Sample: Replacing a spreadsheet-run operations workflow

This is sample content included to show how a project story reads on the site. A real story would begin here by describing the situation the client was in — the business context and the problem that existed before any code was written.

Keep this section factual and specific. Describe what the team was doing manually, where time was lost, and why the status quo had become a constraint on the business.

Explain why the problem was genuinely difficult, not just tedious. In this sample, the difficulty might be that operational rules were inconsistent, data lived in several places, and any new system had to run alongside the old one during migration.

The goal of this section is to set up the engineering decisions that follow — so name the real constraints.

Describe the engineering decisions and the reasoning behind them, focusing on trade-offs. For example: choosing a single well-modelled relational schema over several services, because the team was small and the data was highly relational.

This is where the story earns trust. Explain what was considered, what was rejected, and why — before naming any specific technology.

Only after the approach is clear does it make sense to name the stack. In this sample: a Next.js application backed by PostgreSQL, deployed on AWS, with background jobs for the slower operational tasks.

Highlight the details that mattered — a careful migration path, an audit trail, or a data model that made later features cheap to add.

Describe outcomes honestly. If measurable results exist, include them here. If they don't, describe the operational improvements plainly — fewer manual steps, clearer visibility, less time spent reconciling data.

Never invent metrics. An honest, specific outcome is more convincing than an impressive but vague one.

Use this section to show engineering maturity. Answer the interesting questions: Why PostgreSQL and not a document store? Why a modular monolith instead of microservices for a small team? Why this particular migration strategy?

Discuss the trade-offs you accepted and what you'd revisit. This is the section experienced readers care about most.