.

There’s a lot more to the success of sameview than just the bit we’re involved in. Like many entrepreneurs, Danny has been working his butt off for the past 2 years to get to this point. His motivation is Monty, his son who has a rare neurological condition. We were thrilled to be there (both in person and via the livestream of the event) at the Remarkable Tech Showcase to see Danny give his presentation and take out the coveted Peoples Choice Award.