Strategic Quadrant is an app designed exactly for product managers and product owners. These specialists always may offer a million ideas, however, it’s hard to gather them all into structured and, what’s more important, easily comprehensible unity.Strategic Quadrant software helps to create models, which provide a full understanding of the current project. What you need to leave, what has higher or lower priority. The application allows visualize the matrix of preferences and accept the proper features the customer would be satisfied with. Strategic Quadrant is a tool to transform a plan into strategy swiftly and genuinely.ChallengeIt’s fair to say that the basic functionality of Strategic Quadrant exploits Kanban methodology. Indeed, redoing the existing concept was the most fluent task among others. The real cornerstone that makes the app unique and outstanding was custom features. The original advantages of the project brought us the actual challenge to overcome.There are many solutions for teamwork organization, management, and analytics. Nevertheless, there was no proposition adapted exactly for the project managers. Surprisingly, since these specialists are responsible for product growth and decide what features to select and implement.Our task was to turn the idea of such a solution into the software. It should have been customized for the PM’s needs, especially for those who deal with tech activity. Our application should assist to make comprehensive decisions on how to develop the product and plan the whole workflow.SolutionWe chose React to keep the fundament of the project stable but flexible and capable of changeable UI elements ensuring visualization process. This library works with a declarative method, hence enables much fitting construction for the system with models. Our team has developed these elements, together with visualization mechanics, as an optimized alternative for the boards of cards. Such tailor-made patterns ensure the high level of freedom for the user, for instance, custom reporting and personalized assessment formula.Complementing React with Redux, we leveled-up the app’s inner constitution. Let’s look behind the curtains. Since the default intricacy of bindings between components causes obscurity, we got the clearing solution. Redux creates a separate store that clews up the app’s states to influence components directly. That helps to avoid chaos, structuring the complex system into straightforward integrity, so the app reacts faster and more reliable to the user’s inputs. That’s merely fitting for the stressful atmosphere around the project often including rush and harsh changes in the process.Since a PM and any other user should’ve driven the application with events (to schedule), we exploited NodeJS. This JavaScript runtime gave an opportunity to apply the language for both front-end and back-end with no additional concernings. Applying the API optimized for massive use (your team can be as big as you need!) and the loop to keep an eye on events constantly, NodeJS served as a firm brick in our coding.MongoDB clarified objects with classified documentation, so we fulfilled the tasks much more efficiently, and thus quicker.ResultThe mix of React, Redux, NodeJS, and MongoDB suits the architecture of the app seamlessly. The consistent coherence of the tools we used allowed us to build up an exquisite design and smooth back-end independently, but to consolidate them into the database flawlessly, avoiding complicated joints.That is to say, we spent almost two times less hours comparing to usual ~1200h schedule (according to Ruby Garage). Besides, just 3 professionals, instead of regular 6-member team, scored such record launching the Strategic Quadrant startup. So, we saved the client’s budget, implementing hype solution in shorter terms and with less resources.
