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Structura Planner

A SaaS tool for Business Analysts, built from scratch in 17 days with AI.

Structura Planner — A planning tool that actually speaks BABOK

Project Overview

Role: Solo Founder — Product Designer, Developer, Marketer
Timeline: 17 calendar days from first commit to production
Stack: Next.js 15, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, AWS Amplify Gen 2, DynamoDB
AI Partner: Claude (Anthropic) as autonomous coding co-founder
Live at: structuraplanner.com

The Challenge

The Business Analyst’s Planning Problem

Business Analysts structure projects using the BABOK v3 framework — the industry standard published by IIBA, covering 6 Knowledge Areas, 50+ techniques, and dozens of deliverables. Yet there’s no tool designed specifically for this workflow.

The current reality:

  1. Fragmented tools
    • BAs juggle Excel spreadsheets, Confluence pages, Word documents, and shared drives
    • No single workspace understands the BABOK structure
    • Project plans are assembled manually, every time
  2. Knowledge gap
    • Junior BAs don’t know which techniques apply to which phase
    • Senior BAs waste time recreating structures they’ve built before
    • Team leads can’t ensure consistency across projects
  3. Market gap
    • Sparx Systems EA: Too complex, enterprise-priced, not guided
    • BA-Toolkit: Passive reference material, no project builder
    • IIBA KnowledgeHub: Paywalled, no compilation or export
    • BA Copilot: Narrow scope (BPMN diagrams only)

The hypothesis: A guided, BABOK-native planning tool — one that walks BAs through each Knowledge Area, recommends techniques based on methodology, and compiles an exportable project plan — could fill a real gap.

I knew this firsthand. After earning my IIBA Entry Certificate in Business Analysis, I experienced the same fragmented workflow. So I built the tool I wished existed.

My Role: Everything

This wasn’t a team project with handoffs. I owned the entire product lifecycle:

Product & Strategy:

  • Identified the market gap from personal domain experience
  • Defined product scope, pricing model (freemium with Paddle billing), and go-to-market
  • Researched competitors and validated positioning through LinkedIn campaigns

Design:

  • Designed the complete visual identity — the “V4 Immersive” dark/gold aesthetic
  • Built a three-layer design token system (primitives, semantic, component)
  • Created HTML prototypes for every screen before writing production code
  • Iterated through 4 landing page concepts and 3 internal UI variants

Development:

  • Built the full-stack application with Next.js 15 and AWS Amplify Gen 2
  • Implemented authentication (Cognito), database (DynamoDB), billing (Paddle)
  • Wrote BDD test suites with Cucumber.js
  • Managed git branching strategy (dev → staging → main) with atomic commits

Marketing:

  • Wrote all copy, created LinkedIn ad creatives, ran a targeted campaign
  • Built a waitlist system with Resend transactional emails
  • Drafted a Medium article: “I Built a SaaS Product in 17 Days. My Co-Founder Is an AI.”

The AI-Native Build Process

17 Days. 714 Commits. 1 Person. 1 AI Partner.

By the numbers

This project was a deliberate experiment in AI-native product development. I used Claude not as an assistant but as an autonomous engineering partner, while I retained full creative and strategic control.

How it worked:

I decided what to build. Product vision, user flows, information architecture, visual design, and every strategic trade-off were mine. The AI never chose what feature to build next or how the product should look.

AI wrote the code. Using a structured workflow (GSD framework), every task was atomic: one task, one commit, one state update. Claude executed implementation against my specifications, with BDD tests verifying every change.

I reviewed everything. Every commit was reviewed. Every UI change was visually verified against HTML prototypes. The AI’s output was high-quality but not infallible — the designer’s eye caught what tests couldn’t.

The result: A production SaaS with authentication, billing, database, three export formats, and a full marketing landing page — shipped in 17 calendar days. Not a prototype. Not a demo. A real product, live at structuraplanner.com.

Design System: V4 “The Immersive”

A Dark/Gold Aesthetic with Depth

Projects List

The visual direction was intentional from the start: dark, dramatic, and warm. Not the cold utility of enterprise tools, not the sterile whiteness of generic SaaS. Something that signals premium craft.

