Lizzie’s Leather Belts | Web Portal Development Essay.

Lizzie’s Leather Belts Personnel

A discussion of the professional and legal issuesthat may arise when developing or runningthe website.

Case: Lizzie’s Leather Belts Web-based Order Handling Service

Lizzie’s Leather Belts is a medium-sized company which sells over 50 different styles of leather belt. The company is 10 years old and has grown steadily over the last year mainly due to an aggressive marketing drive aimed at local retail outlets. They would now like to expand further by asking their leather belts available to the general public via a website that must be deployed as soon as possible, hopefully within 3 months.

Lizzie’s Leather Belts Personnel

The Managing Director – the driving force behind the project and the budget holder. She has also put aside time in a busy diary to be available for this project

The Finance Director – keen to be involved, but can be prone to doing a perfect job and is always too busy to attend meetings

The Operations Director – has been with the company for 2 years and was a senior team member from the business community on a previous similar project. Also responsible for the Order Handling Clerks and happy to make at least one available for the project. Keen to be involved and has made space in his diary. Well informed about what is going on in the company

Chief Accountant – generally represents the Finance Director at meetings and is empowered to make decisions on behalf of the Finance Director. Has worked in all departments within the company over the years. Passed accountancy exams 2 years ago.

The Warehouse Manager – not available for the project, but happy to make at least one Warehouse Operative available for the project.

The Marketing Director – available for the project and is also a certified Workshop Facilitator and Agile Project Manager

True Concepts

True Concepts is a software development consultancy located on the same industrial estate as Lizzie’s Leather Belts. They have purpose built rooms for working with clients and like to work closely with clients on projects. They assign a dedicated team for each of their projects. The team can be located on-site or off-site.

True Concepts Personnel

Julie – available for the project, she is a very good programmer with a good working knowledge of web development and a good communicator

Jeff – available for the project, he is an excellent web developer, but has been known to have stand-up arguments with customers

Sophie – available for the project, she has good website development skills and works for the Samaritans in her spare time

Jonathan – available for the project, he has worked on several projects as a Team Leader and has a very good understanding of website development

Ken – available for 2 days a week throughout the project and has a good understanding of web development and testing

Jonathan from True Concepts had an initial meeting with several Directors at Lizzie’s Leather Belts and wrote down some notes. Afterwards he also wrote down some of his own ideas because he had only gained partial insights from the meeting.

Directors meeting Oct 23^rd

New products come on line all the time. Still have a very good business selling to suppliers in department stores, markets and big outlets. They talked about running an innovative marketing campaign to get the web site going. Various ideas – short film, social media, find a vlogger who can to promote to young people. Customers need to know about the brand and maybe get some special discounts

Managing Director wants a monthly report to see how well the online sales are going and how they compare to other sales – put against costs to see profit and return on investment.

If customers are going to use the site it needs to accept several different forms of payment. Also ensure that transactions are secure. Also look at data protection legislation - GDPR.

This initiative will mean they will change their stocking approach. Long discussion about how they currently manage their stock. They will need to have a very accurate view of stock availability, especially since we send big batches to our other customers. If stock isn’t available remove from site.

Extra notes – customers want a browse-able site, with good searches … category, colour, style etc. and to look good on mobile/tablet/laptop views. Secure log in, easy-to-use shopping cart and a variety of delivery options and payment options.

Lizzie’s Leather Belts Personnel

The Lizzie Leather Company has been expanding the business through establishing six different centers at the different places. It is a crucial aspect for the successful implementation of this expansion is to manage an effective and efficient communication between all the centers. The aim of this report is to emphasize on the project management approach that could be an effective approach for the accomplishment of the objectives and goals of the organization. This report also explains the difference between the individual work and teamwork and a communication plan has been introduced that is applicable in communicating with the team members and introducing them about the change. Hosting a web portal will need certain legal contracts and policies for ensuring the security and privacy of the data or information being exchanged or stored in the network.

Agile Scrum methodology can be suggested as the best approach for the developing and testing the software and manipulating the scope of the project towards the aims and objectives of the organization. Scrum can be defined as the process within the agile methodology that has been nothing but the combination of the incremental model and iterative model (Agarwal 2017). The waterfall methodology has been in practiced for very long however; the major drawback of the waterfall model is that it does not allow the activity to be accomplished unless the previous activity has been completed. The proposed methodology has not any such restrictions that previous activity must be completed for next execution. Other fallback of the waterfall methodology was that a single change in activity would have affected the overall growth and development of the project. Scrum process provides flexibility in the project and it is change acceptable, as the change in any single activity will not affect the whole project constraints (Ghafoor, Shah and Rashid 2017). It allows the team members from different backgrounds to be combined in a team and accomplish the objectives and goals of the project. It allows the stakeholders to proceed the project as per the goals and objectives set for the project during the initiation and planning phase. Sprint backlog is another technique introduced by this methodology introducing the record and milestones are to be delivered within the estimated budget and time. There are five crucial phases included in this methodology emphasizing on the planning for the meeting and ensuring that every stakeholder attends the meeting and put forward their thoughts about the pas of the project, present growth and development, and ensuring in future the project will be delivered within the estimated budget and time (Annosi, Martini and Magnusson 2018). The second phase emphasize on the execution of the tasks enlisted during the sprint backlog development and ensuring that the objectives listed in the “to-do” section is converted in “done.” Third phase is nothing but ‘daily standup’ that focuses on the regular meeting execution for the record of the growth and development of the project. It will be focusing on the achievements those have been left for the accomplishment and what things have been done previously and are helpful in ensuring that the project moves as per the planned way (Huijgens et al. 2017). The next phase emphasizes on the retrospective meeting that is nothing but the meeting with the stakeholders after reviewing the overall growth and development of the project during review session.

