16. Mai. 2017 | von Anna-Lena Lewerenz

We ask: What exactly do you do at Belbo when you do an internship? Of course, pursue exciting questions about how service providers can be helped to work even more efficiently. For this, Janko has dealt with how workforce scheduling can be simplified for companies that need to coordinate many part-time employees.

Belbo: Hello Janko, you did an internship with us as part of your IT training. We hope you had a lot of fun?

Janko: I did! There was a lot of new things for me to learn and I could put my skills directly into practice. After the rather general projects in my school training, it was refreshing to work with more specialized current technologies like Facebook Messenger interfaces and Android.

Belbo: Tell us something about your project!

Janko: In my IHK final project, I took on the task of developing a locally usable Android app for workforce scheduling. Intended as a replacement for planning with pen and paper, you can have this app with you everywhere on your Android device and can view and edit your employees' shift and workplace assignments at any time and immediately send the created weekly shift schedule via email. Through the team, I received many good tips on usability and also learned quite a bit about user interface design.

Guaranteed not a staged scene during work.

Belbo: How did you develop the project?

Janko: First, of course, it had to be determined what exactly was needed: a database as a foundation, functions that work with this database, and a user interface to operate these program functions. During development, the app should be constantly in a working state so it could be tested at any time.

After a few days the first prototype was ready and promptly failed in testing with the team, of course: The database worked flawlessly, but the user interface was a design disaster. No big deal, after all, further development is part of the plan. In a breakfast brainstorming session, everyone contributed ideas on what the UI could look like in the future and I received valuable design tips ("Everything looks better with a border!").

In the next programming cycle, I focused on the interface and workflow in the app: instead of a dull menu as the start screen where you had to laboriously navigate to the desired functions, the app now starts directly in the week view for shift planning with quick links to the employee list. Several screens of the user interface were consolidated and many layout improvements were made based on the conceptual drawings from the meeting. The whole thing turned out to be more elaborate than expected, but I learned a lot about the quirks of the Android SDK with regard to the user interface during that time.

The following test runs were more successful: the implemented interface met expectations overall, but there were still some details that could be improved and features like email sending were still missing. In the next programming phase, I focused on the mentioned details, email sending, and convenience features like direct selection of a week for viewing (who wants to scroll week by week when they want to see the shift assignments from last summer?). These last features were implemented in many small steps with constant tests and consultations.

Belbo: What did you enjoy most?

Janko: It's hard to name a single point directly, because ultimately it comes down to the fact that I enjoy overcoming challenges, even if the path there is sometimes a bit frustrating. The biggest challenges in this project were probably the week view and the shift assignment module.

The week view was fun because I simply really like the result. It's a successful implementation of a great design concept that emerged from the UI brainstorming and cost me quite a bit of nerves.

For me, the beauty of the employee assignment module lies beneath the surface. While this is also visually appealing, the business logic for implementing the filters and storing changes in the database was more demanding than in other parts of the app. Accordingly, the joy of successfully implementing these parts was all the greater.

Belbo: Would you use your app yourself?

Screenshot of the app.

Janko: Of course I would – if I ever had to create shift schedules. As the developer of the app, the operation flow seems absolutely ergonomic to me and the app is (after the first prototype) very clearly designed. The "click paths," that is, the number of clicks between the different parts of the app, are pleasantly short and not overloaded with unnecessary functions that are rarely or never used. And if I ever needed such a function, of course I could add it to the app myself ;).

Belbo: What do you think is the biggest difficulty for service providers in shift scheduling?

Janko: Downloading this app from the Play Store! No, I think the biggest challenge in shift scheduling is being able to respond to really short-notice changes, for example when a heavily scheduled employee suddenly gets injured and is out for a few weeks. In such a case, the manager naturally needs to react quickly and make scheduling changes that in turn affect later planning. Then affected employees need to be informed at short notice and so on. I think this app will also prove practical in such cases, if only because it (hopefully) brings together all necessary data in one place.

Belbo: What do you envision for the future of the app?

Janko: During development and continuous testing, of course some ideas emerged about what could be done better and what features could be added to the app. For example, there was the idea from the beginning to connect this app with the Belbo infrastructure. Entering availability and shifts could be simplified with additional convenience features like weekly or monthly repetitions, and entering employee vacation time is also not yet provided for. The app currently doesn't account for holidays, maximum weekly working hours, and so on and so forth.

These ideas could not be realized during the project period, and many extensions would themselves offer new starting points for additions. However, when further developing, it should be weighed what should make its way into the app, because if every sensible additional function were simply integrated into the app, it would soon no longer be the simple, lean tool that it is – and complex all-purpose applications that overwhelm users with their abundance of functions are plentiful.

Belbo: Thank you very much, Janko! We think: That was outstanding work!

The app will be available for Android soon.