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DeSIC Platform

The DeSIC Platform is a secure, web-based activity management and automation system built for the DeKUT Startup & Incubation Centre (DeSIC) — a unit of Dedan Kimathi University of Technology formed in May 2023 through the merger of two earlier initiatives, DeStaC and DeHUB. The Centre exists to help students and staff turn early-stage ideas into viable businesses through mentorship, training, and staged incubation support.

Before this system existed, DeSIC ran on spreadsheets, email threads, and phone calls. That worked at a small scale, but it left the Centre without a reliable way to track who was at which incubation stage, who was mentoring whom, or what needed a response. The platform replaces that patchwork with a single, role-aware system.

Why it exists​

Problem

Manual coordination doesn't scale. As the number of applicants, events, and active innovators grew, the Centre's administrators found it increasingly hard to track progress, allocate mentors consistently, or respond to updates in a timely way — and innovators had no single place to check their own status.

Approach

Rather than digitizing each spreadsheet in isolation, the platform was designed around three roles — innovator, mentor, and administrator — each with a dashboard scoped to what they need to see and do, backed by one shared, authoritative dataset.

Objectives​

The system was scoped around six specific objectives:

Authentication

Authenticate every user and enforce access strictly along role boundaries.

Applications & profiles

Let innovators apply for events and manage an incubation profile tied to their current stage.

Progress management

Give administrators the tools to filter applications and manage innovators' progress through incubation.

Mentor allocation

Assign mentors to innovators directly, based on incubation level and domain fit.

The remaining two objectives — role-based dashboards for every user type, and automated notifications with downloadable CSV reporting — are covered in Features.

How this documentation is organized​

  • Architecture — the three-tier design, technology choices, and data model.
  • Features — what the system does, functionally and non-functionally.
  • Development Process — how the project was run, from requirements gathering to deployment.
  • Testing & Quality — the test strategy and user acceptance results.
  • Deployment — how the platform is hosted and what it takes to stand up an environment.
  • Results & Analysis — how the delivered system measured up against its plan and budget.
  • Roadmap — where the platform goes next.
New to the project?

Start with Getting Started for a guided setup of a local development environment.