IS480 Team wiki: 2011T2 IMATEAM Wiki Copy
Contents
The Team
Stakeholders
Project Overview
Project Description
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Our team will be building a web and mobile social platform that enables attendees of conferences organized by IMAPAC to interact with each other before, during and after the conference. This social platform will allow them to post and receive conference updates, engage in discussions, network with industry partners and arrange meetings. The platform will be built using a content management system written in PHP such as Drupal. Data analysis will be applied to the information provided by the sponsor to build a user-centered system that provides recommendations to the conference attendees based on their individual profiles, such as suggestions of industry partners they might want to work with. | |
Motivation
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Attendees of IMAPAC business conferences vary widely, from governments to NGOs, businesses and academics. They currently do not have a platform that allows their attendees to communicate efficiently with each other. Extra time spent on handling logistics issues such as scheduling of meetings, searching for contact information, arranging meeting locations etc. could be better spent on trying to create an even bigger impact for the social causes they are advocating. We also believe that if organizations have an improved communication channel, especially after a conference, they will be able to build a closer link to one another that further nurtures the social enterprise spirit within. Hence, our proposed web and mobile platform can potentially eradicate the above problems by being user friendly and interactive. We will achieve this by applying heuristics used in usability studies to the user interface design. The platform will be interactive because we will consider all aspects of each group of users’ needs and enable them to engage one another according to their business relationship.
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Project Deliverables
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At the end of the project, our team aims to deliver a robust and dynamic integrated social platform that will improve the overall experience of conference attendees. The platform’s focus will be centered on IMAPAC’s aim to promote good social causes and help businesses do good. Our project will achieve this by meeting the user needs that arise from attending a conference and all the relevant interlinked events such as discussions and meetings. The platform will be deployed on IMAPAC’s servers. | |
Project Scope
We will utilize an open-source content management system written in PHP, Drupal, to develop our web application on. We chose Drupal because it is highly customizable, scalable and flexible in terms of UI design, functionalities and access control. Our project can be divided into 2 core components: the web platform and the mobile application.
Project Functionalities | ||||
Functionality | Description | |||
Web Platform |
Profile of attendees |
Users can sign up for their accounts and set up information such as bio, interests and conference-related history details. | ||
Real time feedback |
Allow attendees to provide real time feedback to speakers and fellow attendees during conferences in the form of live polls and comments. | |||
Friend system |
Anyone with an account on the social platform can add another to his network via the Friend system. | |||
Conference/event details |
Provide attendees and speakers with conference information such as detailed location, time, date, attending list, topics covered etc. | |||
Networking opportunities |
Enable users to connect with potential business partners by matching them to other users with similar interest and keywords. | |||
Sponsored children information |
Allow conference attendees to retrieve information of the sponsored children. After a child has been sponsored, he will have a page with updates to keep the sponsor posted on his development. | |||
Private messaging system |
Enable users to send private messages to each other. There will be a setting to make it public or friends-only. | |||
Post-conference rating and evaluation |
Enable conference attendees to complete their post-conference evaluation for IMAPAC’s records. | |||
Personalized recommendation system |
Users will be recommended similar conferences based on past history. | |||
Sharing function |
Users will be able to share/recommend a conference to other users they think might be interested to attend it. | |||
Live note-taking function |
Allow attendees to take notes live during a conference which they can choose to save, send to email or share (publicly/friends only). | |||
Search |
Search for other users according to name, interests and keywords. | |||
Discussion Forum |
Forums for pre and post conference discussion. | |||
Mobile Platform |
Profile of attendees |
Simplified (only View) profiles of attendees. | ||
Conference/event details |
View conference details such as those detailed above. | |||
Geo-location services |
Locate conference location on smartphone maps using GPS. | |||
Announcement and news |
View and read announcements and news to be kept updated of event happenings. | |||
Private message system |
Send messages on-the-go in case they need to contact a fellow attendee. |
Project Deliverables
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The selling points of our project are features that are not currently available in other social platforms out there. In addition, our social platform is specially customized to meet the needs of conference attendees by catering to every aspect of their interactions. Unique features of IMAPAC Connect include:
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Learning Outcomes
Project Documentation
Use Case Diagrams
Project Management
Project Plan
Risk Management
Project Risks | ||||
Risk Rating | Likelihood of Occurrence | Impact on Project | Risk | Mitigation Plan |
A |
Medium |
High |
Scope Revisions
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The team is to meet up with the client regularly to update the client of the progress of the project. Have a clear project scope before project starts. |
Medium |
High |
Underestimation
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Buffer time in the schedule for unexpected lag in schedule. PM to track constantly on progress. | |
Medium |
High |
Deployment
Team might have deployment failures. Communicate among team members to check whether it is feasible to implement the feature promptly. |
Deploy and test the applications after every iterations | |
B |
Medium |
Medium |
Working with new technology and tools
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Plan the project to allow sufficient time for the team to familiarize themselves with new technology and tools. Pair programming to share knowledge |
Medium |
Medium |
Managing Expectations
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The team is to update the client regularly. | |
Medium |
Medium |
Prioritization
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Team members and Project Manager will remind each other of the urgency of the task and goals that the team needs to accomplish. | |
C |
Small |
Medium |
Overpromising new features to client
Team may be too ambitious and promises more features and resulting in putting the project at risk of incompletion.
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Prioritizes the core functions in the requirement list. Communicate among team members to check whether it is feasible to implement the feature promptly. |
Medium |
Small |
Resource limitations
The team only has 4 people and may be overworked. |
Efficient allocation of manpower for each task. Inclusion of buffer time period for each deliverable. | |
Small |
Medium |
Hardware
Client needs to provide server and client and team have little knowledge on it, might result in buying the wrong type of hardware |
Team members to do extensive research on available server in the market. |
Resource & Reference
Besides those mentioned above, we will be using the following:
- Project Management: Microsoft Office, iWork and Microsoft Visio
- Additional Gadgets: Mobile Smartphones for testing (Mainly iPhone and Android Phones)
- Training & Research: http://drupal.org/forum, http://forum.jquery.com/jquery-mobile, Google and Online tutorials