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The Making of Wizard.Fit Part 2 - How the App was Fast Tracked through On-Demand, Virtual Talent

Alexa BarayMarch 27, 2020

The Making of Wizard.Fit Part II: Sprinting to App MVP through Remote Talent

When we left off with entrepreneur Soofi Safavi and his new application Wizard.Fit late last week, the real work and technology build was just kicking off. This is Part II in our series following Soofi and the hyper-accelerated making of the Wizard.Fit app (read and listen to Part 1 here). Soofi is leveraging the Topcoder platform to bring Wizard.Fit to market in just about 14 days. Follow along on this whirlwind project with Soofi and Topcoder VP, Clinton Bonner.

PROJECT TIMELINE to DATE

  • Mon. 3/16/20 - Soofi comes up with Wizard.Fit concept

  • Tues. 3/17/20 - Soofi reaches out to Topcoder 

  • Thurs. 3/19/20 - Project kicked off on Topcoder platform → Where we left off in Part I

  • Tue. 3/24 - Heroku v1 delivered with certain API functionality

  • Wed. 3/25 - High fidelity UI/UX designs delivered

  • Thur. 3/26 - Heroku v2 delivered with extended functionality

HOW SOOFI IS LEVERAGING THE TOPCODER COMMUNITY

Soofi is working closely with two Topcoder Copilots—one helping with the design and the other with the build. Copilots are members of Topcoder’s community who have expertise in managing customer projects on the Topcoder platform. They prepare the work and manage it to success, ensuring quality outputs stream back from the virtual talent on Topcoder. 

TECHNOLOGIES POWERING COLLABORATION

Collaborating at such a high velocity requires sincerely great communication, the right tools, and of course access to talent that can help you get things done. For Soofi and Topcoder, the following platforms and tools are in use for this accelerated build.

  • Topcoder Platform  - where the team instantiate requirements, tracks project updates and milestones, and where the work is delivered through

  • Slack - for more immediate feedback and day-to-day comms 

  • GitHub - standing up code - Soofi can quickly review code and help out technically

  • Heroku - a flexible cloud platform as a service where application versions are quickly being updated

  • Marvel App - a no code design and prototyping platform that includes feedback and collaboration tools for front-end design

Individuals and small teams can work as a holistic machine at a hyper-accelerated pace because of platforms like these.

THE WIZARD.FIT MVP 

There are a couple core considerations going in to Wizard.Fit MVP:

  • For payment, the team is going with the PayPal for its secure, simple, and effective API

  • For video conferencing, Zoom’s open API is an easy choice

“The scope of functionality that we’re putting together would've been a 12-month project from initiation to technology selection to team selection to build an organization… and we are actually pulling it together in less than three weeks.”Soofi Safavi - Wizard.Fit

the build so far

Here are some designs from the Wizard.Fit application:

HerokuApp_v1-1
DesignScreens_v2-4

openness fuels innovation

What’s unique about this project is the sheer speed of innovation. The confluence of Soofi’s idea—an app to help fitness instructors weather the COVID-19 crisis—with Topcoder’s open talent model, open APIs from Zoom and PayPal, and the passion of talented contributors from across the globe personifies the real future of work. 

“Openness is a competitive advantage. It ultimately creates so much innovation and creativity that at the end of the day, it's going to hands down beat the closed system.”Soofi Safavi - Wizard.Fit

Coming up in Part 3, we’ll check in on progress of the MVP and we’ll share more behind the scenes looks of the app as it takes shape. Stay tuned.