IFSM 436 Group No. 3
Prepared for Dr.Norcio
September 17, 2003
1
Project Team
Financial Analyst:
Infrastructure Analyst:
Systems Analyst:
Systems Analyst:
Project Sponsor:
Information Coordinator:
Project Manager:
Chou, Ying-Chung
Corey, Jeremy
Davis, Desiree
Driscoll, Adam
Durgam, Jacinth
Geisler, Robert
Geist, Jason
(yingch1@umbc.edu)
(jcorey1@umbc.edu)
(des1@umbc.edu)
(adric1@umbc.edu)
(djsudha@hotmail.com)
(rgeisl1@umbc.edu)
(jgeist1@umbc.edu)
Description of Organization
Our project team proposes to improve the discussions forum1 software system
hosted online by the Law Offices of Rajiv S. Khanna, PC. The law firm practices U.S
Immigration and Nationality Laws in all 50 states and abroad. The firm provides specific
emphasis on business and professional immigration matters. They are located at 5225 N.
Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA 22205, with a staff of roughly 40 people. They help provide
clients with obtaining permanent residence through professional labor certifications. The
firm assists clients with complex immigration related cases. Their clientele ranges from
individuals to large corporations. The Law Office boasts an incredible winning ratio;
having only lost 4 cases in the last decade. Other business functions include providing
legal advice to high-technology companies when hiring foreign personnel.
The Law firm currently hosts the following two websites:
http://www.immigration.com
http://www.immigrationportal.com
1
www.immigrationportal.com
2
According to www.Alexa.com, a popular web traffic rating system -Immigration.com has been rated as the top most popular visited sites in “Immigration”
categories.
Our project team has contact to Rajiv Khanna from the law office, through our
team member, Jacinth Durgam. Jacinth has been employed in the IT department of the
law office as an intern. She has been associated with the firm for the past year. We have
the ability to set-up meetings in person and through speakerphone, which gives our team
flexibility.
Problem
The law firm offers online forums for discussion, a place where people can only
leave messages for each other. Individuals usually share their personal experiences
related to immigration. Other than participating in discussions, the purpose of the forums
is to gather people online and undertake activities by creating petitions2 and issues3 as a
group to influence Senators and Members of the House of Representatives.
Currently, the law firm can have only one active petition at a time. The forum
lacks the feature to create and send petitions electronically to congress and other political
offices. The lawyer of the firm writes up a petition and publishes it online; all those who
are interested in the petition have to electronically sign the petition with their email
addresses. The petition is then manually submitted by the law firm to congress and other
2
3
A formal request to an agency or legislature to affect some change
Any matter that affects the community members
3
political offices to be processed depending on the number of signatures signed by the
members of the community. Once a petition is being processed, there is no method of
tracking the status of each petition. Individuals involved in the petition have to wait for a
long period of time until the law firm provides a brief review on the status of the petition;
this long waiting time usually causes the members to lose interest in participating as a
community and to follow up with the petition. The current system also lacks the ability
to allow members involved to assign different tasks to each other. The employees of the
law firm perform most of the tasks, which also include the necessary follow up on each
petition. The firm needs more interaction and the ability to have more petitions active;
they need to involve the members of the community during the process of every petition.
The existing implementation of the system is specifically built for discussion, not
for advocacy purposes. Our project team believes that we can deliver a system, which
will meet and exceed the expectations of the law office.
4
IFSM 436 Group No. 3
Prepared for Dr. Norcio
September 24, 2003
5
Description of the Current System
ImmigrationPortal.com discussions forum is a free service that is being provided
by the Law offices of Rajiv Khanna, PC. This web site is specifically developed to
enhance the access of information to the public and to keep them updated with the latest
news on immigration. Hosted by Immigration.com, the discussion forum creates an
online community where immigrants can post topics and respond to others.
After performing a preliminary analysis on the existing system, our team was able
to further understand the current system. The existing system provides the users with an
environment to participate, discuss their personal experiences, and share their knowledge
related to immigration. It is like a normal community discussion system.
There are about 67,000 registered users and about 80,000 guest users. A person
who is not registered can only view the topics for discussion, while those registered have
the privilege to create a special account that would help them keep track of all those who
are involved in their issues and also maintains a record of all the people who have replied
to their queries. The system offers certain features such as “discussion threads” --- users
can organize discussions in the form of a thread, this gives them the flexibility to quickly
read the thread that is of interest to them. Members have the ability to participate in chat
sessions with other members online. The system offers a search feature but it is poorly
designed as it brings numerous results, including results that are not relevant to what we
are looking for. The users have also experienced difficulty in getting to know the current
system because the system lacks a “help” feature.
6
Currently, there can be one petition4 active at a time. A petition is created only
when a lawyer of the firm receives numerous requests and emails through their existing
clients and other members of the community agreeing to participate on an issue5. The
community members submit an issue to the law firm; the firm reviews the issue and
agrees to proceed with the petition depending on the necessity of the issue. A formal
petition is written through the law firm and published online; people interested in
participating can electronically sign the petitions with their email addresses.
The
employees of the firm can obtain the necessary contact information of the current
senators and congressman. Through an unorganized method, the firm tries to keep track
of all the senators and congressman concerned with their issue. The firm then gathers the
online signatures and submits the petition to the senators or members of the congress.
The employees of the firm begin to monitor the status of the petition by periodically
checking the website or by calling Congress. They also try to monitor who is talking to
whom among the senators.
In each Senator’s office there are 10 – 12 office staff
members. These members may be in favor or not in favor of the issue the petition is
raising. The employees of law firm try to keep track of who’s interested in supporting
the petition and those who are not. This entire process is done manually. Finally, after
waiting for many months or sometimes even years, the results of the submitted petition
are announced.
4
5
A formal request to an agency or legislature to affect some change
Any matter that affects the community members
7
Problems with the Current System
The firm intends to help people focus their issues in a language that regulators can
understand. They do not want to be able to take the entire responsibility of monitoring
almost every step in the process of a petition. The current system does not have the
capability to support several features that the organization considers as business needs.
Following is a list of problems with the present system our project team will address:
1. System design:
System
design
was
poorly
conducted
upon
the
initial
creation
of
Immigrationportal.com. Disregarding any basic web-design rules, several links lead the
user to more links, making it difficult for the user to find the desired page. The lack of
uniformity concerning the layout of each web page on the site creates a cumbersome
effort in navigation. There is no “help” feature that could assist the users to direct them
through their destination. Although the site contains a great deal of information, all of it
is poorly categorized and hard to follow.
2. Unstable system hardware:
Sometimes there could be 1000 users online at the same time for which the system
cannot hold such a heavy load of users to be online at the same time. The current system
is not designed for high volume of traffic.
3. Inefficient search engine:
The search engine brings up numerous results, sometimes information that is not
related to what we are looking for. Thus, there is tendency for people to focus on
8
secondary issues rather than focusing on primary issues.
Getting to the necessary
messages is difficult. There is no a systematic way of finding the necessary information.
4. Inability for members to assign and monitor tasks:
Users are never involved throughout the entire process of submitting the petition,
other than electronically signing on the petitions. There is no organized method of
assigning tasks to members who are involved in the issue. Members have experienced
difficulty in monitoring the status of every petition.
General goals
The Law Firm is trying to expand their goals by providing a structured and more
stable system, which not only contains enormous amounts of information but also
provides an easy and effective way to access the information. The firm strongly believes
that providing plenty of relevant information on immigration to people online could
reduce the chances of foreign students and non-immigrants from being abused by certain
misleading sources. With the ability to customize new software and upgrade or replace
certain features, these goals are easily obtainable.
9
The following are some of the basic features the firm expects to see in their future
system:

Facility for members to create issues

Facility for members to vote internally

Members should be able to choose a group leader for every issue

Group leaders should be allowed to assign tasks to sub teams

A facility to monitor all the tasks
10
IFSM 436 Group No. 3
Prepared for Dr. Norcio
October 1, 2003
11
Scope
The scope of the project determines how much of the organization is affected by
the system. Immigrationportal.com is a sub-site of Immigration.com. The Law Office of
Rajiv S. Khanna, PC provides Immigrationportal.com as a free service to those interested
in immigration issues. The sub-site is more or less dependent on Immgration.com and
not heavily relied on by the internal employees of the law firm. The law office does not
consider Immigrationportal.com as one of its primary sources to attract clientele either.
