Building accessible federal software under fixed deadlines with a distributed development team
Services Provided
Custom Web Application Development, UI/UX Implementation, Section 508 Accessibility Compliance, Staff Augmentation
Project Technologies
AngularJS | TypeScript | Alfabet REST API | HTML5 | CSS
Industry Served
Federal Government, Healthcare Administration
Team Composition
1 Senior Developer (Twin Sun), integrated with partner architects and agency contractors
Project Duration
4 months
TLDR
Twin Sun partnered with a systems integration firm as a subcontractor on a federal healthcare agency project to replace a SharePoint-based technology inventory survey with a custom web application backed by Alfabet enterprise architecture software. The existing system required 10 people nine months to clean survey data each year due to inconsistent free-text entry. Working within a complex multi-vendor team structure, Twin Sun built a modular interface architecture that allowed distributed developers to work independently while maintaining system coherence. When scope creep threatened the fixed deadline, Twin Sun presented velocity data that forced prioritization of essential features. The team also remediated Section 508 accessibility issues and Internet Explorer compatibility problems that emerged late in the project. The survey launched on schedule, and the collaboration established a lasting partnership between Twin Sun and that firm for future government work.
The Challenge
A federal healthcare agency ran an annual technology inventory survey to catalog every piece of technology used across the entire organization. The existing SharePoint-based system allowed free-text entry, which meant survey responses came back in whatever format or fidelity each respondent felt like providing.
The result: it took 10 people nine months to clean and normalize the data after each survey year. SharePoint was not enforcing the consistency the agency needed.
The agency decided to migrate to Alfabet, an enterprise architecture platform. A pilot run using Alfabet’s built-in data wizards proved the concept was viable, but the out-of-box UI had too many limitations. They needed a fully custom web interface that could enforce data quality at the point of entry while still leveraging Alfabet’s backend for analysis and reporting.
A systems integration firm specializing in that platform won the contract but needed a development partner with custom web application experience. That’s where Twin Sun came in.
Our Solution
This was a new situation for Twin Sun. On most projects, Twin Sun acts as the primary development team and often manages the project directly. On this engagement, Twin Sun was a subcontractor under a subcontractor, one part of a larger development effort that included agency contractors, the partner’s architects, and a three-person stakeholder committee making decisions by consensus.
The first challenge was coordinating development work across multiple developers who reported to different people and had different technical approaches. To avoid constant merge conflicts, the team established a common interface that all survey pages would conform to. This allowed different developers to work independently on different pages without stepping on each other. The interface managed wizard flow and navigation while leaving implementation details to individual developers.
This modular approach paid dividends when requirements shifted. When the agency added a requirement to save draft responses mid-survey, the team adjusted the page interface to accommodate draft data persistence. That kind of change happened a few times, but the underlying architecture was flexible enough to absorb it.
The Results
The survey launched on schedule. The agency had a working application that enforced data consistency at the point of entry, potentially saving months of manual data cleaning each survey year.
More importantly, the modular architecture allowed the system to evolve. Pages could be added or modified for future survey years without rearchitecting the application.
From Twin Sun’s perspective, the engagement demonstrated that the company could succeed in a different kind of role, as a specialist contributor within a larger team rather than running the entire show. The collaboration with our partner was complementary: they brought deep expertise in Alfabet and enterprise architecture; Twin Sun brought accessibility experience, cross-browser compatibility knowledge, and custom web application development skills. Neither team could have delivered the full solution alone.
The relationship outlasted the project. The two firms collaborated again on another government engagement and remain open to working together when the right opportunities arise.
The Math Problem
The larger issue was scope creep. Without a clear picture of “good enough” for the first survey year, stakeholders kept adding features. Every time someone saw a completed page, they had feedback. Rework was frequent. Every week, the backlog grew larger rather than smaller.
About two months before the fixed release deadline, Twin Sun did the math. Based on the team’s velocity and the remaining work in the backlog, there was no way to complete everything on time. The deadline was immovable; the survey had to go out on a specific date to give teams time to analyze and clean the data for the following year’s resource planning.
During a morning standup, when asked if anyone had concerns, Twin Sun stated plainly: we cannot complete everything in time. The recommendation was to start prioritizing immediately to ensure the most critical features were done.
The room went quiet. Then the debate began. But the numbers were clear. Velocity data, backlog growth rate, remaining work estimates, it all pointed the same direction. No one wanted to cut scope, but they understood the constraints. The conversation shifted from “can we get everything done” to “what matters most.”
That forced prioritization allowed the team to focus. Over the following two months, they completed the essential features, integrated with Alfabet’s REST APIs, and collaborated closely with the partner’s architects on data structures for storage and retrieval.
Accessibility and Cross-Browser Support
As federal software, the application had to be accessible to users with screen readers, high contrast needs, and other accommodations — a requirement that wasn’t fully built into the specifications and designs from day one, so the team moved quickly to close the gap. Twin Sun’s development approach made that easier than it might have been: the team had used semantic HTML5 elements wherever possible and relied on CSS for styling rather than JavaScript-heavy DOM manipulation, so the codebase was already more accessible than typical web applications. The team installed multiple screen readers on development machines, tested interactions, and addressed the most obvious issues before bringing in an external auditor, which made the formal Section 508 audit simpler and faster.
Browser compatibility was a late-project challenge: the application had to support Internet Explorer 11, which introduced rendering inconsistencies with modern CSS and JavaScript. Polyfill libraries addressed most issues. The survey shipped on schedule, fully compliant and working across every browser the agency needed — a strong finish to a project that started with a near-impossible deadline and ended with a partnership both teams wanted to repeat.
