Tuesday 6 January 2009
The Big Oxford Computer Co. Ltd.

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Project Management System Requirements Analysis Case Study - Making Local Food Work

Overview

'Making Local Food Work' - community enterprise connecting land and people through food, is a Big Lottery funded initiative managed by the Plunkett Foundation. The five year partnership programme is aimed at reconnecting people and land through issues of food: access to fresh, healthy, local food and food that has a clear provenance.

http://www.makinglocalfoodwork.org.uk/

Objectives

To determine the requirements for the development of a Project Management System (PMS) for The Plunkett Foundation and the other Making Local Food Work (MLFW) Partners, which will aid the project officers in the daily task and responsibility of effectively and professionally managing each of the projects as well as the programme as a whole.

Solution

It was the task of our systems development consultants to run a series of requirements analysis sessions with the Programme Team at MLFW. It was determined that the MLFW programme is a 5 year programme funded by the Big Lottery Fund and managed by the Plunkett Foundation as the portfolio holder. The portfolio has overall project management responsibility for the MLFW programme.

There are 10 projects that report back to the portfolio. The portfolio has 5 outcomes that it must show at its conclusion. Each of these outcomes will be supported by evidence collected by the individual projects.

We identified the following main PMS requirements:

  • User and security integration with the new MLFW CMS
  • Track project and portfolio activity
  • Tally beneficiary numbers
  • Create and tally media and communication activity
  • Generate project and portfolio reports incorporating the above information
  • Create a shared database for contact information

It was agreed that the PMS would be developed as a bespoke system to match the requirements of the Programme, but that it would integrate seamlessly with the security infrastructure of the existing MLFW portal website CMS. This will enable existing authorised users to log in to the CMS and see a summary of relevant PMS information. From within the CMS, logged in users that have PMS access will be able to seamlessly access the PMS.

A functional specification was provided to MLFW for review and sign-off prior to the commencement of the system visual and interface design and actual web development. 

Technologies

The system will utilise:

  • Microsoft™ SQL Server 2005
  • Adobe® ColdFusion®
  • AJAX
  • Microsoft Internet Information Server
  • Fully managed dedicated web server at BOCC
  • SSL (Secure Server Certificate)
  • Extensible HyperText Markup Language 1.0
  • Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 2.0 Compliant