From an Excel tool to leading teams that build software

In July 2019 the first software that people relied on from me was an Excel workbook. Teachers at Musamvu TVET School entered marks, and it produced the report cards they had been making largely by hand. Seven years later I lead technology teams. The tools changed completely. What I learned in between did not.

A workbook first

I did not start with a web application. Teachers already used Excel, so I built the report system inside it, with its built-in functions and formulas. On 23 July 2019 I published a video guide for it, and on 4 November 2019 a second one for the full-year report. The school became my first client: it agreed to pay half of my school fees for the work.

The workbook proved the idea before any server existed. It also became the specification for what came next.

From a file to a system

On 8 February 2020 I presented the web version, RASMS (Roger's Advanced School Management System), to the school's general parents' meeting. It brought marks, discipline, permissions, finance and SMS to parents into one system, and the meeting agreed that the school would use it.

Then the conditions changed. When schools reopened after COVID on 2 November 2020, RASMS had to run without internet, so I packaged the application, the web server and the database into one Windows installer. Some teachers' computers were too slow to produce reports, so I built encrypted .rasms backups that let a weak machine hand its data to a stronger one. In January 2023 RASMS went online at musamvutss.hdev.rw, so teachers could work together remotely.

From one maintainer to a team

For the offline releases I was the only maintainer, and I fixed crashes overnight. That showed me the limit of working alone, and it is one of the reasons I went on to build a company and work in teams.

In October 2022 I registered HDEV TECH Ltd. We were two people: UWAYEZU Jean Felix and me. In 2024 I led the team that won the ICP Rwanda Hackathon with TransFund, with UWAYEZU Jean Felix, TURIKUMWENIMANA Daniel and NSHUTI Emmanuel. Since September 2024 I have managed SMS gateway infrastructure as Infrastructure Manager at Trust SMS Uganda.

In 2026 the work became leadership. In May I became Chief Technology Officer at GeoTesta Rwanda Ltd, leading the technology team and direction for AI and data-science products. In July I became Senior Software Engineer at ITEC Ltd, where I had joined as a Software Developer in September 2024. I still run HDEV TECH.

What I took from it

Start where people already work. Teachers trusted a workbook in a tool they knew before they trusted a new system. Teams adopt change the same way.

Design for the real conditions, not the demo. Offline schools and slow computers decided the architecture of RASMS more than any technology choice did.

Systems need more than one person behind them. Overnight fixes kept one school running, but a team is what keeps software healthy. That is the work I do now: helping people build systems that outlast any one of us.