True Concepts

WBS	Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish	Predecessors
0	Web Portal for Lizzies	99 days	Mon 4/16/18	Thu 8/30/18
1	Phase 1: Initiation	13 days	Mon 4/16/18	Wed 5/2/18
1.1	Requirement Analysis	2 days	Mon 4/16/18	Tue 4/17/18
1.2	Problem Findings	3 days	Wed 4/18/18	Fri 4/20/18	2
1.3	Benefits analyzing for then proposed solution	2 days	Mon 4/23/18	Tue 4/24/18	3
1.4	Determination of the needs and requirements of Lizzies	3 days	Wed 4/25/18	Fri 4/27/18	4
1.5	Draft Preparation for the project	3 days	Mon 4/30/18	Wed 5/2/18	5
2	Phase 2: Planning	23 days	Thu 5/3/18	Mon 6/4/18
2.1	Assigning Roles and Responsibilities of team members	5 days	Thu 5/3/18	Wed 5/9/18	6
2.2	Determination of the Activities for initiation	3 days	Thu 5/10/18	Mon 5/14/18	8
2.3	Communication with Stakeholders	2 days	Tue 5/15/18	Wed 5/16/18	9
2.4	Determination of budget	2 days	Thu 5/17/18	Fri 5/18/18	10
2.5	Determination of schedule	4 days	Mon 5/21/18	Thu 5/24/18	11
2.6	Project Approval	5 days	Fri 5/25/18	Thu 5/31/18	12
2.7	Team Selection	2 days	Fri 6/1/18	Mon 6/4/18	13
3	Phase 3: Execution	41 days	Tue 6/5/18	Tue 7/31/18
3.1	Allocating the identified resources	5 days	Tue 6/5/18	Mon 6/11/18	14
3.2	Hardware requirement analysis	3 days	Tue 6/12/18	Thu 6/14/18	16
3.3	Software requirement analysis	3 days	Fri 6/15/18	Tue 6/19/18	17
3.4	Development and Growth execution	5 days	Wed 6/20/18	Tue 6/26/18	18
3.5	Subscribing cloud services	2 days	Wed 6/27/18	Thu 6/28/18	19
3.6	Database management system installation	15 days	Fri 6/29/18	Thu 7/19/18	20
3.7	Web portal Development	8 days	Fri 7/20/18	Tue 7/31/18	21
4	Phase 4: Monitoring and Controlling	14 days	Wed 8/1/18	Mon 8/20/18
4.1	Evaluating the developed system	3 days	Wed 8/1/18	Fri 8/3/18	22
4.2	Testing Portal	2 days	Mon 8/6/18	Tue 8/7/18	24
4.3	Launching Web Portal	3 days	Wed 8/8/18	Fri 8/10/18	25
4.4	Identifying errors	2 days	Mon 8/13/18	Tue 8/14/18	26
4.5	Determination of the risks	2 days	Wed 8/15/18	Thu 8/16/18	27
4.6	Risk Management	2 days	Fri 8/17/18	Mon 8/20/18	28
5	Phase 5: Project Closure	8 days	Tue 8/21/18	Thu 8/30/18
5.1	Hand over portal to the management	2 days	Tue 8/21/18	Wed 8/22/18	29
5.2	Project Documentation	3 days	Thu 8/23/18	Mon 8/27/18	31
5.3	Stakeholder Sign Off	2 days	Tue 8/28/18	Wed 8/29/18	32
5.4	Legally detaching the stakeholders from project	1 day	Thu 8/30/18	Thu 8/30/18	33

 

 Teamwork is always a beneficial aspect for the execution of any project in an efficient and effective manner as it allows team members to accomplish the single objective through applying different skills of other team members. Teamwork and its importance came into account since from the beginning of the life and allowing individuals to understand the importance of the teamwork. The task or action can be completed in an efficient manner through the contribution made by different individuals with different skills and provides the various views of the certain activity (Krishna et al. 2017). It is also a helpful measure for getting support and help from other team members that is a crucial aspect for motivating the team members to achieve the goals and objectives of the project. Come of the benefits of the teamwork can be explained as below:

Better Results: It can be stated that the work being accomplished by the contribution of the teamwork, the results are mostly positive if managed and communicated in an efficient and effective manner (Finkelman 2015). Better outcomes has been always recorded if a team is involved for the accomplishment of the certain activities of the project.