The sub-site would mainly affect external users interested in discussing immigration
issues online and voicing their opinions. If this sub-site were to shut unexpectedly, the
law firm would not suffer from direct loses in revenue.
12
Operational Feasibility
This part of the feasibility analysis will determine whether the problem with
Immigrationportal.com is worth solving.
It will also determine the urgency of this
problem and the effectiveness of a solution.
Performance:
Overall the current system does not have adequate throughput and response time
the Law Office of Rajiv S. Khanna, PC, wants to provide. Denial or lack of service
because of inadequate hardware to handle the volume of users trying to register or log on
reduces prospective clientele. The complicated organization of the site makes navigation
difficult for the common user. These and other related problems provide our project team
sufficient reason to propose a solution that will give the Law Office of Rajiv S. Khanna
the service it wants, to attract a larger customer base.
Information:
The current system provides a place for users to discuss immigration issues and
obtain information regarding immigration policies. The Law Office of Rajiv S. Khanna
wants to enhance the ability users have of not just discussing their opinions but taking the
next step to making that issue official. Discussion boards are maintained by moderators
for validity purposes but all many users want to be able to create their own petitions
based so that other’s who agree can sign these petitions. The current implementation
doesn’t allow for registered users to do more than discuss their opinions and majority of
visitors are using immigrationportal.com as an informative site. Besides the discussion
13
boards, immigrationportal.com provides valid information on forms required for
immigrant visas. Users would like to see a tracker incorporated into the site which would
show the status of petitions and where they lay in the approval process.
Economy:
The Law Office of Rajiv S. Khanna does not gain tangible benefits other than
name recognition through indirect referrals. The law office is providing this service free
of charge in hopes of helping those that need it. Customer satisfaction is their main goal.
The current system offers customer satisfaction but not at the extent in which the law
office would prefer.
Control:
Upon loading the homepage of immigrationportal.com, a disclaimer states, “We
take no responsibility for accuracy of information provided. Please use at your own
risk.” The current system does not provide adequate controls against fraud other than a
simple online registration in order to post topics. If a new system was implemented that
would allow users to take a more interactive approach of creating an official petition,
certain security issues need to be addressed in securing data and information.
Efficiency:
The current system does not make maximum use of available resources because
the current hardware can not handle the volume of visitors to the website. Although there
is minimum processing when posting a thread, the flow of threads is difficult to navigate.
14
Services:
The current implementation serves the purpose of providing a location where
people can discuss their issues about immigration, but does not provide the service the
Law Office of Rajiv S. Khanna is aiming for. With a newer system, scalability or
flexibility won’t be a problem. With the evolution and widespread deployment of the
World Wide Web (WWW), accelerated by the rapid adoption of web browsers, webbased applications have been developed for a variety of applications in online discussion
and group management software. Our project team can provide a feasible and effective
solution to this problem.
Technical Feasibility
The law office of Rajiv S. Khanna, PC new system is feasible technically,
although there is some risk.
Law Firm’s risk regarding familiarity with applications is low
 The IT department already is familiar with system we are just upgrading.
 With new system we will have a help feature for the users.
Law Firm’s risk regarding familiarity with the technology is low
 IT department is a very advanced team that works well, but there will be some
new hardware implemented that could lead to some risk.
 Not much new hardware will be implemented into the new system.
The project size is considered medium risk
 The project team will consist of seven people.
 User involvement will be required.
 The project timeline cannot exceed three months (end of semester).
The compatibility with Law Firms existing technical infrastructure should be good
 The current system is web-based and will stay web-based with more organization.
 The current internet infrastructure already in place will be upgraded for
scalability.
15
Economic Feasibility
Cost and Benefits:
Benefits
Increased sales
Increased customer satisfaction
Stronger name recognition
Total benefits
Development costs
2 servers @ $110,000
Software licenses
Server software
Development labor
Total development costs
90,000
30,000
500,000
620,000
220,000
30,000
10,000
800,000
1,060,000
Operation costs
Hardware
20,000
2 Dell 2650 PowerEdge Servers
Software
10,000
1 Site license - Strategies Group Management Software
Operational labor
200,000
Total operational costs
230,000
Cost-Benefit Analysis:
Total development costs:
Hardware
Software
Operational labor
Total Operation Costs:
2003
1,060,000
20,000
10,000
200,000
230,000
2004
0
20,000
10,000
210,000
240,000
2005
0
20,000
10,000
220,500
250,500
Total Costs:
PV of Costs:
PV of All Costs:
1,290,000
1,277,227
1,277,227
240,000
235,271
1,512,498
250,500
243,132
1,755,630
Increased sales
Reduction on customer calls
Reduced on advertising costs
90,000
30,000
500,000
94,500
30,000
500,000
99,225
30,000
500,000
Total Benefits:
PV of Benefits:
PV of All Benefits:
620,000
613,861
613,861
624,500
612,194
1,226,055
629,225
610,719
1,836,774
Total
1,755,630
1,836,774
16
Total Project Cost Less Benefits:
(670,000)
Yearly NPV:
(663,366)
Cumulative NPV:
(663,366)
384,500
376,923
(286,443)
Return on Investment:
Break-ever Point:
(81,144 / 1,755,630)
(367587-81144) / 367587
4.62%
3.78 years
378,725
367,587
81,144
81,144
Based on the cost and benefit analysis we performed above, it shows the project
to be doable.
Schedule Feasibility
Though our research we have come to the conclusion that the deadlines of this
project are reasonable and the project team has the ability to meet each one








Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Thursday, January 08, 2003
Project Proposal(Complete)
Preliminary Analysis(Complete)
Feasibility Analysis(Complete)
Requirements Analysis(Complete)
System Analysis Report
System Design Report
System Installation
Post-implementation Audit Report
The Feasibility Analysis, Requirements Analysis, System Analysis Report,
System Design Report are all mandatory deadlines. Both the System Installation and
Post-implementation Audit Report are desirable deadlines.
17
Political and Legal Feasibility
A disclaimer will be posted on the site so the law firm will not be liable for any
statements that are made on the website. A disclaimer will also have to be agreed upon
registering every new user. A disclaimer will also be in the mission statement of the site
viewable from a link located on every footer of every page.
18
IFSM 436 Group No. 3
Prepared for Dr. Norcio
October 8, 2003
19
This document will provide an outline of the requirements for the system. It will
also provide a measure of the current project status. Tables and charts are included to
visually illustrate the status.
A brief overview of our team member’s tasks and
responsibilities ensures that all members are contributing to the success of the project.
