Sureway AS and 99X Technology build an enterprise software product in a week while under lockdown

The core functionality enabled creation of requirements for departments and owners on what they should do to prevent infection and safeguard services.

Sureway and 99X Technology launch Tackle, a software product for business continuity relating to COVID-19. The entire product design and development was done in just 7 days, while both countries were under lockdown, using online collaboration tools.

Sureway AS is a leading Norwegian risk management and privacy consultancy firm in operation for almost 20 years. They began their relationship with 99X Technology in 2012 when they engaged 99X Technology to migrate their existing risk management product, Whatif, to a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform. The successful completion of this project saw Sureway transfer their entire IT operations to Colombo.

Newly developed Tackle enables companies to provide clear instructions to departments and teams on every aspect relating to business continuity to face the COVID-19 crisis. This includes areas such as infection control, operations, resources and quarantine status. The progress made on these areas is also tracked and reported within Tackle, providing a real-time view to management. Tackle is suitable for both the public and private sector, for business leaders, councilors, mayors and emergency management teams, all who need to react and clearly communicate what everyone should do and receive a real-time status of what has been done.

Kjetil Odin Johnsen, CEO and Founder, Sureway stated, “As the COVID-19 infection began to take hold, we compiled a list of COVID-19 scenarios for municipalities and power companies, which are our major customer groups. We distributed these free of charge so that our customers could best cope with what is happening now. Based on the good feedback we received, we thought of developing Tackle as an effective solution when dealing with crisis situations and will be providing this free of charge to all our existing customers.”

He added: “Our distributed team is fantastic and worked day and night to deliver the new software in a very short time. What’s amazing is that the entire team – both in Norway and Colombo - was working from home and collaborated using online tools throughout the entire product lifecycle. I’ve never seen it done before like this – we only saw each other on video! I would like to appreciate the 99X Technology team for their outstanding commitment and productivity to deliver this outcome.”

Manoj Fernando, Associate Technical Architect at 99X Technology and AWS Community Hero shared his experience of distributed product development during the lockdown. “The Colombo team was fully on-board when Kjetil brought forward this idea of building ‘Tackle’ to help companies deal with the Coronavirus pandemic. We knew this tool could immensely help hospitals, municipalities, and all our customers to get through these challenging times.”

He further observed, “We knew we needed to deliver it fast as the impact of Coronavirus was rapidly becoming a crisis in Europe. We had three times as many daily meetings while working from home to make sure everybody was on the same page. We worked during the weekends to get this tool out to our customers and support them in these difficult times. We are happy now that the product is ready for customer onboarding. It’s a great team effort!”

The core functionality includes the ability to create requirements for departments and owners on what they should do to prevent infection and safeguard services. The tool can also be used to understand the resources available within teams and record updates as these resources are consumed. The tool also integrates with collaboration tools such Microsoft Teams and Skype for screen sharing and obtaining real-time updates. The product already has a pre-filled set of instructions relating to COVID-19 management which are applicable for most companies.