Efficient and effective: As explained above teamwork allows combining the thoughts of individuals belonging to different culture and thoughts and thus, innovation or new ideas can be generated (Xiong, Tang and Medlin 2018). This generated idea can be easily manipulated into the benefits for the project in an efficient and effective manner.

Mutual Support: It has been reported that the individuals within the team can support the other colleagues for accomplishing the certain activity or job within the project. This support can bring motivation within the employees for accomplishing the goals and objectives set by the organization.

Sense of Accomplishment: The ratio of the accomplishments done by an individual member has been extremely high however; teamwork allows them to communicate with each other and implement the experience or thoughts of other in personal ideas (Ahraf and Aftab 2017).

 Unequal participation: the individual within a team might think of dragging himself back from accomplishing the activities and think of that some else will complete the task. It makes them the viewers for the project who are not contributing in the project.

Not Team Players: Some of the individuals might not be able to work within the team and thus, their efficiency might be decreased (Stackz Heckman and Shamshurin 2017). The individuals who are not capable of contributing their 100% within a team might lag in contributing their section of contribution and hence, decreasing the capability and capacity of the whole team.

True Concepts Personnel

Creativity limitations: Some of the individuals having creative thinking might be blocked or stopped from raising their idea as it becomes very important within a team to incorporate within the team and work for overall good without any risk (Conde et al. 2017).

 The first attempt for making the communication with the team members should be face-to-face interaction in manner to look in their eyes and make them understandable that this is a team and everyone is of same value for the team. The team leader and team members should communicate in a regular interval of time in manner to make sure that not any conflict within the team and every individual is well comfortable to operate with each other. Asking every individual within the project to be present at the meetings should be ensured by the leader and make sure that everyone listens and speaks despite of their positions.

Professional issues take into account the necessity of the learning, how the portal works, and it should be difficult for the user to operate it (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017). Legal issues include the privacy and security of the individuals whose related data and information are being collected for the operational activities of the Lizzie Leather Company.

Conclusion

 The above report explains the aspects related to the deployment of web portal for every centers of the of the Lizzie Leather company and explained about the necessary elements for the accomplishment of the goals and objectives of the project. Training to the individuals can be recommended for the users of the portal in manner to make sure that every individual is well aware with the properties and working of the portal. This report highlights on the aspects related to the deployment of a web portal that can be a beneficial measure for the proper and effective establishment of the communication between the centers.

References

Agarwal, A., 2017. The Basics of SCRUM: A Simple Handbook to the Most Popular Agile Scrum Framework.

Annosi, M.C., Martini, A. and Magnusson, M., 2018. Investigating the impact of agile control mechanisms on learning in scrum teams. In Learning and Innovation in Hybrid Organizations (pp. 213-229). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Ashraf, S. and Aftab, S., 2017. IScrum: An Improved Scrum Process Model. International Journal of Modern Education and Computer Science, 9(8), p.16.

Ashraf, S. and Aftab, S., 2017. Scrum with the Spices of Agile Family: A Systematic Mapping. International ournal of Modern Education and Computer Science, 9(11), p.58.

Conde, M.A., Colomo-Palacios, R., García-Peñalvo, F.J. and Larrucea, X., 2017. Teamwork assessment in the educational web of data: A learning analytics approach towards ISO 10018. Telematics and Informatics.

Finkelman, A., 2015. Leadership and management for nurses: Core competencies for quality care. Pearson.

Ghafoor, F., Shah, I.A. and Rashid, N., 2017. Issues in Adopting Agile Methodologies in Global and Local Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review Protocol with Preliminary Results. International Journal of Computer Applications, 160(7).

Huijgens, H., Lamping, R., Stevens, D., Rothengatter, H., Gousios, G. and Romano, D., 2017, August. Strong agile metrics: mining log data to determine predictive power of software metrics for continuous delivery teams. In Proceedings of the 2017 11th Joint Meeting on Foundations of Software Engineering (pp. 866-871). ACM.

Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H.R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Krishna, B.C., Srinath, A.Y., Bhavani, N. and Sai, G.J., 2017. Analysing software quality using cmmi-2 with agile-scrum framework. International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7(1.1), pp.290-293.

Saltz, J. and Crowston, K., 2017, January. Comparing data science project management methodologies via a controlled experiment. In Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Saltz, J., Heckman, R. and Shamshurin, I., 2017. EXPLORING HOW DIFFERENT PROJECT MANAGEMENT METHODOLOGIES IMPACT DATA SCIENCE STUDENTS.

Schwalbe, K., 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.

Whetten, D. and Cameron, K., 2014. Developing Management Skills: Global Edition. Pearson Higher Ed.

Xiong, J., Tang, Y. and Medlin, D.B., 2018. Analysis of Agile Learning into Information Systems Project Class: A Cognitive Apprenticeship Approach. ARBS 2018 PROCEEDINGS, 1, p.5.