Non-Functional Requirements
1. Operational Requirements
1.1 The system will operate in the Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP
environments
1.2 The system will integrate users from the previous system. Inactive accounts
will be deleted
2. Performance Requirements
2.1 The system will be able to handle more than 1000 simultaneous user
connections
3
Security Requirements
3.1 The member’s personal information can only be accessed by employees of the
law firm
4
Cultural and Political Requirements
4.1 The system will provide a disclaimer regarding the firm’s liability related to
the information provided by the system and its members
Functional Requirements
1. Registering a Member
1.1 User must agree to consent form
1.2 User is required to select a User Name and password
1.3 User is required to enter a valid e-mail address
1.4 User may enter optional information including
1.4.1 User Homepage
1.4.2 Birthday
1.4.3 Location
1.4.4 Occupation
1.5 User may customize his/her preferences including
1.5.1 E-mail notification
1.5.2 Private Messaging
1.5.3 Automatic Logon
1.6 After Submitting, User receives e-mail confirmation
1.7 E-mail Confirmation, user clicks link to activate account
20
2. Browsing the Forums
2.1 User does not have to be registered in order to view threads on the forums.
2.2 User must be registered in order to post a message to the thread.
2.3 User must be able to receive private messages from other users
2.4 New threads will be a different color than threads the user has already seen
3. Posting a message
3.1 User must be able to format the text, and perform functions such as Cut, Copy
and Paste
3.2 User must be able to edit their message after it has been posted to the thread
3.3 User may be able to include a “signature” appended to the bottom of each of
their messages
4. Searching the Forum
4.1 User must be able to perform a search using keywords
4.2 User must be able to perform a search using a range of dates
4.3 User must be able to perform a search based on user names
4.4 Results must provide a direct link to the original thread
4.5 User must be able to use logical operators for a search (i.e. And, Not, Or)
5. Signing a Petition
5.1 User must be able to view the petition in its entirety
5.2 User must be able to digitally sign the petition
5.3 Duplicate signatures will be detected and disregarded
5.4 Confirmation of the petition signature must be provided
5.4.1 Failure to confirm will disregard the signature
5.5 Users may be able to view the signatures that the petition has received
6. Group Leader Functions
6.1 Users must be able to assign a specific group leader to a community issues
6.2 Group leader must be able to assign task to other users
6.2.1 Tasks may be assigned through e-mail
6.2.2 Tasks may be assigned through the community forum
6.2.3 Tasks may be assigned through private messaging
6.3 Assigned Tasks must be available to be viewed by all users
6.4 Group leader must be able to track completion status of current tasks
21
Team Member Responsibilities and Tasks
Our project on immigrationportal.com discussion forum system is a collaboration
of efforts by Ying-Chung Chou, Jeremy Corey, Desiree Davis, Jacinth Durgam, Adam
Driscoll, Robert Geisler and Jason Geist. As a team, we designated all our analysts’
positions in general to work resourcefully. Jacinth Durgam, who works for the Law
Offices of Rajiv S. Khanna, PC as an intern, initiated the project. She will be the Project
Sponsor and is the primary point of contact for the project. Our team unanimously
selected Jason Geist to be the Project Manager. Ying-Chung Chou will be the Financial
Analyst, Jeremy Corey will be the Infrastructure Analyst, Robert Geisler will be the
Information Coordinator; Adam Driscoll and Desiree Davis will be the Systems Analysts.
All the tasks that we have performed so far have been a team effort. Jacinth helped us
to get a brief interview with the lawyer of the firm, which gave our team a better
understanding of the problems with the current system and requirements for the future
system. She also participated in performing the Preliminary analysis of the system.
Jason Geist was in-charge in organizing all our group meetings. He participated in
researching the technical feasibility for the system and was also part of the interview
conducted with the lawyer of the firm. Ying-Chung Chou performed a research in
determining the economic feasibility for the future system. He conducted the cost and
benefit analysis for system. Jeremy Corey performed a study on the current system and
determined the operational feasibility. Robert Geisler participated in researching the
schedule feasibility of the system; he was also responsible for collecting and maintaining
a record of all the deliverables for our project. Desiree Davis and Adam Driscoll were
22
responsible for taking notes during our team discussions. They also participated in
researching the Feasibility analysis of the system.
Future tasks will continue to be a team effort. The system analysis report has many
segments which our team members have been working on. Ying-Chung Chou will be
determining business rules. Desiree Davis will assist Ying-Chung, as well as conduct
information gathering. Adam Driscoll will be handling the entity-relationship diagrams.
Jeremy Corey will use those ER diagrams to help in the creation of data flow diagrams.
Robert Geisler will be supporting both Adam and Jeremy in the creation of the diagrams.
Jason Geist and Jacinth Durgam will be involved in information gathering.
23
Task Completion
Start project
Initiation Task
Initial meeting with team members
Get team members contact information
Choose an organization
Choose Project
Set date and time to meet team member
Selecting the contact person
Talking to stakeholders
Draft project requirements
Selecting the problems associated with it
Develop a team proposal
Planning Task
Conduct the feasibility study of the project
Develop cost benefit analysis
Requirement Task
Assigning group members with a task
Decided the estimated time
Analysis Task
Developing diagrams (ER, DFD, Network)
Diagram of the current system
Information gathering techniques
Interviews, questionnaires, surveys
Preliminary Analysis
Develop requirement analysis
Design Task
Determine alternative solutions
Develop web-based design
System design report
Final Task
Prepare for project report
Prepare for presentation
Presentation
Completed
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
80%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
80%
0%
35%
15%
50%
100%
100%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
24
28 Sep 05 Oct 12 Oct 19 Oct 26 Oct 02 Nov 09 Nov 16 Nov 23 Nov 30 Nov 07 Dec 14 Dec
Analyze Phase
Gather Requirements
Requirements Analysis
Indepth Analysis of System
Project Legend
Systems Analysis Report
Completed part of task
Overdue part of task
Uncompleted part of task
Design Phase
Milestone
c
Develop web-based design
System Design Report
Implementation
Final Project
25
IFSM 436 Group No. 3
Prepared for Dr. Norcio
October 29, 2003
26
Information Gathering:
We have used two techniques in gathering information about our current system.
We did an interview with Rajiv Khanna and we also conducted a survey. The interview
with Rajiv Khanna was conducted over a speakerphone and lasted about an hour and
fifteen minutes. Our group members were able to ask direct questions about the
operation of the law firm. Mr. Khanna was very open about his law firm and provided
our group great insight. We administered the survey online at ImmigrationPortal.com.
We did this so users could reply to the survey just like they would on any other thread.
This would be the best way to get the most feedback from the users. The survey mostly
closed open questions so we could attract more users to take the survey. We did have one
open ended question which helped give us great ideas for things to fix. Both methods
used help gain great detail about the current system.
Survey:
1) How often do you visit the site www.immigrationportal.com on a scale of 1-10?
10 being the highest
2) When visiting the website, do you find it easy to browse through the forums?
3) Would you like the ability to be able to post petitions?
4) Would you like to see some kind of help option when you are browsing the website?
5) On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate this website? 10 being the highest
6) Do you ever notice the website being bogged down or slow at times?
7) If there was any changes that you would like to see done on immigrationportal.com
what would they be?
Results gained from Survey: 103 people took the survey
Question 1: Average was 8.89
Question 2: 93 No’s and 10 Yes
Question 3: 100 Yes and 3 No’s
Question 4: 92 Yes and 11 No’s
Question 5: Average was 2.14
Question 6: 60 Yes and 43 No
From question 7 we have a lot of answers which all seemed to be good suggestions:
1) Have a better search feature, so when you search something it is actually related.
2) Have the website be more organized so they can understand where they are going.
3) Have a help button so if anyone has any questions they can go to the help feature.
4) Get rid of the duplicate information on the same page.
27
Interview Transcript
Jason: We need a description of your ImmigrationPortal.com. What your site is trying to
achieve and the way it works currently.
Rajiv: So essentially what your question is “what software are we currently deploying to
achieve the purpose that we wish to achieve the future software. Is that your question?
Jason: Just a description of the current system, so that can include what software you are
using and what type of features it has.
Rajiv: Let me explain in hopefully a very summarized manner what the difference in the
two software’s is. Let’s say you are using a project management software. Like for
example MS Project. What we have in place is merely a chat system. We have no other
features except a facility where people can leave messages for each other. And
participate in discussions that a threaded. So in a nutshell, we have a system currently off
the shelf. Nothing customized about it. We have some features customized a little bit but
most of it is off the shelf and it only does one-fortieth or one-hundredth of what we want
it to do.
Jason: So, what off-the-shelf software are you using?
Rajiv: It’s called VBulletin.
Jason: Is that free, or did you purchase it?
Rajiv: Ahh, It’s close to free. It only costs a couple hundred bucks. And then another
couple hundred bucks for us to take the emblem or icons off. You know how it says “this
is the software we are running.” Well, we’ve taken it off. It’s a really cheap software.
The software we had before that was called Web-X. That software used to cost us
$24,000 a year in licensing. Okay. It only had the capability to have 60 people online at
a time. This software (VBulletin) with some good hardware costs only $400 and we can
have unlimited number of people online at a time. Normally we have anywhere from
400- to 800 people on at the same time.
Jason: Pretty good numbers.
Rajiv: Yes, the only thing it needs is solid hardware, dual processors.
Jason: What kind of hardware do you have supporting?
Rajiv: Like I said, we have dual processor computers with gigabyte level ram. I think
its 2-gigabyte at the moment. The fastest hard-drives we could buy. I think they are
SCSI. And they are all running Raid-5.
28
Jason: Are there any problems with the system, other than it doesn’t have the features
you need?
