Introduction

d1kit - the One Development Kit, also written dev1kit or ODK - is an all-in-one application development and e-learning ecosystem. It gives teams the ability to launch high-performance web and mobile applications while cutting development time by more than half.

The problem it addresses

Software development projects routinely exceed their duration and their budget, because business needs keep evolving while the project is being built. Industry studies put the proportion of software projects that run over schedule at around 85%, and a typical custom build runs four to twelve months from requirements to production.

Most of that time is not spent on what makes the product distinctive. It goes into the same scaffolding every business system needs: records and the forms that create them, listings and filters, approval routing, permissions, reporting, an audit trail, and integrations with whatever the organisation already runs.

The approach

d1kit takes the same view of software that the Speedee Service System took of restaurants in 1948: standardise the repeatable parts so the whole thing gets faster, cheaper and more consistent - without making the result generic.

The framework provides the operational backbone as configured, ready-made capability. Delivery teams build only the part that is genuinely specific to the organisation.

What you get

Financial accounting - a full double-entry ledger with budgeting, procurement, remittances, bank reconciliation and reporting. See Financial accounting.

Inventory and supply chain - stock control across multiple locations, requisitions, goods receipt, vendor-managed inventory and valuation. See Inventory.

Integration interfaces - a REST API, a GraphQL endpoint for richer queries, and webhooks for event notification, so a d1kit deployment participates in an existing estate rather than standing apart from it.

Around those sit the cross-cutting facilities every deployment relies on: approval workflow, role and privilege management, document handling, notifications, dashboards and reporting.

Track record

d1kit development commenced in 2011, and the first version powered a live eCommerce platform in 2012. Since then it has been used to deliver systems across financial regulation, oil and gas, healthcare, social protection, religious institutions, agriculture and government services - by Maybeach Technologies and by independent partner firms delivering to their own clients.

Deployments built on it manage records at national scale, including a social protection programme covering tens of millions of individuals and the first World Bank-sponsored project in Nigeria to disburse grants electronically.

Who this documentation is for

Two audiences:

1. Organisations evaluating d1kit for a build, who need to know what the platform provides and how it will connect to what they already run.
2. Technical teams integrating with a d1kit deployment, who need the shape of the REST, GraphQL and webhook interfaces.

This documentation is deliberately capability-level. Implementation detail, internal architecture and module source are shared with community members and partner firms under an access agreement - see Request access.

Learn, build, earn

d1kit is also a learning ecosystem. Free online classes take developers from the fundamentals of system analysis through to building on the framework, and members who progress join project teams and earn from delivery work. Providing people with the tools and skills needed for today’s jobs is the point of the whole exercise.