In 2008, the regular development team for the Transaction System at Blackboard was falling behind on delivery of their next release. Ken was asked to step in and be an almost one man development team (product management, architect, UI, developer) for version 3.0 version which was the first version on the web (and effectively a 1.0 product). An experience database developer was available to handle optimization of the back end.
"This was an interesting project because there was a tight time-frame that it had to be delivered in, it had to pass web-accessibility (a new requirement for the product) and was effectively a targeted ad hoc query builder. The non-technical user could:
- Select the fields to show
- Select the filters (non-trivial, rich and complex with support for sub-queries etc)
- Select the aggregration
- Select the output format (Xml, Pdf, Excel etc)
- Save and modify report definitions
Preliminary research by Dennis Cozart found an a typical pattern of building ad hoc complex query-filters that was the very non-geek and effective for the general public so a complex web control had to be built to render a simple to use interface. From assignment to hand-off to QA and deves was less than 10 intense weeks. Delivery was meet with a solid code base. The VP-Product Development commented, "For a 1.0 product, it does not look, feel or work like a 1.0 product [rather a 2.0 or even 2.5]".