Rajiv: Yeah, Basically we have an air pistol to do the job of a bazooka. To understand
what we are trying to accomplish you need to understand how advocacy works. If you as
a person woke in the morning and said “you know what I don’t like X thing in the
education system. I want to get that change to Congress.” What would you do? Well,
first thing you would do would be pick up the phone and call a few people. And see if
you can locate who in Congress is concerned with education. Example, you would find
out there must be an education sub-committee on the Senate-side as well as the Houseside. You would find out who the congress people are. And first you would find out who
the staffers are. Because first you have to start with the staffers. You have to find out
who on the staff deals with the education issues. Then you have to cultivate a
relationship. You got to go meet them 12 or 15 times. Take your problems to them.
There is a whole level of things you have to do. Then if the bill does come into play and
you see it move the various stages of becoming a law, you have to follow through with
every senator and staffer as possible. You need to know who our friends are and who our
foes are. If you’ve got a team of 30 people work on it, who is doing what. So we need a
very sophisticated project management software that is intimately connected to the
process of a bill. That understands how grassroots activism works. So you need vertical
knowledge of the business process.
Jason: It seems like an awful long process and certainly becomes time-consuming. Is
there benefits to your company running this service? Are you making any type of profit
from it? We kind of have the understanding that you weren’t at the moment
Rajiv: No, there is no direct profit to the company at the moment. We don’t have a
revenue model and I’ll explain to you why. Somebody many years ago mentioned to us
that we run Immigration.com and ImmigrationPortal.com as basically an ad for our firm.
They said “basically this is nothing but an ad for your firm.” And I said I agree with you.
Why do have these websites up? Because we get name recognition. Why do these
companies like Colgate and you know all these companies spend billions of dollars on ad
revenues? The reason for that is they put money out for the ads so that they can get name
recognition. But the difference between Immigration.com and the Yellow Pages is that
you don’t have 500,000 people a year or a million people a year just reading Yellow
Pages. People are reading Immigration or ImmigrationPortal.com because we are
providing a very useful service which is information. And incidentally our name gets
floated along with it. So the most important indirect benefit of any website we sponsor is
our name gets before the community of our potential customers in a very targeted and
very creative constructive way. At a moral level, we are giving something before we get
something. And at an advertising level, this is the best possible ad that you could think
of.
Jason: So in essence you are getting name recognition while providing a service.
29
Rajiv: Immigration.com used to be just a 3 page website in 1993 when people haven’t
even heard of the world-wide-web. I was the one did all the programming. In those days
you had to hand code all the HTML. We only use the Linux –ux platform. We do not
touch Windows. I tried Windows for about six months and never went back to it again. I
can’t stand Windows on a commercial website. So anyhow, we started off with a 3 page
website and the basic function of the entire website was “what can we as a law firm give
away, not what can we get, but what can we give away?” And before you know it our
own firm expanded from a one-person operation to today about 40 people. It has been a
slow, well, I wouldn’t say slow, but a gradual increase in our own size. And our the
reason for that is contrary to what most firms do which is before you talk to them you
have to pay up. Read what we have, if you like us, hire us, if you don’t like us don’t hire
us. At least you got something out of it. There we took it one step further.
Immigration.com if you look at it is a one to many information dissemination platform.
Our firm supplies information to many people who come to visit. ImmigrationPortal.com
is a many to many dissemination format. Many people provide information to many
other people. The community is based upon a group of volunteers. We invited people
who have posted more than a 1000 messages to come and become volunteer moderators.
They are not getting paid a penny. We don’t pay them. Basically they are doing it
because they like doing it. So it’s a community that is truly run as a community. We try
not to take credit for anything. We try to stay in the background. We only come in the
foreground when any legal questions need to be resolved which is a problem of the
masses. In fact we did a cross-section lawsuit a couple of months ago. Another indirect
benefit. The legal fees for a very little amount of work where we didn’t even go to court.
We won the case without going to court. And the legal fees for what it was, was $50,000.
So you can think of it as many many indirect benefits flow from it. Also that’s not we
focus on it. We focus on it as something good for the community. And then money just
comes from it.
Jason: So What was this cross-section lawsuit? How was that spawned? Does that
increase revenue for you?
Rajiv: Somebody on the newsgroup that we have on ImmigrationPortal.com mentioned
that the Social Security Administration was giving them a lot problems to give drivers
license to dependents of legally present non-immigrants in the US. For examples
students. Because an F-2 visa holder cannot get a social security number they can not get
a drivers license. That’s ridiculous. You know someone with an F-2 visa could be here
for 6 years and his wife could not drive the kids to school. We have the same problem
with H-4 visas, same problem with L-2. These are all long-term non-immigrants. People
who stay an average of 5 or 6 years. So we took the Social Security Administration to
court and said “you can’t do that.” And the court agreed with us. They said “You can’t
do that.” Although things are not quite the way we want them to be but the court did
throw out the proposed regulation of the Social Security Administration. And in part of
that deal the court said you have to pay them whatever is the attorneys fees. So they
called and said “how much do you want to get paid.” And we said “we think $50,000 is
fair.” Like I said the amount of work involved was negligible. It wasn’t a lot of work,
because we didn’t go to court. The judge basically threw out the case of the Social
30
Security Administration on the paperwork alone. This is just an example of an incident
benefit.
Jason: We are trying to get some kind of idea.
Rajiv: I would said a direct benefit is name recognition which is like advertising. A lot
of indirect benefits flow from it. Such as a lawsuit that I just gave you an example of. To
know what the community wants truly helps us understand where we need to focus our
efforts as a law firm. Is it Immigration? Is it transactional practice? Where do we need
to go to next? Do need to become all of the sudden lobbyists instead of lawyers?
Jason: I think Jacinth was talking about that you only have 1 petition at a time.
Rajiv: You see, the petition is at the beginning of activism. Petition is just basically
knocking at the door.
Jason: You wanted to expand to have more than one petition at the same time?
Rajiv: We are doing a lot more than that because the high level specs that you saw
basically conceive of this software as a one stop portal/project management for issue
formation through the law formation entire lifecycle. We start with an issue. It becomes
a community issue. We design a team. We designate tasks to the team. We got a team
leader or group of team leaders. And then you start making lists. We have a huge fount
of knowledge about who to contact, who is a good guy, who is on our side, phone
numbers. We are acquiring an institution of knowledge here. Which means it’s not a
short term thing. Like you know, I want my problem resolved in 3 months… It’s not
gonna happen.
Jason: It definitely seems like a long term issue. We were definitely trying to figure out
the costs and the revenues involved.
Rajiv: See we don’t mind the costs. And I’ll tell you why we don’t mind the costs.
Every law firm in this country, because it is legal to advertise, devotes X percentage of
their firms revenue to advertising. You know how the tax system works. If I make
$100,000 profit, I get taxed 48% of that. Uncle Sam takes almost 50% of my money. If I
take that same money and I put it into something like advertising, it is a tax write off for
me. So $100,000 of advertising only costs $50,000. In other words, the tax laws of the
United States of America are heavily titled towards building up a company, instead of
taking money out of the company. So 98% of the law firms that I know, or have worked
for had ad revenue up to 30% of their budgets. Even if we were to assume 30% as a good
figure for our firm to sort of put into development. It is a very constructive, creative,
even moral way of business development. You are helping millions of people. If you
were to put that figure into business development revenue it would translate easily into
less than we would have to pay for the system. And we do not place any ads. In 12 years
of my practice, we have never placed a single ad. I have not spent a dollar on an ad.
31
That is way we are relatively unknown. We are heavily focused on a special interest
group. People who know us, come to us only 100% through word of mouth.
Jason: So your advertising revenue is used to support this?
Rajiv: Yeah, we could easily spend between 60 and 100 thousand dollars on advertising,
if we were to take the revenue model approach. (Pause) Wait, no, I have the wrong
figure. 30% Oh my what am I saying? That would be $600,000. So we could develop
with $600,000 a year on this kind of advertising.
Jason: You are saying that kind of money could possible be used to take the issue to the
community issue, to the petition and support that long process?
