Portal for Online Service

Management (POSM)

Progress

Project Outline

People

Progress

In April

• Completion of Initiation and Planning phase.

• Started gathering requirements by having regular meetings with the sponsor.

• Completed the 1st class presentation.

• Handed over the Project Schedule document.

In May

• Continued with Requirements Gathering.

• Started drawing up UML Use Case diagrams.

• End of the meetings which were related to Requirements Gathering.

• Started writing up the Functional Requirements Specification document needed by Augen.

• Began logical database design.

In June

• Completed the2nd class presentation.

• Handed over the Project Specification document needed by the university.

• Exam break.

In July

• Continued with Functional Requirements Specification document.

• Began physical database design.

• End of Requirements Analysis and Design phase.

• Had a formal meeting to Scope the project.

• Beginning of writing up Objects and Stored Procedures.

In August

• Continuation of writing up Objects and Stored Procedures.

• Coding the system.

In September

• Continuation of system coding.

• Set up of weekly deliverables with the sponsor.

• Delivering parts of the system each week.

• Final Presentation preparation.

In October

• Wrapping up system coding.

• Preparation of final documentation.

• Technical documentation handed over.

• System handed over.

• The End.

Deadlines Yet To Be Met

Project Outline

The Company

Augen (NZ) Limited was founded in 1993 to provide IT services that add value by improving business efficiency and effectiveness through custom-developed software applications.

Augen is a professional IT firm, providing a full range of consulting and development services in the past 10 years. The company has a wide array of experience in different industries, functional units within those industries, as well as types of systems within those functional units. It provides the company with the ability to take on complete projects, or apply the expertise to only specific phases of the project cycle.

As a Microsoft Certified Partner, the company specialise in developing applications using mostly (but not exclusively) Microsoft programming tools, database platforms and technologies. Augen is also the New Zealand system implementation partner for Onyx CRM software.

Project Aim

The aim is to re-develop an application that helps the user organisations in the health industry to manage the services which they provide to their clients. The proposed system, Portal for Online Service Management (POSM), will be developed using the latest technologies that will replace and enhance the current system which is implemented nationwide. The main emphasis on POSM is its scalability, flexibility and robustness which enable the product to be competed in the international marketplace.

Current System & The Limitations

The current system is an MS Access application built upon an MS Access database. The first version of this was written in 1996 which was updated in 1999. It is specifically designed for use in a local area network.

The system itself deals with three major entities: services, service providers and clients. The users of the system manage these three entities and how they interact with each other. Managers can allocate services to service providers so they will carry out for the clients. The application currently generates timesheets for providers, allows the managers to run reports on various aspects of the system and it creates invoices and payroll details for other applications to use.

There are a few limitations for the current system:

·        Low Market Strength

The trend today is multi-tiered application with a web front end. MS Access application is difficult to stand ground in the current competitive market.

·        Inflexible

MS Access application is not very flexible in terms of minor changes on some of the functions of the system.

·        Not Customisable

The current system causes considerable amount of difficulty for customization of both the business rules and style of the interface to suit individual customers’ needs but with a web based system it would be easily manageable.

Proposed System

POSM will deliver all the functionality of the current system as well as extra functions required to enhance the application. It will be a web based application allowing user will to access it over the internet. It will be based on a 3-tiered web based architecture using ASP.NET as the front end. The middle tier will contain all the business logics required to control access to the back end database.

The proposed system will be designed to accommodate two sales models. It could follow an application service provider model. Clients will pay for licenses that allow them to access this application over the internet, where the servers would be maintained and serviced by Augen. Since the centralised database will hold all the data from multiple organisations, security measure will be put in place to ensure that an organisation will only be able to access the data within its own domain. Thus multiple branches of an organisation can be considered to be in the same domain.

Alternatively, the complete application can be sold as a whole to a client organisation. This packaged product will allow the client to setup and maintain its own environment and use the system either through the organisation’s intranet or over the internet. This approach will be more suitable for larger organisations to achieve economy of scale.

Features of POSM:

·        Competitive

Current market demands multi-tiered web application using cutting edge technologies.

·        Customisable

It is expected the new application would be customisable at both the application layer and the business logic layer according to customer requirements. This can be achieved through the use of style sheets and object oriented programming.

·        Manageability

In the application service provider model, servers are situated within Augen’s premises. Thus enable centralised management, deployment and maintenance of the application both easily and effectively.

Target Business Benefits

The new application is expected to provide the following benefits to the business:

·        Enables Augen to compete in the international marketplace since the new application will be based on more current technology.

·        The availability of two sales models open up options to the clients thus allows appeal to a boarder range of organisation sizes.

·        Attract more clients as it is easily customisable to suit individual organisation.

Major Activities

Initiation and Planning

            It would include an extensive project overview and scoping the project, followed by the development of the preliminary project schedule.

Requirements Analysis

This phase would involve user requirements gathering sessions with the clients, and putting the information gathered into UML Use Case models. Drafting out the workflows of the entities involved with the proposed system (POSM).

Design

This is subdivided into two design phases: Logical Design and Physical Design. It involves designing and modelling the database, crafting the architecture (for both software and hardware). Designing user interfaces, and to create small prototypes of POSM.

Development & Documentation

The development phase would include coding the proposed system according to the design. System documentations (help files and manuals) will also be created at this stage.

Testing & Implementation

Testing of the new system would take place here in the final phase. Bug fixing, and quality assurance of the system will also be carried out here. Finally, the deployments of POSM on live the servers.

People