Beginning in the spring of 1998, Boyd began speaking at education conferences on school information management systems and their role in promoting accountability.
Surprised by the apparent vacuum in this field, Boyd began seeking pilot schools which would adopt a system that combined administrative and curricular functionality.
The product was christened Achieve and Boyd began working with software developers to create a standardized product.
In seeking pilot schools, Boyd received over one hundred applications.
Boyd selected 16 schools and tried to create a set with as much diversity as possible.
In particular, Boyd wanted a mix of school year, Boyd and her team continued to monitor their progress and used ideas from them in developing and refining the Achieve product. While Boyd had a technology director in-house, much of the product development was currently outsourced creating the largest expense for the company.
In December of 1998, Boyd also decided that moving Project Achieve to San-Francisco would be in the best interest of the company.
By June 1999, Boyd felt that Project Achieve had made significant advances in staffing, product development, and the creation of a viable business model.
On the staffing front, the move the San Francisco resulted in the hiring of two key employees--Melissa Williams and Bala Ganesh (see Exhibit 1)—that rounded out the product marketing and development effort.
Recruitment was still a major drain on Boyd’s time, as the labor market in San Francisco proved extremely tight.
Feedback from the pilot schools and the addition of Williams and Ganesh had resulted in a considerably revamped product.
In particular, Achieve was transformed into an entirely Web-based information management system that would be remote hosted.
Boyd and her team chose to move to this architecture to reduce the hardware costs for schools and to take advantage of the scalability provided by the Web.
Full security would be ensured and parents, teachers, and administrators would be able to access the system from work or home.