Rajiv: Absolutely, We do not intend to support the entire lifecycle with our money. We
tend to provide the software which will then help provide focus the money that they have
and focus they effort they are willing to put in. We are not talking about putting money
into it. We are putting money into developing the software which will create a meeting
place for people. Once the meeting place is created, we are out of it. We are not putting
any of our money into it, except into software maintenance and enhancement. And the
hardware and software, that is all we will do. The rest is up to the community. If they
want to spend a million dollars, collect money and do things, it is up to them. I’m not
going to get involved with that.
Jason: I guess that was a confusion. We thought that because the petitions were on your
site, that you were helping. Other than you provide the software, that you were helping
with legal advice/counsel.
Rajiv: Yes, we do. That we do and we will continue to do that. We don’t have any
problem with that. But we are not shelling out any more money from out pocket, unless
we see a cause in which we are personally concerned.
Jason: Obviously there would be cost in paperwork or other type of filing that you
would need to do.
Rajiv: You would be amazed how much money I have thrown away in the last 3 years.
People have called me and said we can raise $50,000 overnight if you want. And I have
said no thank you. We are a grass roots movement. I am not going to go spend money
on political committees. I am member of a couple of pacts. Very powerful pacts, but I
will not spend a dollar. I only give them the 5 or 10 thousand dollars a year that they
charge. I don’t put any money up as a contribution to a political cause. I think people
should count. I don’t believe in putting money into democracy. I don’t think that is the
way it should work. So what we are doing with the petitions is helping the people focus
their issues in a language that the regulators can understand.
Jacinth: So you guide them through the process?
32
Rajiv: We just guide them through the process. We tell them this is where to go next.
This is a free community. If they let an issue die, that is their problem. They are not
babies. I’m not going to hand-hold them.
Jason: That was my misunderstanding. Just from the information we received. I think
a few of us though that this is the issues, and that you were helping them along, and that
you were more involved than just the facilitator.
Is Immigration.com or
ImmigrationPortal.com your only method of revenue?
Rajiv: That is our only method. We don’t go knocking on any doors. We let people
come to us.
Jason: Well, Rajiv, Thank you very much. I need to be wrapping things up, I appreciate
your time.
Rajiv: Jason, you are quite welcome. Good Luck with your project.
33
34
35
Business Rules
A user is any person who goes onto the website and views, browses or searches through
different threads. Each instance of user information is defined by an email address, other
attributes of this entity include: first name, last name, address and birth date. A user can
either be registered or unregistered.
The unregistered users are able to view and browse through the forums archive.
An unregistered user is also allowed to sign a petition in the Petition Archive.
-
The registered user has all the abilities that an unregistered user has plus the
permission to post a message in the forums archive. The registered user can also
search through both a petition archive and user’s interests. A registered user ID is
the one attribute that differentiates the two types of users. Related constraints
include:
one or more unregistered or registered users can browse the forum archives at a
time
one or more unregistered or registered users can view a forum at a time
one or more unregistered or registered users can sign a petition from the petition
archive
one or more registered users are allowed to search through the petitions archive
one or more registered users are allowed to post a message in the forum archive
The forums archive separates the forums into different categories such as: “Employment
Information”, “Education in the USA”, and “Changes in the USA after the Terrorist
Attacks”. Each forum is uniquely identified by a forum ID. A related constraint is:
- a registered user can post only one message at a time in the forum archive
The petition archive is a lot like the forum archive but with petitions. A petition can be
signed online by any user. Each petition is identified by a petition ID. Some related
constraints are:
- both types of users can only sign one petition at a time
- users can only sign a petition once
Each petition signature if verified through signature information. Signature information
is verified so one user doesn’t sign same petition multiple times. Signature information
contains a verified signature list, a user name and an email address. Some related
constraints are:
- one or more signatures can be verified at a time
- one or more petitions can verify a signature at a time
Registered users can search through a list of topics in the user’s interest entity. Total
interest can be derived from user’s interest. Some related constraints are:
- only one user’s interest can be searched at a time
- one or more user’s interest can search for threads
36
The threads entity contains a list of threads that can be searched by user’s interest. Each
thread is identified by a thread ID. A related constraint is:
- one or more threads can be searched through user’s interest
37
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39
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42
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45
IFSM 436 Group No. 3
Prepared for Dr. Norcio
November 12, 2003
46
System Alternatives
Our project team has performed a wide-range of analysis on the current
hardware and software used on Immigrationportal.com. We have performed a detailed
study on every aspect of the system and have further considered the different feasibility
analysis for the future system.
Our project team has come up with four different
alternatives based on extensive research and careful analyzing of business operations in
the current system. Below is a brief summary of the alternatives and the following pages
will provide details to each of those alternatives.
The first alternative would be to keep the current system the same. The
advantage with this alternative is that the users are already familiar with the current
system and if a new system were implemented, the users would have to be trained on
how to use the system. The second alternative will be to purchase a commercial off the
shelf software called PHProjekt (http://www.phprojekt.com). This software has almost
all the essential features required by Immigrationportal.com. The third alternative will be
to purchase another off the shelf software called A.C.E Project Management and Intranet
(http://www.ace-solution.com). A.C.E PM & I is a fully downloadable PHP source
project management tool, which includes all the necessary project management features
to replace or add-on to the current system. The fourth alternative will be to build an
entirely new system. A key advantage with this alternative is the ability to build a new,
customizable system from the ground up. This option would require hiring programmers
to develop a new system that would meet the specific needs of the law office. All the
above-mentioned alternatives have been further evaluated and discussed in this report
including the essential feasibility analysis for each option.
47
First Alternative
The first alternative would be to keep the current system the same. The
main advantage with this alternative is the users will not have to be trained because they
are familiar working with the current system. Other advantages include lower spending
costs since no upgrades or changes are being made. However, a major disadvantage is
the problems with the current system will continue to exist. Maintaining a legacy system
will only save the organization money in the short term. While the current system
continues to age, the requirements for new software will need to be tailored for
compatibility issues which will increase labor cost.
The following is a discussion on the various feasibility analysis if this
alternative were to be implemented.
Feasibility Analysis:
Economic Feasibility: In regard to cost and benefit analysis, there will be no extra cost
for keeping the system the same in the short term but there will also be no benefit of an
enhanced and a better functioning system. Long term costs will be for maintaining the
legacy system.
Technical Feasibility: Considering this feasibility, the law firm would not require any
added technical resources or expertise to maintain the current system. The firm has an inhouse programmer responsible for monitoring the data stores and data flows of the
petition system while manually checking the status of every petition. The firm also has
48
system administrators to maintain the Immigrationportal.com website and its various
functions.
Operational Feasibility: This feasibility is a measure of how end-users and management
feel about the system. If this alternative were to be implemented, the end-users would
still experience difficulty navigating through the system because of its complicated
layout. The performance and efficiency of the system will still be inadequate fail to
address the issues of providing a structured and a stable system outlined by the law firm.
Schedule Feasibility: This is the measure of how reasonable the project timetable is.
This feasibility will not apply to this alternative because the systems analysts will not
change any characteristics of the current system.
49
Second Alternative
The second alternative would be to purchase a commercial off the shelf software,
called PHProjekt (http://www.phprojekt.com).
PHProjekt is an open source
groupware suite; it is free software that can be distributed under the terms of the GNU
General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. This software has
almost all the essential features required by the immigration portal website.
The
components of PHProjekt are Project management, Group calendar, Time card system,
Chat, Forum, Request Tracker, Voting system, Search system, Administration utilities etc.
All the above-mentioned built in components could be easily customized to the law
firm’s needs.
Feasibility Analysis:
Economic Feasibility: This is free software that can be downloaded online from its
website http://www.phprojekt.com. The advantage with this alternative is that it is cost
effective. PHProjekt requires a typical LAMP/WAMP (Linux or Windows/ Apache/
MySQL/ PHP) system environment. The current system has already been configured to
the LAMP environment, thus eliminating the need to purchase additional software. There
could be recurring costs for further customization and support depending on the user
number of installation. By implementing this alternative the law firm will gain increased
customer satisfaction and stronger name recognition.
