Melvin Farrugia

In the development of IT services for Government, MITA uses various technologies to build up the systems that are required. Therefore, employees working within different teams at MITA need to specialise in their specific sector and on technologies which are used in these systems.

MITA has felt that it would be fruitful to expand the knowledge of its employees by involving them in “virtual teams”, where employees from different teams work together, using different technologies and methodologies. Not only do employees get the possibility of sharing their knowledge, but they develop a product with the best combination of technologies for its purpose.

The objective of one of these teams is to build a template of a mobile app for Government. The team members are Wayne Zammit, Andrew Azzopardi, Frank Paul Azzopardi, Clayton Spiteri, Julian Agius, Daniel Farrugia, James Mamo, Alistair Chetcuti, Nicholas Galea, Joseph Damato and David Galea. We have discussed the concept of the virtual teams with four team members.

Working on unilateral projects

Nicholas explains that the team consists of employees working in different departments within MITA and have specific projects to deliver to different Ministries. For example, Nicholas comes from the Health Team. However, through the virtual teams, employees from different teams are working on projects that are unilateral to MITA.

Julian describes how different teams use different methodologies, technologies and frameworks and therefore employees share their knowledge, while learning best practices used by other teams. These practices can then be implemented by other teams within MITA, thus expanding the knowledge within the organisation.

Asking about why the team related to Mobile apps was convened, Andrew says that after Government launched the Mobile Government Strategy, making its services accessible from anywhere and at any time, several apps were developed, each having a different style. The aim of the virtual team is to create a mobile app template which can be used by suppliers, or developers within MITA, who want to develop an app for Government.

Nicholas adds that the aim of this team is to consolidate the apps that were developed, while checking which features are common and what challenges they present. Subsequently, the team will create an app which addresses these challenges and which will give a direction to external suppliers and developers on how to develop an app that is uniform to others used by Government. Nicholas also remarks that having uniform apps will enable MITA to maintain the apps better and will provide a common base line across the apps.

How the virtual team works

Julian explains that the virtual team is furtherly divided into three sub-teams, focusing on the styles, components and services. The team members are either software developers or architects, with a software-development background. The virtual team has agreed to use a specific framework called Ionic, through which the team will be building hybrid mobile apps.

Nicholas emphasises that MITA is not a mobile development company and therefore there are only few mobile developers within the organisation. Therefore, one of the aims of this team is to build these skills and share them across the Agency. He also explains that there are several ways to solve an issue or do specific tasks. The team will identify the ideal way and which direction is best to follow.

To this, Julian adds that through this app developers will be saving time and money because they will not have to create different screens for different apps, but rather use a common screen which is already made available. He adds that the team’s work is for now targeted towards the internal development teams within MITA. However, it is MITA’s ultimate goal to create an open source product, allowing suppliers to download the app, develop it according to their requirements and then publish it. This would be a first experience for MITA to create an open source product.

Different tasks and learning opportunities

Andrew describes that as a coder, his role within the components sub-team will be to code different components that will be used within the mobile app. These components will include News, Lists and many others. A component is a structure within the app that can be moved from one part of the app to another. For example, all the apps will have a contact us form. Instead of having many different contact us forms, the team is building a contact us form as a component which can be re-used in other apps.

Frank Paul, who is quite new to the team, is still familiarising to the technologies being used. However, he explains that he is very excited because it is the first time he is working on such a big project. He also remarks that it is an interesting project because for the first time a mobile app is being targeted towards the developers of the apps rather than to the users of the app.

Nicholas explains that these teams have managed to bring together several people who did not know each other before. To this, Julian adds that all members were coming from different departments, and therefore they had to familiarise with people whom they had never worked with before actually starting to work on this project. He describes it as a nice feeling