Stage 1: System Study Initiated

The partner has commenced their System Study phase which comprises 3 weeks of study and the deliverbale will be: a) Systems Requirements Statements, b) Technical Feasibility Report (i.e. high level outline how the requirements can be achieved using the intended technology).  Primarily however it is the step required to ensure Partner understands the project and requirements and envisages a viable solution.

It seems one SRS document will be produced per existing website or business unit. This incurs significant effort to write, review and signoff.  Arguably this veritical approach of studing requirements yields a deeper understanding of the requirements of each company.

Partner selected

A Request for Proposal (RFP) process has been held, which saw the schedules and costs projected by potential partners in the project.   A partner has been selected to undertake a) the System Development activities, and b) System Visual Design activities.  The successful incumbent is a large tier 1 Indian offshore software development company. A so-called “onsite/offshore” model will be applied whereby some resources work onsite for a period in order to study and learn the requirements, and then return offshore to work with the design and development team in the construction of the system. 

The cost and schedule of the project have been revised to be based on the Proposal, are now felt to be more realistic and achievable albeit undoubtedly challenging.

Software packages selected

High level evaluation of the requirements against a number packages resulted in the evaluation team unanimously selecting MOSS 2007 and Commerce Server 2007 as the foundation packages. The investment in these commercial strenth applications should ensure the system has good foundations, and can continue to evolve on a roadmap.

Requirements Gathered

A document titled Regional Portal requirements was completed.  Due to the pace/expedience of the project there is risk of inacuracies or omissions.  These are expected to be addressed during a future ‘analysis’ phase.

Asia Pacific Portal Project – Concept

After a nice long xmas holiday break I return to work, and 2007 projects have been listed for me. This year its a short list - one project but which is enormous.  My rough estimate (gut feel) is this is an 12-18 months and AUD$1M+ project. The project ownser and sponsor have stated 6 months and AUD$200K .  Such a big discrepany can be a recipe for a roller coaster project … so I’ll have to find ways of verifying all costs and expectations and driving toward a realistic alignment. 

So I’ve decided to blog as the project progresses: An activity which can be very cathartic for me; Potentially useful for the project team members; Of interest to other Project Managers; and Probably interesting to look back on at some stage.

The project mission: Introduce a regional web-portal platform to replace existing 7 websites (more are believe to exists TBD); moderenise the technology available/used; standardise development and support arrangements; leverage new capabilities for increase ecommerce and online marketing opportunities; standardise business workflows and processes.  The problem it solves is the lack of all the above due to the current “sprawl” of disparate websites and infrastructures.