Virtual Learning Environment: a 20 Year-Long Collaboration

Our client is one of the world's leading learning platform providers with millions active users worldwide. The platform is used in all levels of education, from primary schools to universities, helping teachers make education more inspiring and valuable for today’s students. As user feedback drives the development, the client achieved high levels of user adaptation and satisfaction.

Back in 2006, when our collaboration started, the platform had already existed for 5+ years. It started as a student project and needed a major upgrade to keep its position on the market:

• improving performance to cope with a growing user base
• modernising UI: responsiveness, accessibility
• adding rich Web 2.0 functionality and advanced collaboration features to keep with the trends
• expanding possibilities for integration with other applications to meet the needs of the growing number of users worldwide.

Software Country's team performed a deep re-engineering of the application platform using .NET technologies and Web 2.0 approaches. We added internal messaging, video conferencing, discussion boards, a test creation tool, content recommendations and other advanced tools for communication and collaboration. Besides, we greatly modified the user interface to provide the best UX, including responsive design and customisation features. During the migration, we ensured compatibility of the data with the previous versions and smooth transition for the end users.

This project became a part of the story of a successful startup turning into an international company; nowadays, the LMS is used in many public schools in Europe.

As the experience of the first project was mutually beneficial and pleasant, our collaboration continued.

The client's philosophy is “listen to the users to define further needs for improvement”. Besides, the modern learning industry has a number of international standards, such as SCORM, LTI, OneRooster, xAI and others. They facilitate data and content migration and exchange, compatibility across various systems, scalability and better collaboration. Through recent decades, the standards evolved significantly, and keeping the system compatible with major standards required significant labour inputs.

Here are just a few sample projects we've done:

• xAPI Content Player. A solution for playing SCORM and xAPI content and reporting about learners' progress according to xAPI standard.
• OneRoster 1.2 Integration for LMS. A solution for passing grade information from the LMS to a student information system (SIS).
• Implementing Learning Tools Interoperability for LMS. The LTI standard is used to connect learning tools with an institution's learning environment with a high level of security for passing data about the users, their institutional enrollment, and roles.
• LMS Content Import and Export Feature. A solution for importing and exporting content in Moodle and IMSCC format.

Finally, the major technologies evolved and changed through the time, and 10 years after the first re-engineering, there was another major transfer to Svelte.  

Right now, our developers contribute to the process of migration to .NET 9, implementing Open Search and other new technologies.

Sharing software development expertise and building an engaged team

Through the years, the development team gathered a number of highly motivated developers who gained expertise in the client's business area. At the same time, our project managers brought their insight into best strategies of organizing the development cycle, which led to shorter and less risky releases and faster implementation of new features.

Here are our blog articles dedicated to the evolution of the software development process:

• ‘Little Secrets of Testing a Large LMS.’ Our way to enact optimal process organisation; how we decided to use monthly releases and successfully adapted our process to the quarantine conditions.
• ‘The Evolution of LMS Release Management and Its Benefits.’ This article illustrates how the release process of the high-load platform was transformed from occasional and costly releases to more frequent and predictable ones.

Flexible project model: keeping up with changing needs

The project model evolved with the client. The first re-engineering project was performed in a distributed team, where Software Country's and the client's developers and testers worked together using SCRUM.

Later, to organise simultaneous development of a number of features, we built several cross-functional project teams dedicated to the client. These teams included developers, QA engineers, UX designers, a business analyst, and worked hand in hand with the client’s inner team. They were led by our managers but shared the client's values and corporate standards, participated in collaborative events organised by the client and grew fond of the product. They were driven by the idea that they are contributing to a system that makes life better for millions of users.

The teams were physically distributed in different parts of the world, and this fact greatly helped us during the lockdowns in early 2020s. We already had in place all processes needed for remote work, and that facilitated doing extra work arising from increased demands for performance and changing educational processes.

As the client matured, accumulated expertise in setting up optimal development processes, and became part of a bigger IT ecosystem, the role of our team changed again. The client did not need project management expertise any more, and we moved to a staff augmentation business model, where the client fully manages the whole process and applies only for extra resources or specific expertise. Still, many processes, created with help of our managers and proven by time, continue to exist. At this stage, having an outsourcing partner allows more flexibility in staff management and technical expertise.

To sum up, parameters of our collaboration significantly changed through years, with few things remaining constant at the basis of our relationship: trust, transparency, and commitment.

This case is an excellent example of successful, mutually beneficial collaboration lasting for decades. Different stages of company development need different project models. On each stage a good outsourcing partner will bring the expertise and flexibility just according to the client's needs, thus allowing the client to concentrate on its business goals and contributing to faster time-to-market, revenue growth and higher ROI ratio.