Color palette:

  • Background: #0C0B0A — warm dark, never flat black. Layered surfaces: #100F0D → #161514 → #1C1B19
  • Primary accent: Gold #F5C518 — CTAs, active states, hover borders, serif italic keywords
  • Text hierarchy: Warm off-white #F0EDE8 for headings, pure white for body, #9A9590 for tertiary
  • Borders: rgba(255,255,255,0.07) default, rgba(245,197,24,0.18) on hover

Typography system:

  • Sans: Helvetica Neue (weight 100 for hero headlines — ultra-thin, editorial)
  • Serif accent: Instrument Serif italic — used for single emphasized keywords in headings (the “guizzo” pattern): e.g., structured. in gold
  • Scale: Major Third ratio (1.26), base 1rem, ranging from 0.5rem to 5.04rem

Signature details:

  • Glassmorphic fixed header with backdrop-filter: blur(24px) saturate(1.2)
  • Ambient body glow: radial gold gradient at 3% opacity
  • Gold CTA shimmer sweep on hover
  • Technique card gold radial glow on hover
  • Bento-grid layout for BABOK Knowledge Areas section

Three-Layer Token Architecture

Following the approach I established at Duskrise, the design system uses a strict variable hierarchy:

  • Primitives → Raw values (#F5C518, 16px, 700)
  • Semantic tokens → Purpose-driven references (color.accent.primary, spacing.card.padding)
  • Component tokens → Scoped to UI elements (button.cta.background, phase-card.border.hover)

This architecture ensures no arbitrary values exist in the codebase. Change one primitive, the entire system updates.

Key Screens

Project Detail — Phase Timeline

Project Detail

Each project flows through a sequential phase timeline mapping to the 6 BABOK Knowledge Areas. Users see their project status at a glance: which phases are planned, which are active, which are complete. The methodology tag (Agile, Waterfall, Hybrid) sets smart defaults for technique and deliverable selections.

Phase Editor — Technique & Deliverable Selection

Phase Editor

The core interaction: a two-column editor where BAs select techniques (left) and deliverables (right) for each Knowledge Area. Techniques are filterable by category and complexity. The sidebar summarizes selections and notes. Navigation flows sequentially — Previous/Next with auto-save — so the planning experience feels guided, never overwhelming.

The BABOK Foundation

6 Knowledge Areas

Every project walks through all 6 BABOK Knowledge Areas:

  1. BA Planning & Monitoring — Governance approach, stakeholder engagement
  2. Elicitation & Collaboration — Techniques for gathering and confirming requirements
  3. Requirements Life Cycle Management — Tracing, maintaining, prioritizing requirements
  4. Strategy Analysis — Current state, future state, risk assessment
  5. Requirements Analysis & Design Definition — Modeling, specifying, verifying
  6. Solution Evaluation — Assessing solution performance and value

Go-to-Market

Pricing model: Freemium

  • Free: 1 project (full functionality)
  • Pro Monthly: €4.99/month
  • Pro Annual: €39/year
  • Lifetime Early Adopter: €99 (limited to first 100 seats)

LinkedIn campaign (March 2026):

  • 5 posts over 2 weeks: pain point carousel, how-it-works, 50+ techniques, pricing, methodology poll
  • 3 ad variants A/B tested with €200 budget
  • Campaign monitored every 6 hours with automated logging

Positioning: “Stop planning your BA projects in 5 different tabs. One workspace for all 6 Knowledge Areas. Select techniques, choose deliverables, export your project plan.”

Results & Reflection

What shipped:

  • Full SaaS application with auth, billing, and database
  • 50+ BABOK techniques mapped across 6 Knowledge Areas
  • 4 methodology templates (Waterfall, Agile, Hybrid, Blank)
  • 3 export formats: Markdown, PDF (with branded layout), Slideshow
  • Complete marketing landing page with testimonials and pricing
  • Waitlist system and transactional email infrastructure

What this project proves:

  1. Designers who code ship faster. The developer-to-designer trajectory isn’t just a resume line — it collapses the design-to-implementation feedback loop to zero.

  2. AI amplifies, it doesn’t replace. Claude wrote 714 commits of production code. But the product decisions, visual design, UX flows, and strategic positioning were entirely human. AI is the best multiplier a designer can have — if you know what to multiply.

  3. Domain expertise creates better products. I didn’t design this tool from a brief. I designed it from frustration. The IIBA certification wasn’t decorative — it was the foundation for understanding exactly what BAs need and where existing tools fall short.

  4. One person can build a real SaaS. Not a landing page with a waitlist. Not a Figma prototype. A production application with authentication, billing, database, exports, and marketing — in 17 days.

Try it: structuraplanner.com