Technical Due Diligence for the Church of England

We have conducted technical due diligence for the Church of England to asses the technology’s state of their online platform.

About the client

Our client is the Church of England with their leading online platform - A Church Near You - that helps people find information about churches in their local area in England.

More than 16,500 churches and cathedrals in England and across the Diocese in Europe and 4,700 Church schools are listed on the platform. It was launched in 2017, and has since become a popular resource for people looking to connect with their local church communities. In 2022 ACNY received 77 million page views, and 80% were from first-time visitors.

The platform allows users to search for churches by location, denomination, service times, and other criteria. It also provides detailed information about each church, including contact details and real-time updates on church services and events. Information is kept up to date by authorised editors within each church. Currently, the platform has about 20,000 of these editors.

Challenge

Representatives of the Church of England contacted DeepInspire and requested a technology audit & assessment to understand the current technology state of their online platform, identify issues and areas for improvement, and help them implement the right approach to development that will ensure successful product growth.

The client had some pains associated with product development, all updates going out of deadlines, and there was a lack of understanding of the client's needs from the development team. Before making the next large iteration/investment, the Church of England asked us to check the code quality, team expertise, development flow and provide independent feedback on whether they need to rewrite everything, change contractors etc. Shortly, how to make things better.

The main objective was to understand their pain, reveal its reasons, and see how things could be improved. Also, our goals within technical due diligence were:

Evaluate the current structure of the code in view of the current and planned platform scale;
Evaluate the quality assurance process;
Assess the code maintainability and issues related to it;
Conduct the general product review;
Review of the development process, issues faced in 2022 and challenges expected in 2023;
Assess internal processes, documentation and the technical team.

Our Approach

During the first week, we onboarded like new teammates and lived within this project and product, aiming to identify key issues and opportunities. The second week was dedicated to ideating how to improve the product and determine what would and would not work for the client. We formulated all of our thoughts and ideas into a report.

Let us elaborate on what we did in more detail:

01
Carried out product overview from the business and tech sides;
02
Conducted a comprehensive check of the product's technical condition and code quality;
03
Evaluated the internal roles and processes for development, quality assurance, deployment, operations and support;
04
Conducted team interviews (Product Owner interview and Development team interview);
05
Performed code review;

06
Performed platform testing on a demo account;
07
Reviewed existing product documentation;
08
Сonducted a series of brainstorming and ideation sessions to define the best solution for such case;
09
Created a final report including an executive summary, technical code review report and user experience audit report.

Duration:

2 weeks

Team composition:

Business Analyst
Lead Developer (Python)
UX Expert
DeepInspire CEO (as advisor)

Outcomes

After conducting the technical due diligence, we delivered a comprehensive report on the state of the client's technology and development team. Our assessment included a thorough review of the codebase and technology stack, as well as an evaluation of the cooperation model between the client and their development team.

Typical for IT projects - the key reason for all issues resides in the cooperation model, communication and flow. Despite having a highly engaged client who is passionate about the product and a team of skilled technical specialists, issues appear due to wrong processes being applied.

Our report focuses on three key areas: code, team roles, and processes.

Conducted a comprehensive check of the product's technical condition and code quality, we recommend switching to a full-fledged frontend with frameworks like React or Angular. It can help simplify maintenance and improve performance in the long run.

Based on the product's features and the client's goals, we have defined that the best-fit cooperation model between the client and technical specialists is Dedicated Team as the most suitable model for long-term product development and successful product scale.

We have also advised on the best-fit team composition and recommended the assignment of a Technical Lead as the person to oversee the development process, review architecture, define & plan product development strategy, and take responsibility for all tech decisions.

We have offered the client 2 main options for enhancing the development process and resolving challenges and described the associated benefits and risks:

Stay with the current vendor and change the cooperation model from Fixed Price to Dedicated Team to transform developers' mindset from "the contractor" into an initiative and inspired product team.
Change vendor for a more experienced and perceptive, with proper processes and roles implemented, who can act as a technical partner while the client can fully concentrate on strategy and users.

We believe that our findings and recommendations will help the client enhance their development process and successfully scale the product.