Week 6

Management Summary Checkbook

Management Summary – Redoing the Checkbook.io-Website This brief report provides a recapitulation of the project the three students have accomplished during their six-week campus experience in the United States. It will also show which methods and problem-solving techniques were used and how well they worked out.

In a first step the students had to contact their project provider to set up a meeting to discuss their project. Two of the students were traveling and have not been able to contact PJ Gupta, the CEO and Founder of Checkbook.io, via Skype. So, they decided to send him an e-mail. After sending e-mails back and forth, including CVs of each student, the project provider had an impression of the students and their skills.

In the kick-off meeting PJ Gupta welcomed the students and their professor at the Checkbook.io’s office and introduced some of the employees. In the conference room the students introduced themselves to the CEO once more, but this time with the background and current knowledge of each student. After that PJ Gupta told them everything there is to know about Checkbook.io. The meeting ended with the discussion about the project proposal. After discarding the initial proposal, a research task meant for MBA students, a couple of new project ideas were born. PJ Gupta told the students, that he will send them an e-mail with three potential projects. One week passed and the project group was not able to start working, because the project was not yet specified. During that time the students learned or repeated the basics of coding in HTML and CSS. Furthermore, they looked at Python, because PJ Gupta mentioned that they could update the business logic which is written in that specific programming language.

After a while the students were able to start redoing the website of Checkbook.io, including a redesign of the API-site and their homepage. PJ Gupta also wanted to add a check on the top of the homepage, where the customers easily can fill in their information and send a check to anyone without signing in. A big change in the project goals, compared to the proposal PJ Gupta has sent to the accompanying professor in advance for the international campus experience.

In the third week the students drew three sketches of the homepage, suggesting how the main elements should look like. They created an additional, more detailed sketch of the second segment

on the homepage, which shows the advantages of using Checkbook.io’s services in detail. The inspiration for that design came from other companies that work in the financial technology sector.

After reviewing it with PJ Gupta and modifying the design several times, they began to create wireframes with Balsamiq and mock-ups using Photoshop. Simultaneously they started coding the fillable check for the homepage using JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3. To track the work of the team they used a platform called Asana to get an overview of the results and the tasks that had to be done.

After the founder of Checkbook.io reviewed the mock-ups, the students were finally able to start coding the whole homepage. They began to set up their programming environment on MacBooks, that were provided by the company. An introduction of this process was found on the GitHub repository of Checkbook.io, but did not help to entirely finish the setup process. The students tried everything they could think of, but did not succeed. Google was not able to give them the right answers to their problem either. A software engineer at Checkbook.io had to help the students. Afterwards, the local server was running and the students finally started coding.

A couple of days later, the project provider posted the mock-ups on slack, an online communication tool the company uses. That way every employee was able to give feedback on the newly designed homepage. One employee came up with another template he was working on. The employees and PJ Gupta decided to take the new template and to complement it with the ideas of the students. Without a new wireframe they began to code and design the new homepage and all the new subpages in HTML and CSS. Parallel to that, they put the API-site into a new template to make it look more pleasant and appealing.

The coding of the new homepage went straightforward and without big difficulties. PJ Gupta had new ideas so the students had to adjust their code to his vision. Shortly before the coding was finished, he had the idea to put a code snippet of the API-docs on the homepage, because the homepage did not seem built for businesses. With this code snippet everyone can send a check using their computer terminal without signing up. The students tried to integrate a runkit script but had some difficulties with this JavaScript. However, one of the students had a lot of experience with this type of script and could insert it properly.

The most difficult and most time-consuming part was to build the fillable check for the homepage. Using JavaScript and HTML/CSS the students had to solve many problems. A major problem was to integrate the business logic, so the check was working and sending out the check. This process needs to be secured and adjusted to the company’s system. Additionally, PJ Gupta was not satisfied by the look-and-feel of the check, so the project group had to make major changes in their code.

Working together with Checkbbok.io employees and PJ Gupta was a very interesting and sometimes challenging experience. There is a special atmosphere in an American startup. Everyone wants the company to succeed and works extra hours. The students could never live up to that, because they always had to go to another meeting or an excursion with their class, although they managed to work at Checkbook.io's office twice or three times a week. The project group wants to thank all the involved people, especially PJ Gupta and Checkbook.io for an amazing time in the Silicon Valley.