Challenges

• To facilitate the build for this platform, Code Switch settled on developing a fully responsive Next.js web application. The BestFit team already spent time developing their promotional marketing site and the integration of their user survey to kick the process off. This meant we had to determine the best way to seamlessly transition between the existing site and the new platform throughout the user's platform journey.
• As with most apps, Bestfit's second education student platform had several features planned. Through Bestfit's parallel marketing processes they were able to secure a client while we were in the middle of development. This put us in a position of having to provide a partially completed platform to the client on the planned delivery date.
  

Solutions

• Ideally we would love to have a single platform that handled all phases of the student journey, but given the planned deployment timeline that was not an immediate option. So currently we are maintaining two platforms (one for the marketing and student survey facilitation, and the other for student resource and education plan management). Combining both into a single platform is still on our roadmap, but being flexible in how apps are built is helpful and sometimes needed when working with client needs and expectations. Code Switch prides ourselves on being adaptable and flexible to a client's current situation and can find ways to work around most challenges.
• Fortunately, the concept of delivering a solution that may not initially contain all features is a commonplace theme in the development world. It often happens when we start with a minimum viable product (mvp) to kick start a project. A lot of times this is actually better as it allows us to gather real user feedback as input to what features we should prioritize the full development process on. We were able to use this concept with Bestfit which resulted in us being able to get the solution out to the client at the desired delivery date.