You’re tasked with delivering a new analytics dashboard in Next.js for internal stakeholders who care about both speed and security. How would you plan and execute this project from requirements gathering through release, including how you’d validate you met performance and security expectations?

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VirtualInterview.AI · Accepted Answer

I’d start with a short discovery cycle: sit with stakeholders to nail down the 5–10 core metrics they actually use, target load times (for example, \u003c1.5s to first chart for 90% of requests), and data sensitivity requirements. I also loop in security and infra early to agree on data boundaries and auth.

Architecturally, I’d use Next.js App Router with Route Handlers and Server Components for all data access, and keep dashboards behind SSO with role-based access. Heavy aggregations would be precomputed where possible, so the dashboard mostly reads from optimized views or a warehouse. In a previous project, this cut median load time from ~3.2s to ~1.4s for 2k users.

Before release, I’d run synthetic tests (Lighthouse, WebPageTest) and load tests, and run a basic security review: OWASP checks, secret scanning, and verifying least-privilege DB roles. After launch, I’d monitor Core Web Vitals and access logs to confirm we’re hitting our SLAs.

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