Software development projects routinely exceed their duration and their budget, because business needs keep evolving while the project is being built. Most of the effort is not spent on what makes an organisation distinctive - it goes into the same operational scaffolding, written again for each new system.

d1kit - the One Development Kit - was started in 2011 to remove that repetition. It provides financial accounting, inventory, approval workflow, access control and reporting as configured capability, so delivery teams build only the part that is genuinely specific to the organisation. In practice this cuts development time by more than half.

It has been in continuous development ever since, and in continuous production use since 2012. The teams who build with it are the teams who maintain what it produced, which is the reason the platform is shaped the way it is.

  • 50%+ Reduction in development time
  • 21 Applications developed
  • 4 Supported programming languages
  • 2011 In continuous development since
Mission

Provide people with the tools and skills needed for today's jobs.

The platform and the community are two halves of one idea. One removes the barrier to delivering software quickly; the other removes the barrier to becoming someone who can.

Standardise what repeats

The operational backbone every business system needs is provided as configured capability. Delivery effort goes to what actually distinguishes the organisation.

Configuration over customisation

The difference between deployments in different sectors is largely chart of accounts, approval rules and reporting lines - not new code. That is where the time saving comes from.

Discretion about what is published

Deployments hold financial records and beneficiary registers for organisations accountable for protecting them. Capability is public; implementation detail is shared under agreement.

Bring people through

Free classes, mentored first projects and paid delivery work. Providing people with the tools and skills needed for today’s jobs is the point, not a by-product.

Learning, since 4 August 2017

We started by giving the answer away

Long before there were classes or a community, there was a question people kept asking: where do I start? On 4 August 2017 we answered it properly - writing down the full list of what a working developer needs to be knowledgeable in, publishing it as a publicly accessible document, and handing out the link to anyone who asked.

Nothing was gated and nothing was sold. That document is still live today, and the classes, the internships and the route from learning to paid delivery work all grew out of it.

History

How it got here

  1. 2011
    Development commences

    Work begins on a framework to reduce the repeated effort in web-based project implementation.

  2. 2012
    First version in production

    A form generator - the first version of the kit - powers a live eCommerce platform. Maybeach Technologies Limited is incorporated the same year.

  3. 2013
    First major deployment

    A budget reconciliation tool delivered in the oil and gas sector, through a consulting partner.

  4. 2016
    Health records

    The platform is adopted as the foundation for an electronic health record system, later deployed across multiple providers.

  5. 2017
    The learning guide goes public

    On 4 August 2017 the list of what a developer needs to be knowledgeable in is published as a publicly accessible document and shared with anyone who asks where to start. Everything that followed - classes, internships, the community - grew from it.

  6. 2017
    Regulatory workflow

    A financial regulator’s workflow processing system is rebuilt on the platform in two months.

  7. 2019
    National scale

    Platform-based data collection underpins a social protection programme covering tens of millions of individuals, and the first tutorial cohort runs on Google Classroom.

  8. 2020
    Institutional adoption

    Organisations adopt the kit as a standard development tool rather than a project-specific choice.

  9. 2022
    Second implementation

    A Java implementation commences alongside the original, for organisations whose estate requires it.

Where it runs

Sectors served

Systems built on d1kit are operated by the organisations that own them, across financial regulation, healthcare, social protection and beyond. We describe deployments by sector rather than by name: publishing which organisation runs which system on which platform serves no one but an attacker.

  • Financial regulation
  • Oil & gas
  • Healthcare
  • Social protection
  • Religious institutions
  • Agriculture
  • Government services
  • Cooperative societies

Who builds with it

d1kit is used by independent firms delivering to their own clients, not only by its authors. Partner firms hold their own client relationships and run their own deployments, and are accountable to their own clients for them. Maybeach Technologies maintains the platform and the community around it.

Get in touch

Evaluating the platform, or want to join?

Whether you are considering d1kit for a build, integrating with a deployment, or looking to learn it and join a project team - one form reaches a person.