Two months ago, we were honored to be considered (along with
Development Seed), as one of the two finalists to take on a series of sprints for the development of the new Amnesty International site. In late May, we were informed that we had been
awarded the engagement. Two weeks ago in London, Ken Jordan,
Jacob Singh, and I met with the Amnesty team for a 2 day engagement kick-off. We are on track to present the results of our first sprint in early July.
For the engagements, we are bringing to play an experienced team that moves quickly from ideas to implementation. We have adopted an
agile process very close to
scrum for this engagement. In short, this methodology emphasize teamwork and rapid iteration. Managers, clients, and developers are all part of a team dedicated to delivering quality software. We keep our designs simple and clean. We get feedback by testing the software starting on day one. We are using a series of 'stories' to give us a clear picture of the intended outcome for various users of the new system.
It's been almost two years since the first
CivicActions retreat in Amsterdam, where we envisioned a
better world in 2012. Along with a sustainable environment, world peace, heathcare and education for all, -- we envisioned a world where justice prevailed. At the time, we weren't mature enough to take on a project of this magnitude - Amnesty was seeking a firm that could provide 3-5 full-time developers for 6 months who knew
Drupal and
CiviCRM. At that time, it would have required more than all of our engineering resources, and we just didn't feel it was appropriate to take on large engagements. Since then, we have grown up a bit - we now have 27 folks on our team and can finally take engagements of this magnitude and provide a high level of service.
While we have been growing, the world around us has also matured. Organizations like Amnesty are beginning to understand (and appreciate) iterative development and network-centric advocacy. Technology is also maturing rapidly, with environments like Drupal and CiviCRM gaining
momentum and
recognition. Professional services firms that provide
free software solutions are growing up. Today,
we have multiple vendors who are all very capable of providing strategy, information design, visual design, development, and management. We are living into this vision of a better world.
And, we couldn't be more excited to use our expertise to, as the Amnesty t-shirts say: Protect the Human.