Technical Feasibility: If this alternative were to be implemented, the law firm need not
necessarily have to hire additional technical expertise because this software is easy to
50
install. The free, limited-technical assistance is provided online through email allowing
support at anytime. If the firm were not satisfied with the built-in components of this
software there would arise a need to hire additional technical expertise to create modules
that would suit the firm’s needs by modifying the source code that comes along with the
software. Also, PHProjekt can be easily upgraded with the current system, cutting costs
by not having to completely eliminate the current system
Operational Feasibility: Implementation of this alternative would comparatively increase
the performance and efficiency of the current system. The software uses a favorably
pleasing graphical user interface, which will make navigation simple and effortless.
Users will be able to perform their activities quickly and accurately. This software
provides several features that are of direct benefit to the law firm such as the voting
system, search feature, request-tracker etc. There is also a feature in this software that
allows members to be able to assign access control levels to other team members. This
alternative would greatly reduce all the problems faced by the current system.
Schedule Feasibility: From all the information and analysis that has been collected
during our research, our team will be able to implement programs for the input screen
design and the output report design. We will present written documentation of the
available solutions along with the conversion, training and maintenance plans to the law
firm.
51
Third Alternative
The third alternative would be to purchase another off the shelf software, called
A.C.E Project Management and Intranet (http://www.ace-solution.com).
A.C.E PM & I is a fully downloadable PHP source project management tool, which
requires PHP and MySQL to run on the server. This software also contains most of the
features that are needed for the discussions board on Immigrationportal.com.
This
alternative would be advantageous because the software includes all the necessary project
management features that the company is looking for such as, Project coordination tools,
Management tools, Communication tools, Individual tools and Time management tools.
The Project coordination tools will allow the users to create multiple projects and assign
different tasks to each other. Users will be able to view project team members and allow
each member to communicate with each other, create issues and enquire about the current
stage of petitions.
Feasibility Analysis:
Economic Feasibility: In regard to cost and benefit analysis, implementation of this
alternative is relatively expensive to PHProjekt.
A one-time purchase cost of this
software would be $695.95. This quote includes free upgrades. A.C.E PM & I software
also requires PHP and MySQL to run on the server. Since the current system has already
been configured to the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) environment there will be
no additional expenditure on the software. There could arise a need for recurring costs if
the law office were to implement PHP Live Support hosted by Osicodes. PHP Live
Support can be hosted or downloaded on ImmigrationPortal.com servers. PHP Live
52
Support provides live technical and customer service 24/7 on PHP servers. If the law
firm were to employ PHP Live Support’s Hosted solution for corporate users, it would
cost them $299.95 per year. If the law firm were to download PHP Live support source
code on the immigrationportal.com server, it would cost $149.95 with an annual license
renewal of $74.95 (as found on http://www.phplivesupport.com/purchase_s.php).
Implementation of this software would be advantageous to the law firm because of the
built-in features that comes with this software that can be easily customized to the law
firm’s requirements.
Operational Feasibility: Similar to the previous alternative, this solution provides the
user with a well layed out graphical interface for navigation. The time management tools
has a special feature that will allow the administrator or any moderator of the site to
layout time lines and proposed schedules for petitions, issues and dated material in a
calendar view. Each team can perform different administration tasks, allowing access
control and security.
Technical Feasibility: This alternative will probably entail hiring additional technical
expertise; persons familiar with MySQL and PHP coding could modify the software to
better suit the law firm’s needs. PHP is a script language and interpreter that is used
primarily on Linux web servers.
Schedule Feasibility: From all the information and analysis that has been collected
during our research, our team will be able to implement programs for the input screen
53
design and the output report design. We will present written documentation of the
available solutions along with the conversion, training and maintenance plans to the law
firm.
54
Fourth Alternative
The fourth alternative would be to build an entirely new system. The new
system will bring in new hardware and software. The advantages with this alternative
would be that the system will not only fix all the problems with the current system but
will also allow developers/programmers to be flexible and creative in the way they solve
the problem. The disadvantage is that there could be a possibility that the new system
would be missing elements or would be difficult to implement or maintain.
Feasibility Analysis:
Economic Feasibility: Applying this alternative to cost and benefit analysis, the cost of
developing a new system would most likely outweigh the potential benefit. It would also
be very expensive and time consuming to develop a brand new system from scratch.
Since Immigrationportal.com doesn’t generate revenue directly, but through indirect
referrals, the costs for a new system can not be justified to spend on a system that is
providing a free, informational web-based service.
Operational Feasibility: Implementation of this alternative would be advantageous
because we will be able to fix all the problems associated with the performance and
efficiency of the current system; however a disadvantage would be that the users will
need to be trained extensively to use the new system and to perform at a desired level.
There is a possibility that users might not be satisfied with the system’s user interfaces.
55
Technical Feasibility: Building a new system will require a lot of technical expertise and
functional knowledge within the company. This would also entail hiring programmers to
develop a new system that would meet the specific needs of the user.
Schedule Feasibility: From all the information and analysis that has been collected
during our research, our team will be able to implement programs for the input screen
design and the output report design. We will present written documentation of the
available solutions along with the conversion, training and maintenance plans to the law
firm.
56
Alternative Comparison Chart
1
Alternative
Maintain the
Current System
Advantages
• No training required
• Users familiar to the system
• No immediate spending
Disadvantages
• Current problems continue to
exist
• Maintaining legacy system
• Short term gains cause long
term losses
2
PHProjekt
• Free groupware
• Same features as current system
• Cost effective
• Compatible with current systems
• Doesn’t eliminate legacy
hardware
• Free without maintenance
contract
3
A.C.E. Project
Management and
Intranet
• Matches all requirements
• Includes project management tools
• Reliability
• Will need to hire PHP expert
• Most expensive alternative
• Requires new hardware
4
Develop a New
System In-House
• Allows for complete customization
• Built from ground-up
• Not the best resources from
within
• Not cost effective
• Longer developing time
57
System Analysts’ Recommendation
After outlining the possible alternatives to the discussion board software on the
Immigration Portal web site, our team suggests the law firm to use PHProjekt
(http://www.phprojekt.com). PHProjekt software will provide the Law offices of Rajiv
Khanna with one of the simplest and most flexible group management systems. It is a
modular application built for the coordination of group activities and to share information
and document via intranet and Internet. PHProjekt is an open source groupware suite that
can be distributed for free under the terms of GNU general public license. One of the
major advantages with this product is that it provides the flexibility to add features
depending on the company’s requirements by modifying the source code.
The following is a list of all the features offered by PHProjekt: Project
Management, Group Calendar, Time Card System, Chat, Forum, Request Tracker,
Voting System, Search System, Administration Utilities etc. The Forum option enables
users to view available threads in a tree structure, which gives users the flexibility to
participate in discussions of their choice. The Chat feature allows users to communicate
with members online, this also allows the discussions to be saved in a file so that they can
refer back to them at anytime in future. The Voting system feature allows members to
select individual persons to vote for a particular issue by electronically signing on an
issue; depending on the number of votes received by the members a petition will be
published. Members can view the voting in the form of a table showing all current and
past voting. The Project Management feature allows users to divide projects into several
subprojects with unlimited depth. This feature enables users to create issues, assign a
project leader, track the status of an issue maintained by a project leader, assign tasks to
58
different members of the team and finally check the statistics results that describe who
worked on which part of the project. The Search feature allows users to search for a full
text search in a single module or a complete site search. Most of the admin tasks can be
accomplished through the Administration feature, which will allow members to manage
groups, users, projects, and create access levels to project members and other users. The
Request Tracker feature is sort of like a help desk or trouble ticket system, which answers
any technical questions regarding the software. There is also a searchable knowledge
base for solved requests. A special add-on feature is included with the software, which
gives us the flexibility to add different features to the program by modifying the source
code. The advantages of this alternative are that it will be relatively lower in cost
compared to implementing an entire new system and the transition for users would be
easier because this program uses user-friendly GUI’s that makes navigation effortless and
easily understandable.
The PHProjekt software is completely compatible with the Immigration Portal’s
current hardware. PHProjekt works on various operating systems such as Linux, UNIX,
Windows, OS/2, and Solaris etc and is compatible with many web servers like Apache
and Samba. Immigration Portal, however, does not currently have backup system. Our
implementation will add a second Dell Power Edge 2650 server. That server will be a
clone of the main web server for redundancy. A Dell 130T Tape library will also be
added to the network design. The tape library is a fully automated tape backup system
which does incremental backups daily. And it will perform a full backup every Sunday
evening.
