Technical Deliverable
Team,
I hope everyone has had a chance to test out the functional pages (that represent 40% of your final project’s grade). I would like to wrap this portion up by this weekend. The only thing that’s remaining as far as I can tell is integrating the CSS StyleSheets across all of the pages. Ed has added a lot of good content and links to the static pages, but the look and feel of the static pages is currently different from the look and feel of the dynamic (functional) pages. For me, it would just take a few minutes to change the styles of ALL the pages. So it is up to the team to decide which styles everyone prefers.
Please take a look at the following sites and tell me before 9PM EST today, which look-and-feel you prefer:
I will go into ALL of the pages (static AND dynamic) tonight and unify the look-and-feel to which ever the team chooses. We can then schedule a demo for the Professor sometime this weekend. Thank you everyone!
-MI
I have tested the login page and it works very well. I was able to register and re-apply my name and password and it worked. I will be updated the rest of the pages for the website tonight hopefully we can finalize the website portion of the project.
Comment by edaviles — February 21, 2008 @ 2:22 pm
Great job!
I think the first site is perfect, looks more professional to me and well thought, i.e great deal of thought and skill went into it.
But shouldn’t the content in the second one be incorporated into the first one? The “not have account yet” etc?
Is there anything I need to do to logon? And no I have not had a chance to test the functional pages!
Honestly I think the technical team should do a walkthrough with the rest of the team! I have tons of questions to ask to understand certain things and be in the loop!
I don’t know about the rest of the untech but me thinks I do need it! If that would not be too much,can the tech team do kindly oblige me (us)?
So MI don’t wrap this up too quickly PLEASE! And before a demo presentation is done for the Prof.
Thank you
Oge
Comment by oge — February 21, 2008 @ 2:28 pm
Vote total so far:
http://studentportal.bu-pm.com/ ……. 1
http://aspspider.info/asadis/ ……. 0
Comment by MI — February 21, 2008 @ 2:45 pm
Oge,
If you have questions on the technical deliverable, then please post them on the blog. There may be others who also have the same questions but are too shy to ask.
The question about the second site needing to be incorporated into the first one is valid. That is what the purpose of my original post was. We need to settle on a unified look-and-feel so that we can integrate the two portions of the site together. If you’ve been reading the past technical posts, you know that we had a technical difficulty with the professor’s web server and couldn’t host the functional site on it. That’s why I build the functional site on a separate server, with a plan to integrate it with the static site when both were near completion.
As far as a demo goes, we have seen how difficult it is to get everyone on a conference call. But if anyone wants a private demo of what we have, I can certainly set up one before this weekend.
The reason that I am pushing for us to complete at least the technical part of this project soon is that FINAL EXAMS start next week, and I am sure that nobody wants to be thinking about the project while studying for the finals.
Comment by MI — February 21, 2008 @ 3:57 pm
I am heavily in favor of the style you use on http://aspspider.info/asadis/ it’s fresh looks web 2.0 ish, and fits well with the modern theme of the main BU site. If adding a CSS sheet is all it would take to change the main site we should definitely do that.
-Gene
Comment by admin — February 21, 2008 @ 5:38 pm
Vote total so far:
http://studentportal.bu-pm.com/ ….. 1
http://aspspider.info/asadis/ ……. 1
Comment by MI — February 21, 2008 @ 5:43 pm
I like the http://studentportal.bu-pm.com/ better because you can surf without having to login. It looks great.
Comment by dtayeva — February 21, 2008 @ 6:15 pm
Umm… the question was about look-and-feel and not functionality…
Comment by MI — February 21, 2008 @ 6:29 pm
Well, so much for democracy. Since three votes can hardly be considered a quorum, I will go ahead with the vision laid out by Gene in the newer post. I will keep all of Ed’s static content, but style it using BU’s template to get us closer to Gene’s Web 2.0 vision. Please let me know if any of you would like a complete demo of the technical deliverable. I am willing to set up a demo this weekend if anyone is interested.
Comment by MI — February 22, 2008 @ 6:53 am
I take it that the look/feel would be the second one? Hmmm, so much for democracy!
I would like to see the demo, let me know when you would do that.
Comment by oge — February 22, 2008 @ 12:40 pm
Me again!
“I will keep all of Ed’s static content, but style it using BU’s template to get us closer to Gene’s Web 2.0 vision.”
What style are you referring to, second one?
BU’s template, is that the development template?
Is it not possible to be more creative and do it our style? I thought the project was all about creativity, if not I really don’t see why there shouldn’t be innovation or are we just reinventing the wheel?
Then again I might be wrong in my thinking!
Thank you
Oge
Comment by oge — February 22, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
“Another very obvious measurement will be the mailing list subscriptions and responses to onsite surveys from students.”
I see part a: “……measurement will be the mailing list subscriptions…”
How do we accomplish the second part: “…responses to onsite surveys from students” from one of the links?
