Building 'Slivers-of-Time'
The development of the Slivers-of-Time employment system is one of Torchbox's most significant technical, and user interface achievements to date. Torchbox was selected against some of the multi-national giants of the IT industry, several of whom said 'Slivers' couldn't be built for less than high seven figure sums. We built it for a tiny fraction of the price: to time, to budget and to the total satisfaction of the client (legend has it his eyes moistened with tears when he saw the first 'end to end' live demo).
So, what is Slivers-of-Time?
Slivers-of-Time is a website that manages part-time employment:
- It lets people say "I want to work between 6.00 and 9.00 this evening" and the type of work they want to do.
- Then, it allows employers to book them - in an elegantly simple way we call 'click, click buy'.
- Slivers then sends the person a text message offering them the job, and they text back to confirm.
The site automatically takes care of contracts, timesheets, payments, employment agency commissions and every other part of the process.
Slivers-of-Time is a revolutionary new way of working and of employing people. Crucially, it allows the seller (of their time) to say when they want to work and for how much money (and set 'mark-ups' like requiring extra money to travel further to a job). Employers choose who to book from a seller availability screen organised by price and dependability (established by how often they have worked successfully through Slivers-of-Time).
We think Slivers-of-Time is a visionary idea, who's time has come and we are very proud of our work in building it.
Forget Torchbox's website, I want to join the Slivers-of-Time revolution, where do I go?
Fair enough, you can register on the Slivers-of-Time gateway site. When an agency in your area starts to offer Slivers-of-Time working they will contact you and invite you to join.
So, are you saying that the system isn't live yet?
Absolutely not, it's live and it runs like clockwork. The world's first true Slivers-of-Time marketplace has been running since December 2005 in East London. It is now ready to spread across the UK. Market research commissioned by government suggests millions of people in the UK both need and want to "sell spare hours" in this way.
So, what did Torchbox actually do?
We built the whole thing, from the ground up. Drawing on some initial powerpoint wireframes developed by the client (admittedly, these were a great starting point), we scrutinised every aspect of the system from a user-centred design perspective and a system architecture perspective. From this we developed detailed build specifications, and interface designs (yes, we user tested both at the design concept stage and at the beta stage).
The project was rigorously managed using a toolset including Trac and an approach based on the Prince2 project management framework.
The system was built over six months. The core team included four java developers and a two front end specialists.
And the tech spec?
Slivers of Time is a Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE, formerly J2EE) application built around an Open Source architecture. Fronted by the Apache web-server and running under the Apache Tomcat servlet container, it uses Struts to support the Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern and the Spring framework to support component management. The database server is PostgreSQL. The application is designed to be scalable through the use of load balanced web-servers and replicated databases.
I'm interested in discussing enterprise java developments with Torchbox
Great, please give our Technical Director, Tom Dyson a call on 01608 811870, he will be delighted to discuss your project with you.
