Cookiecutter Hybrid Apps

An open source framework for hybrid mobile applications.

Opportunity

We’re constantly doing pitches. A great way to push our pitch over the top is to include a working prototype of what we’re proposing. Making them from scratch is too expensive for most projects. Having a white label project for hybrid apps would allow ustwo to develop prototypes and projects faster and more efficiently. This will become more important the more ventures, partnerships, and startup work we do. ustwo is committed to focusing on these types of projects in 2016. In our 2015 OKRs, we’re looking for open source projects to contribute to. The cookiecutter-ionic project is an open source framework for building hybrid mobile apps and its adoption will help us achieve these goals. The project is currently looking for community support.

Hypothesis

The ustwo tech team will benefit by contributing to the cookiecutter-hybrid-apps project through increased visibility in the open source community and internally by using it for pitch prototypes, ventures, partnerships, and startup work.

Audience

• Perspective clients
• Product teams
• ustwo new business team
• Perspective tech talent

Value

• Allows for technological learnings and skills to be consolidated and preserved from project to project
• Allows us to focus on writing business logic for our applications instead of boilerplate tasks like authentication, setup, and deployment
• Allows ustwo new business team to have stronger pitches.
• Allows ustwo tech to leverage more of the tech team for pitches and projects that require custom apps.
• Reduces the costs of pitch prototypes, ventures, partnerships, and startup work.
• Increased presence in the open source community for ustwo
• Strengthens the ustwo New York tech profile
• Completes a tech team OKR for 2015

Objectives to reach value

• Complete MVP release.
• Use the project successfully on a pitch
• Use the project successfully on a project

Validation Plan

• Measure the cost of project using the framework and otherwise
• Compare infrastructure bugs for projects using the cookiecutter-ionic and those that don’t
• Analyze how the open source community receives the project

What does MVP look like?

• A working cookie cutter that solves the general needs of creating a hybrid application

Casting / Human Resource needs

• ( 1 ) Developer

Timeline estimation to MVP

4 weeks to get to MVP.

Accountability / Stakeholders

• ustwo tech team
• ustwo new business team

New skills utilized

• ES6 & ES7 specifications
• Angular 2.0
• Polished CTAs animations, easing, timings
• Creating hybrid apps
• Static sites
• Google Analytics API