Thank you, didn’t mean to bug all of a sudden!
Oge
Comment by oge — February 22, 2008 @ 3:34 pm
Hi!
The “Former BU Email ID” is it for the benefit of “alumni?” Past students?
What if the student does not remember that? Because it takes me some seconds to remember mine sometimes, because what I did from the onset was to forward my BU mail to my personal mail!
If that happens, is there another way a student can login without having the BU Email ID?
I know that might be one of the authentication process, but could there be anyother way? Like SS# and DOB?
Gracias!
Oge.
P.S
If I get really annoying with all these posts and questions, kindly let me know. I wouldn’t mind if you complained, I rarely do mind. I have 3 little rug rats, I have immunity! So feel free to scream: Oge, stop already!
Comment by oge — February 22, 2008 @ 3:42 pm
“I will keep all of Ed’s static content, but style it using BU’s template to get us closer to Gene’s Web 2.0 vision.”
What style are you referring to, second one? yes
BU’s template, is that the development template?
• They are both development templates, one is done by Ed to create a mock up user interface, the second one is the actual deliverable form and database that matter for the project.
Is it not possible to be more creative and do it our style?
• Style is not part of the graded deliverable so while it’s nice, we could put it into the suggestions for the new site.
I thought the project was all about creativity, if not I really don’t see why there shouldn’t be innovation or are we just reinventing the wheel?
• The project is more about the project management process then the look and feel of the site. If Ed Leong, and MI had create a white html only form and connected it to a 5 table database that worked we would have fulfilled the deliverable.
“Another very obvious measurement will be the mailing list subscriptions and responses to onsite surveys from students.”
I see part a: “……measurement will be the mailing list subscriptions…”
How do we accomplish the second part: “…responses to onsite surveys from students” from one of the links?
This is an excellent point. MI, can you send a mailing list out of the admin section? I don’t have the admin passwords so I couldn’t check.
Please comment on this clarification.
Comment by admin — February 22, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
Technical Deliverable:
dynamic database linked to the current site that will receive the following information from current and former students
• Name, Current or Former student, former BU Email id or student number (for proof), email address, interested_in_contributing_how
The key goal of the database is to collect email addresses and send out 8 news letters each year.
Also the database should collect information from students optionally if they want to contribute in any way. interested_in_contributing_how is a COMMENT box.
Creative part:
Other proposed ideas could stem from Google apps wrapper for the website so that things like calendar, email etc can be integrated. Also Google apps has chat and google talk. The sponsors are interested in providing this wrapper now or in a future implementation.
The project team can be creative to make it a valuable social net for PM graduates or current students.
Comment by admin — February 22, 2008 @ 4:01 pm
Hey Oge,
Thanks for all the questions! And thanks to Gene for answering most of them. I wanted to touch upon one point:
“Is it not possible to be more creative and do it our style?”
If you have read my post about 4GT, then you will notice that it takes 313.72 person-hours just to put together the non-creative functional site. That means it would take 3 full-time developers 2.5 weeks to complete the functional pages. Furthermore, I just did a code analysis, and it turns out that our functional site now has about 10,000 lines of code so far. Given these circumstances, you would most certainly need to be “creative” just to get the product out the door. How we showed our creativity is through the Object Oriented Programming (OOP) concept of “reusability”. Since our job is to create some pages that fit into an existing environment, the smart question to ask is “How can we leverage reusable components from the existing environment to shorten the amount of work that needs to be done?”
So to answer your question, yes, finding ways to leverage existing resources instead of reinventing the wheel requires creativity. And I am certain that the professor will recognize this.
Comment by MI — February 22, 2008 @ 11:21 pm
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Gene and MI
;-)LOL Thanks Mohammed for making my “question smarter”
“the smart question to ask is” “How can we leverage reusable components from the existing environment to shorten the amount of work that needs to be done?”
Oge
Comment by oge — February 23, 2008 @ 9:43 am
GREAT JOB, GUYS! I SEEM TO BE SAYING THAT OVER AND OVER AGAIN, BUT IT IS TRUE. IF WE MUST SAY SO OURSELVES.
I still need comments on the Final Report, except you guys are you trust me?
Comment by oge — February 23, 2008 @ 9:44 am
Oge, I certainly didn’t mean to say that your question was in some way not “smart”. Since this is a Project Management class, it’s important to focus on ideas that would make the project successful. As we know, a successful project is one that is delivered on time and comes in under budget. So being resourceful and finding ways to accomplish this goal is the main job of a PM. Now, if this was a web development class, the “smart” question to ask would be “how can we be more creative with our website to impress the end users?”. The thing is, these two goals are usually at odds because adding “cool” things to the site would add to the scope of the project and wouldn’t make the PM too happy.
Comment by MI — February 23, 2008 @ 10:25 am