Hardware:
59
2 Servers:
Additional Processors:
Hard Drive:
Router:
Backup:
PowerEdge 2650, Intel Xeon 2.4GHz w/512K Cache
Dual Processor Intel® Xeon 2.4GHz w/512K Cache
36GB 10K RPM Ultra 320 SCSI Drive
Cisco 6509 Catalyst
Dell 130T Tape Library
Software:
Operating System:
Firewall:
Web Server:
Application Server:
Database:
Application:
Linux
Raptor Firewall version .9
Apache version 1.3.27
PHP version 4.3.0
MySQL
PHProjekt version 4.0.4
After evaluating the various advantages and disadvantages of the suggested
alternative solutions, our systems analysts’ team recommends the law firm to implement
PHProjekt as their best choice in every way. This option will not only prove to be cost
effective but it will also accomplish the law firm’s desire to expand their goals by
providing a structured and a much more stable discussions board system that contains
enormous amount of information but would provide an easy and an effective way to
access information.
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Project Completion Plans
Start project
Initiation Task
Initial meeting with team members
Get team members contact information
Choose an organization
Choose Project
Set date and time to meet team member
Selecting the contact person
Talking to stakeholders
Draft project requirements
Selecting the problems associated with it
Develop a team proposal
Planning Task
Conduct the feasibility study of the
project
Develop cost benefit analysis
Requirement Task
Assigning group members with a task
Decided the estimated time
Analysis Task
Developing diagrams (ER, DFD, Network)
Diagram of the current system
Information gathering techniques
Interviews, questionnaires, surveys.
Preliminary Analysis
Develop requirement analysis
Design Task
Determine alternative solutions
Discuss feasibility of the solutions
Decide on appropriate solution
Discuss specific hardware/software needed
Design Network Layout
System design report
Final Task
Prepare for project report
Training Plans
Maintenance Plans
Conversion Plans
Prepare for presentation
Presentation
Project assessment
Completed
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
80%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
80%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
25%
25%
50%
25%
25%
0%
0%
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The project is currently on schedule and will be completed soon. The work left to
be completed includes the conversion plans, maintenance plans, and training plans. The
project team will also be preparing a presentation which will be given on December 1 st.
The conversion plans are being developed by Desiree Davis. Robert Geisler is managing
the implementation of the training plans. And Ying-Chung Chou is working on the
maintenance plans. The other members of the group will provide editing for the plans.
Jeremy Corey will spearhead the team’s project assessment, but will receive input from
all group members. The project presentation will be a collaborative effort between the
group members. The work has been divided and the team has committed to an aggressive
schedule for the project’s completion. There is no doubt that it will be completed
successfully and on-time.
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Normalized Database Tables
User_Info
Field Name
E-mail
First_Name
Last_Name
Address
Birthday
User_Type
Field Type
Text
Text
Text
Memo
Date/Time
Text
Forums_Archive
Field Name
Forum_ID
Discussion List
Text
Memo
Signature_Info
Field Name
User_E-mail
Verified_Signature_List
Text
Memo
Petition_Archive
Field Name
Petition_ID
Petition_List
Field Size
35
25
25
32 kb Memory Limit
N/A
1
Field Type
Field Size
35
32 kb Memory Limit
Field Type
Field Size
35
32 kb Memory Limit
Field Type
Text
Memo
User_Interest
Field Name
Topics
Total_Interests
Text
Number
Threads
Field Name
Thread_ID
Keywords
Thread_List
Text
Memo
Memo
Field Size
35
32 kb Memory Limit
Field Type
Field Size
35
6
Field Type
Field Size
35
32 kb Limit
32 kb Limit
*Database Names, Type and Field Size are based on Microsoft Access 2003
64
IFSM 436 Group No. 3
Prepared for Dr. Norcio
December 1, 2003
65
Screen Design
Figure 1 - Summary Window
The Summary Window provides the user with an overview of current events. It notifies
of the user of new postings, new votes, new files, and other things that have occurred
since the user’s last visit.
66
Figure 2 - Calendar Function
The calendar provides complete functionality of schedule and keeping track of personal
activities. It includes the ability to create group events also, which will appear on the
calendar of each group member.
67
Figure 3 - Contacts Function
The contacts tab allows user to keep an address book to manage personal information of
friends and business partners. It includes a feature to export the address book to XML.
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Figure 4 - Chat Screen
The chat tab allows all online users to communicate with each other in real-time. It is
useful for long-distance group meetings.
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Figure 5 - Forum Screen
The forum allows users to post topics of conversation which other users will read and
respond to. It includes features to sort the threads in a variety of ways.
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Figure 6 - File Exchange
The file exchange allows users to submit files to the website which then other users can
download the files. This is a useful feature when exchange large files.
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Figure 7 - Project Planning
The project planning is an excellent feature which allows a user or group of users to
create a work breakdown structure. It includes timeframes and completion status. It also
allows tasks to be assigned to users.
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Figure 8 - To-Do List
The To-Do List allows a user to create a list of items that need to be completed. This is a
powerful feature when combined with the project planning and calendar features.
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Figure 9 - Voting System
The voting system allows users to create issues to be voted on. It keeps track of the
number of voters, percentage of votes of each choice, and a participation percentage
which is based on the number of users out of the all users to have voted.
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Conversion Plans:
Once the new system has been tested and assured that there are no bugs or
glitches, we will need to choose the best conversion strategy. When determining the best
conversion strategy we had to keep in mind three things, the risk associated with each
style, the cost and the time. The two styles that we are choosing from are parallel
conversion and direct conversion.
Direct conversion is implemented by turning off the old system, and replacing it
with the new system. This strategy is a high risk since there may be bugs in the system
that may have went undetected and the old system will not be there to convert back to.
Also the users are not given anytime time to practice and get used to the new system
before the old one is turned off. It is the least expensive and it is the fastest when it
comes to implementing the new system and getting the users working with it.
Parallel conversion is where both the systems would be running simultaneously.
This system has the least amount of risk. If any bugs are detected while running the new
system, they can be worked on and the users can continue to work on the old system until
the problems are solved. Parallel conversion gives the users some time to get used to the
new system before the old one is turned off, for good. This strategy is very expensive. It
will be very costly to maintain two systems because you will need to have someone there
to make sure that all the information that is being inputted is the same on both systems.
The conversion style that best fits our system is the direct conversion strategy.
Since the system we plan to implement is web-based, we do not want to run the new
system in parallel to the old one. This would be too costly to maintain since there would
have to be two websites. There would also be too much time spent trying to maintain
75
consistency among the data from both the sites. Since we will be changing the system
over directly if the users have any problems navigating the site there will be online
support offered and a help option that can walk them through anything.
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Training Plans:
Training on how to work with PHProjekt will only pertain to the in house
programmer and the various system administrators for immigrationportal.com. Training
will involve a combination of one-on-one and classroom training; this is viable option
because of how small the group is. A specialist will fly in from California on January 4th
and the classroom session will begin on Monday the 5th.
On Monday morning a
classroom training session will be held, it will only last a half a day and will introduce the
in house programmer and system administrator to different aspects of PHProjekt. The
specialist will spend the rest of the day with the in house programmer, focusing on the
specific issues a programmer using PHProjekt has to deal with. The next day, Tuesday,
will be devoted entirely to the system administrators. Most of Tuesday will be in a
classroom because there are too many administrators to work with one-on-one. The
specialist will go over the administration functions of PHProjekt and other special topics.
The specialist will be available for one more day, Wednesday. The programmer and
administrators will go about their daily routine but will use PHProjekt, the specialist will
be around to help anyone if they need it.
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Maintenance Plans
The maintenance plan included in the PHProjekt package covers any problems
with installation and setup, training, hardware, software and system customization.
Technical support provided is available online and over the telephone 24-hours a day.
The warranty includes 1 full year of technical support from the date or purchase.
Installation:
Installation and setup problems can be troubleshooted using the following steps:
 The Administrator’s Manual will be mailed to the law firm that contains a
frequently asked question (FAQ) section, basic troubleshooting and user friendly
guides to simple operating procedures.
