the humans behind the systems

// rewards platform · major south african telco · summer campaign
// client details anonymised

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This project had a major influence on how I approach software, and it was one of the most formative of my career.

Three to four weeks to build, test, and launch a spin-and-win campaign as the centrepiece of a major South African telco's summer promotion. Every prepaid bundle purchase awards a spin. Spins win data bundles or entries into a draw for millions of Rands. Millions of subscribers. The campaign launches whether we're ready or not.

The technical challenge was real. Billing systems firing spin awards at volume, anti-exploitation controls so free bundles couldn't be gamed, integrations with provisioning and messaging systems, hosting outside the telco's DMZ. But the harder problem was human.

• Multiple enterprise teams, each owning a piece of the integration
• Documentation that described how systems were supposed to work, not how they actually behaved
• A QA process that had to start before all the integrations were functional
• A deadline that existed in our world but not always in theirs

Technical integrations are straightforward. Getting the right person on the phone, the one who actually knows how their system behaves in production, is the work. Enterprise teams are busy. They have their own priorities. The only way to get what you need on time is to genuinely connect with the people behind the systems, not just the systems themselves.

We launched on time. Something built in three weeks ran for five years, eventually expanding to include bundle sales and discounts driven by customer segmentation. At peak, one in four users who were notified that they'd won a spin came back to play.

That number didn't come from the original architecture. It came from years of observing the system, understanding what users actually did, and continuously improving it. You can only do that if you built observability in from the start and stayed close enough to care.