Unboxed Consulting builds innovative learning platform for young people

Sept. 17, 2012 - PRLog -- Unboxed Consulting completed the build of the versatile and innovative learning platform, delivering in 7 weeks what had previously taken a year to fail.

Project “Phoenix” built to support 5,000 schools and 100,000 student teams by 2013-14. Users can access website through any modern desktop or mobile browser. Student teams upload coursework “artifacts” for marking. The system links stakeholders together to maximise learning opportunities.

Website enables educators to run CDI Apps for Good programme
Apps for Good is designed to inspire passion for technology and social enterprise, promoting soft skills through teamwork-based problem-solving. The platform brings together all the parties in the education process, including course developers, students, teachers, external experts, account managers, corporate volunteering managers and systems administrators. Visitors apply for their appropriate role and completed projects can be showcased on the internet to peers, parents and the business community.

Unboxed Consulting’s Agile approach delivered to tight budgets and deadlines
After the first attempt had failed to deliver a working product after a year, Apps for Good came to Unboxed with a brief that had to succeed second time around. In a series of 7 one-week sprints, Unboxed worked closely on “Phoenix” with CDI Europe, quickly producing working iterations of the software and culminating in a result that met all their requirements – in a fraction of the original timescale. Towards the end the client’s own developer worked with the team, to ensure knowledge transfer.

Apps for Good site launched on time, hugely popular
Piloted with small groups in 2010, the Apps for Good programme was rolled out in over 40 schools across the UK in September 2011. The new website was ready for launch in September 2012, by which time the initiative had reached partner capacity for 2012-13 with a full waiting list. The site was designed to support a tenfold increase in capacity for 2013-14: up to 1.5 million coursework artifacts.

The Apps for Good project is funded by the Nominet Trust and Nesta's Innovation in Giving fund.

"We are so pleased. The platform sits at the heart of our future strategy for growth and thanks to the precise and fast work of Unboxed we are now back on track to achieve this. Working with a team that really excels in agile has been amazing."
Iris Lapinski, CEO, CDI Apps for Good

Useful links:

Visit the Apps For Good site
http://network.appsforgood.org/

Visit Unboxed Consulting’s website
http://www.unboxedconsulting.com

Ruby on Rails training course from Unboxed Consulting, London
http://www.unboxedconsulting.com/courses/ruby-on-rails-tr...

Agile training course from Unboxed Consulting, London
http://www.unboxedconsulting.com/courses/introduction-to-agile

About Unboxed Consulting

Unboxed Consulting turns exciting and complex digital ideas into reality, developing web applications and digital solutions using agile methodology.

Delivered by agile veterans, the Unboxed Way is specifically designed to start delivering business benefits immediately. And it’s so well respected, Unboxed Consulting teaches other companies how to use it to leverage agile.

Unboxed Consulting works with a range of organisations from innovative media-techs companies to complex corporates and the public sector