 A file included in the software download called FAQ-install.html is provided
along with PHProjekt with updates to the Administrator’s Manual and common
problems relating to specific types of systems that PHProjekt has been used with.
 The Installation Forum is located at http://www.phprojekt.com/support/forum/
that allows system administrators and users to write in their opinions or problems
they are experiencing with the software.
 Telephone support is available 24-hours a day, 7 days a week for technical
assistance. If PHProjekt is unable to assist you over the phone, they are willing to
help find a certified technician to come on site.
Training:
A week long training program is provided to system administrators of the site. In this
program, they will be provided materials and skills to allow them to assist their end-users.
This lowers cost of off-site assistance.
Hardware:
Daily checks of server and network devices are conducted furnishing a Daily System
Status report (DSS) which is electronically mailed to system administrators. The e-mail
can be customized in format as well as to who will receive the report.
 Yearly evaluations of hardware performance will be compared.
 Any hardware updates or upgrades will be conducted Sunday night and
notification will be published ahead of time on the website.
Software:
Self-manageable software checks the BugTracker® for new updates or fixes.
BugTracker® lists all bugs and fixes that have been reported.
 BugTracker® sends out weekly reports to selected system administrators of any
software malfunctions in the system.
 New versions of PHProjekt are usually available after 1-3 months. New versions
are considered beta until further evaluated and can be downloaded for site testing
at system administrator’s choice.
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Customizing:
The ability to modify, enhance, create, and adapt new features or processes.
 Modify the existing modules to our needs.
 Enhance with new features to what we want.
 Creating new modules.
 Adapting and integrating your existing applications.
Note: Modifications can be sent to PHProjekt for a quote request. Under agreement, no
modifications can be done without project management approval.
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Project Assessment:
Through the span of the semester, our project team worked efficiently and
effectively to meet requirements and deadlines. Every team member contributed their
ideas and suggestions to each deliverable.
Communication played a large role in
coordinating what tasks went to which person. On several occasions, a team member
could not attend a meeting but was always sure to notify the group. If a team member
had a lot of work to do, others were not afraid to offer their help. There were no group
issues that had a significant impact on performance. Personality conflicts were irrelevant
if they existed and team members concentrated on the focus of the project.
The ability to coordinate everyone’s schedule was the hardest part. Every team
member had a different schedule and therefore made it difficult to have everyone attend
in each meeting. This is where communication played a vital role, because someone who
attended the meeting would notify the absent team member of what was discussed and
what work was completed. It’s strongly recommended that from the first day a project
team is put together, establish a set schedule of when everyone can meet and make that
meeting time consistent through the weeks ahead. This makes it easier on everybody and
creates weekly deadlines for tasks that need to be completed for the deliverables. These
weekly deadlines provide a timeline the group can follow in order to achieve the best
grade possible. Sticking to the schedule prevents the group from falling behind.
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Meeting Notes
Project Proposal
September 15: This was our first official meeting that took place at 10:00 am…
Everyone was present. We discussed possibilities for our system. We were able to agree
on re-designing the system for a law office.
September 16: We had a meeting at 11:00 am. Everyone was able to attend except
Jacinth. We were able to talk to her on the phone. This meeting is where we discussed
the problem that the law office had and were able to come up with a possible solution.
We obtained most of our information about the current system through Jacinth, who has
direct contact with the law office. With that information we were all able to agree that
the current system needs to be organized and more user friendly.
Preliminary Analysis
September 21(on campus): Jason talked with our contact on the phone while Jacinth was
actually at the company on the other line. This helped us more understand the current
system that is being used now. It also helped us better see the problems that went along
with it. We came up with a good idea of the problem that was at hand from this. Jacinth
also recorded the conversation she had with our contact.
September 23(in library): Everyone attended meeting. All took turns listening to the
recorded conversation with our contact. Our goal of this meeting was to go over the
current system and to determine the problems at hand. Also start to think of goals we
might have for the new system. We already had hardcopy of some ideas that we put
together already. So we changed some things on that and fixed it on the computers in the
basement. We also began to look at our feasibility analysis which is due next week.
Feasibility Analysis
September 24(after class): Received our proposal back. We discussed the changes that
we would make in our proposal. We also talked to Monica about the changes she wanted
to see. We decided on meeting Wednesday night at 7pm to fix our proposal and decide
on roles.
September 24(in library): Everyone attended meeting. We talked about the feasibility
analysis and how we would go about breaking it up. Jeremy was going to do the
operational part, Rick was going to do the economic, Adam would do the technical,
Robert would work on the schedule feasibility. Jacinth and Desiree would work on the
part of the legal issues at hand. Jason was going to put all the parts together.
81
September 26(in library): Everyone attended meeting. We revised the project proposal
that was handed back to us. We also discussed what everyone was working on in the
Feasibility analysis.
September 29: Received back our preliminary analysis. We went to talk to Monica after
we received our preliminary analysis to discuss what she exactly was looking for to help
us when we were correcting the proposal.
September 30(in library): Everyone attended meeting, and we started at 10am. We
worked on the computers down in the basement. Made sure the project proposal was
ready to hand back in and worked on the feasibility analysis. We started to look at the
preliminary analysis so we could fix the problems that we had.
Requirements Analysis
October 3 (library): Everyone attended meeting. Our goal of the meeting was to start to
get our requirements analysis on paper. We broke it up into sections: Ying-Chung Chou,
Jeremy, and Jason would work on the requirements (Nonfunctional operational and
Functional), Robert and Desiree would work on the Gant chart, Jacinth will do the part
who is responsible for what tasks, Adam will do a table on what are the estimated
completion times for the tasks. We decided that we would meet again on October 7th to
finish up.
October 7 (library): Everyone attended meeting. Everyone brought with them what they
did for this part of the project. We then went on the computers and put it all together and
made it look nice. Also we looked at the preliminary analysis because we have to hand
that in tomorrow with our new requirements analysis. We made some more changes to
the preliminary analysis. Are requirements analysis is good now and we decided that we
would email out if anyone decided to make anymore changes.
System Analysis
October 10: Our group met in the library. Everyone in the group attended. At this
meeting everyone was assigned a different task.
 Network Design – Jeremy
 Information Gathering – Jason and Adam
 Definition of Entities – Robert
 ERD – Desiree
 DFD – Ying
 Business Rules – Jacinth
October 21: Group met in the library. Everyone in the group attended. We discussed
how far along we were with our assigned tasks. Everyone worked on the DFD since that
seemed to be the most difficult part.
82
October 23: We met in the library. Everyone attended and we all worked on the DFD
until it was completed.
October 27: Our group met in the library. Everyone was there. We discussed how much
was finished and what still needed to be finished. The few things that needed to be
completed were then divided up among everyone to be finished.
System Design
November 5: We had our group meeting in the library. Everyone in the group attended.
We discussed the objectives for the next deliverable, and assigned task for everyone.
Jacinth took the job of writing up the alternate solutions. We all discussed what our
choice would be and Jason wrote up the appropriate solution. Jeremy made the network
layout. Desire, and Rick talked about the hardware and software needed. Adam worked
on the work that needed to be completed and the meeting notes.
November 7: Group met in library. Everyone attend the meeting. We discussed how the
tasks were progressing and what still needed to be done. Everyone was just about done
the tasks and we started to look at the next deliverable. We decided we were going to
have that deliverable done by next Wednesday.
November 10: Group met in class after lecture was over, everyone was present. We
discussed what tasks were completed and what needed to be done for the next
deliverable. Final tasks were broken down and assigned to each team member.
Final Project
November 14: Group met in library, everyone was present. We discussed the final
components of final project deliverable. Everyone was to send their revisions to Jason,
who would compile the document.
November 17: Group met in library, everyone was present.
constructing an outline for our project presentation.
We spent our time
November 19: Group met in library, everyone was present. We took our project
presentation outline and constructed a detailed powerpoint slideshow. We started to
think about who would present.
November 24: Group met in library, everyone was present. We tried to nail down any
remaining tasks that needed to be completed. We decided to meet the following evening
to practice the presentation
November 25: Group met in library, everyone was present. We went to the Social
Science building to find an empty room. We practiced the presentation.
83