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PROJECT NOTES AND SAMPLE BREAKDOWNS
- Contact Management
- Office and Business Administration Systems
- Infrastructure Management
- Web and E-Commerce Systems
Managing contact information is critical to the success of the Network's programs. Consulting engagements, network growth and relationship building, event attendance, book sales, and many other areas depend on solid contact information and communications management.
Status
Major and outstanding concerns include:
• Platform and directory technology.
• Data and directory architecture.
• Integration with business, email, and e-commerce systems.
• Access, administration, and security policies.
Some requirements in this area have been captured but need to be reviewed, extended, and prioritized.
We have a collection of contact information stored in an Access database which is more of a prototype than a final, published application. Not all of its features have been put to regular use. I believe one of last year's summer students began work on a new contact database schema design but no design or implementation details have been finalized.
There are a few thousand contact records in the database now. Not all of the available fields have been collected for all records, in part because fields have been added throughout the database's lifetime. Data quality also varies from record to record. We could probably add 20, 50, or even 100 records every month depending on the Network's activity level. The impact of web applications such as the book store on the volume of additions or changes is unknown. However, the database size and activity level will be a minor factor compared to the capacity of the volunteer staff to manage communications.
In my view, the requirements lead to a design based on an LDAP server that is accessible from both inside and outside the office, though any proposed alternatives will be considered. Server location is also a major consideration; I believe external and internal locations are both feasible but present their own challenges, and the choice is not obvious.
Sample Project Milestones
No strict order is implied and the milestones are just for illustration.
• Related standards are sourced and selected where applicable.
• Multiple contact information sources are combined, cleaned, qualified.
• Contact management platform and architecture are chosen.
• Client and process integration mechanisms are determined.
• Client and server application data architecture requirements are compiled.
• Logical record and directory designs are set and refined.
• The system's baseline architecture is implemented.
• Contact information is imported.
• Directory usage rights, policies, procedures are established.
• Email and web client access is implemented.
• The directory goes live for use as general address book.
• Support for remaining key use cases and scenarios is implemented.
• Other clients and applications are integrated and deployed.
This area has consumed the most development effort to date. The current Access database application is the primary legacy system to account for in our development plans.
Three basic areas are covered by the current Access application (rough list, arbitrary divisions):
• Book supply: dealers, publishers, orders, accounts payable
• Book sales: customers, orders, invoices, payments, shipments
• Book inventory and catalog: descriptions, pricing and discounts, inventory counts
Status
There might be significant paper-based or manual components to any given business processes.
Major issues remain and include:
• Whether and where to migrate from Access as a data manager.
• Whether and where to migrate from Access as an application front end.
• What the full set of business requirements are.
• How the current system covers these requirements and which remain to be satisfied.
• What improvements, additions, refactorings the database schema requires.
• How the web, contact, accounting, and retail applications will work together.
The primary risk factors are that when we go live with online book sales we will not be able to cope with the volume of work and will not have all the functionality in place we need to manage it completely.
Sample Project Milestones
Because the overall system requirements are unknown it is difficult to suggest an appropriate list of target milestones.
Aside from determining the complete set of system requirements, an uncontentious set of preliminary deliverables might be:
• As-is Access design documentation, esp. data and process models.
• Research and recommendations on retail functions and database schemas.
• Research and recommendations on hosted or packaged management solutions.
• Clean and complete book description records, including cover image integration.
• Category design and assignment of books to categories.
• An audit and update of Access and Windows data access technologies.
• Prototypes and tests of Access to RDBMS migration alternatives for the backend data engine.
While most systems and applications are taken for granted and work without much fuss, we have a laundry list of our infrastructure's petty annoyances, recurring issues, and a few more serious gaps. An experienced administrator could surely expand the list, and someone which technology planning experience would be of great help too. Note that I consider the web sites and servers to be part of our infrastructure.
A partial list:
• System inventory and documentation review, update.
• Security audits, system scans, Windows updates.
• Application audits and updates.
• Backup system.
• Network-accessible printer setup.
• Standard system configurations.
• User administration and access control, account and password inventory.
• Standard, documented operating procedures for common and important tasks.
• Standard, documented usage and administration policies.
• Web hosting service research and recommendations.
• Medium and long term system capacity planning.
Basically we need to clean up and standardize our system and service setups, determine the best way to manage things from then on, and document this just enough to allow non-technical volunteers to manage most tasks and troubles when a technical person can't be found.
• Medium and long term system capacity planning.
• Web hosting requirements and hosting service recommendations.
• Web-side SLB catalog and store architecture - information, flow, function.
• Technical SLB website architecture - design standards, practices, qulity criteria.
• Accessibility and web standards (XHTML, CSS, ...) conformance.
• Site management process - security, directory structure, update flow, requirements,...
• Dynamic management options: CMS, templates, administration interfaces, ...
• Template design and standard practices for development integration (JSP, PHP, ...).
• Choice and implementation of an appropriate e-commerce platform.
• Publishing an interim catalog.
• Making book cover images web-ready - size, palette, ...
• Evaluation / integration of past Java component work.
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