School sports arena – A digital platform transforms school sports
Agile software development and testing for a digitalization project for the common good.
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German School Sports Foundation
School sports can do more
The German School Sports Foundation is supported by the federal states and the leading sports associations. Its aim is to promote extracurricular school sports in particular. With the Jugend trainiert competition, it reaches up to 1 million pupils every year. Three events take place each year: Spring, fall and winter finals. The organization of the ‘Jugend trainiert für Olympia und Paralympics’ national finals is to be supported by a modern web application.
This new digital platform ‘Schulsport-Arena’ aims to promote school sport and nationwide school sport initiatives. It supports the implementation of these initiatives in school sports and the organization of the national finals. One of the aims is to increase physical activity and interest in sport among pupils and to combine a wide range of functions and processes on one platform.
The Challenge:
Covering the diversity of 24 different sports on one platform
The variety of sports is huge and each has different requirements.
For example, each sport has its own competition specifics, such as scoring and timekeeping.
All of this had to be mapped on the platform. Another key requirement was to integrate complex functions and develop a UX/UI concept that focused on user-friendliness and responsive user guidance.
In addition, the concept had to be implemented within an agile framework.
In addition, the ‘sweet spot’ between generalization and specialization had to be found in the technical implementation.
The solution:
Holistic software development of the school sports arena by QualityMinds
QualityMinds handles the entire software development process for the single-page web application for the school sports arena. This supports central processes for 24 sports and enables comprehensive event management, from travel and accommodation planning to the presentation of competition results.
QualityMinds developed the Event Arena, a central platform component of the School Sports Arena.
The Event Arena supports the organization of sporting events, including competition planning, accreditation and the regulation of travel and accommodation arrangements.
For example, the results of competitions are reported digitally so that parents, for example, can view their children’s performances.
Thanks to the agile approach of the QualityMinds team and the early go-live of the event arena, users were able to benefit from new functions at an early stage and provide valuable feedback.
Key Facts
The digital platform Schulsport-Arena aims to promote school sports and nationwide school sports initiatives and support the organization of sports events
Comprehensive software development of the school sports arena from conception to quality assurance and platform support
Functions of the event arena: competition organization, entries, accreditation, results service, finances, travel arrangements, billing, accommodation
Agile approach with early go-lives for valuable user feedback and rapid further development
Change for free working model – change requests without additional costs
“The collaboration with QualityMinds is characterized by their methodological strengths in agile software development and their extensive experience in designing a complex platform with multiple roles, authorizations and functions.
Despite the classic project structure, they were able to successfully integrate an agile approach, which demonstrates an innovative mindset.
Over the course of the project, they repeatedly prioritized together and, thanks to the flexible Change for Free working model, change requests were taken into account and integrated at any time without additional costs. Open communication and a lot of exchange are key success factors in our joint project.”
Simon Biemüller
Product Owner & Project Manager of the School Sports Arena (German School Sports Foundation)
Technologies used
Single-page web application implemented on Kotlin/Springboot and Angular 17
Frontend: Angular
Backend: SpringBoot, Java
Identity Provider: Keycloack
By integrating CI/CD pipelines (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment), the source code is regularly transformed and automatically tested, which simplifies and accelerates software development
“We at QualityMinds are thrilled to be part of a project in which we can actively shape all steps of the software development cycle with our agile way of working. The close cooperation with our client also contributes significantly to the success of the project. Everyone in our team can fully identify with this project and has the feeling that they are creating something really meaningful with the school sports arena. The platform relieves the organizational team of the “Jugend trainiert” national finals and promotes the necessary digitalization in the public sector. This allows everyone to concentrate on the most important thing: the well-being of the children, including those with disabilities. They can take part easily and get the chance to experience values such as fairness and team spirit, just like at the Olympics.”
Stefan Meyer
Project Manager & Team Lead DevAgile, QualityMinds