Intern Case Study
Students Build Enterprise-grade Apps after 1 Week of Training
Key Takeaway: If we can train college kids in a week how to build actionable business applications, imagine what your team can create!
Training the Future Workforce and Closing the Skills Gap
LeapXL, along with the University of Arkansas, is committed to fostering technical talent in the state of Arkansas and closing the skills gap. Over the summer of 2023 we worked with three students from the university’s Fayetteville and Little Rock campuses. They are currently enrolled in web development and data science programs and about to enter their third or fourth year. We introduced them to our platform and set them loose to see what they could build.
A Low-Code/No-Code Toolkit for Speeding Software to Market
At LeapXL, our mission is to empower companies to achieve continuous digital transformation. We want to help businesses break free from technical debt, which will enable domain experts to focus on tasks that propel the business forward at the pace of the market. This can be accomplished in two ways – firstly, by translating existing applications into Leap apps, and secondly, by relieving a portion of the IT workload from conventional development. This empowers business domain experts to build directly on our user-friendly, powerful and platform.
Get Skills, Build with Purpose and Deploy FAST
In June and July of 2023, we sought to put our money where our mouth is. We brought in three college students, trained them quickly, and saw what they could build with the platform. Our interns had very little experience in application development outside of some introductory coursework during their time at the university. Our goal of this experiment was to demonstrate how fast and easy it is for anyone with just a little bit of technical prowess to build useful and secure applications with Leap.
The Training
We chose young people with little to no experience and provided them with a one-week, virtual crash course.
The materials used were outdated because we were in the process of launching Leap 4.0. It did not slow them down! In fact, after their week of training, they quickly updated our training materials to reflect the changes in the platform.
In hindsight, it seems like we were deliberately setting ourselves up for failure. This just shows how confident we are about our platform tools.
Designing and Composing the Software Solutions
We wanted the interns to have experience building applications that people actually wanted. One of our interns, Joel, worked with the IT director of Acxiom on an idea for an app that would have real value for their operations. Winston and Anthony developed applications exhibiting solutions needed by the Arkansas State Bank Department.
They spent two to three weeks developing their applications and then spent another week building training and smart templates so that others could build the same applications on the platform in even less time. Each application showed the ease with which data from external sources and services can be integrated into Leap applications.
Results
In terms of confirming that LeapXL provides a platform for rapid digital transformation – the experiment was a smashing success. All three interns produced working applications that meet real business needs. However, the program provided additional benefits to both LeapXL and our interns.
For us, we were able to gain experience managing a boot camp training program. This is something that will be valuable to us as our company grows and we need to provide training for new builders on the platform. We were also able to do intensive testing and bug reporting of a new version release of the platform, Version 4.0.
For our interns, they were able to gain real world experience in software development that will be useful throughout the rest of their studies and as they enter careers in data science and web development.
Testimonials
“Very cool that I can build an expense report app that people need in only two weeks!”
– Winston
“This increased my confidence in the app building process.”
– Anthony
“I learned what really goes into building an app, especially the backend and inner workings.”
– Joel
Lessons Learned
While the overall experiment was a great success, we did find opportunities to improve. Regarding training, we found that our revolutionary technology requires a bit of new vocabulary that must be learned to communicate in the language of Leap. We’re going to place more emphasis on this in the early modules of the training materials.
For this experiment, we had our interns pursue individual projects. They were by no means alone during the process, of course. For next time, though, having the interns work as a team could be a better choice. A group project could possibly have a greater scope. For the interns, this could give them a more real-world software development experience since building software in isolation is rare in the industry. It also helped us recognize collaborative features that are underdeveloped in the platform. In addition, we got confirmation that an AI SQL writer would be a great addition.
Conclusions
We have the continuous digital transformation platform to keep companies moving at the pace of change in business today. We taught three college students to build meaningful applications in a fraction of the typical development time. In fact, the IT director at Acxiom said it would have been six months before his high-end developers could have developed the SLA Tracking and Ticketing System that Joel built in three weeks. Just imagine what Leap could do for your business in the hands of your experienced IT staff!
Media
Watch the interns demo their apps on our YouTube channel.