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Final Year Dissertation

During my leave from education to undertake a professional studies placement I worked for a business called Andalucia Web Solutions. The organisation is based in Estepona, a coastal town on the Costa del Sol of Spain. While working at Andalucia Web Solutions I found my dissertation topic to produce a web based project management tool using PHP and MySQL. The site will manage multiple web design projects focusing on the cradle to grave activities of delivering projects.

Screenshot 1: Andaluica Web Solutions, Credit Andaluica Web Solutions

Andalucia Web Solution

Andalucia Web Solution is the product of the continued development and evolution of sister company Andalucia.com S.L. In 1996 Chris Chaplow Managing Director of Andalucia S.L. founded with the aid of Chris Mason the Andalucia Slide Library. With further development this became the portal site, Andalucia.com. Andalucia.com delivers its users advertisement supported information covering tourism, accommodation, life style, governance, historical and entertainment information to residence and tourist information for Andalucía the southern most region of Spain. In contrast to the work done by Andalucia.com - Andalucia Web Solutions provides Web Design, Hosting and Search Engine Optimisation to their customers. The organisation specialises in the design and maintenance of websites, blogs, forums, E-marketing or E-commerce solutions for organisations with international audiences.

While employed by Andalucia Web Solutions I identified a risk and opportunity to improve the business through the implementation of a project management application to assist the delivery of client solutions. The organisations was struggling to effectively produce results when developing new websites for customers. The issue with project work is simple. It involves non-routine tasks which requires considerable planning to overcome obstacles to deliver specific objectives for the customer. It is very possible that this work is carried out in phases and be large or complex in nature.

Problem Domain

During my employment at Andalucia Web Solutions I identified a risk and opportunity to develop a project management application to aid the delivery of client solutions.

We use projects to define activities which require a series of steps to deliver an event, product or service. The important and difficult part of project delivery is the management and time keeping of the work from start to completion. These cradle to grave activities require a special system of checks and balances to record steps and activities taken with the goal of delivering a solution to specification within contracted budget and time.

Project managers require the characteristics of leadership, strategic anticipation and analytical skills so they may react accordingly by adjusting planning to environmental changes. To successfully complete projects, managers of projects require accurate information to assess overall progress and resource allocation.

Business Case

The business case for this project at Andalucia Web Solutions is to find ways in which to improve the data collection of operational data which is current dispersed over several Microsoft Excel Workbooks.

The Business Case for this project is to use knowledge management techniques to collect and report this data to the Project Manager and Management Team. The result should improve the understanding the current progress of projects currently been undertaken by the Andalucia Web Solutions Operations Team responsible for the development and delivery of the solutions.

The Project

Screenshot 2: Project Homepage, Credit Matthew WIttering

This project has enabled me to work on the production of an system with the express purpose to aid the company by modelling their core product-lines to represent the activities required to deliver projects at the highest standard. It does this by creating template solutions to create generic project workflows which can be later customised and configured to suit the clients requirements and load source code need to develop the selected solution.

The goal which I have met is to develop a web application to aid project managers to plan, organising, staff, monitor and control projects with minimal effort. Previously it was neigh impossible to collect metrics on the current progress and project billing. After completing this development cycle I have produce an application which reports critical information about the current positions and hours employed to the project thus far.

My intention was to produce the code capable representing the project graphically so comparisons can been drawn between the actual progress of the project against the planned route and duration.

Due to pressures in other areas I was only able to implement the code to draw Gantt charts from the planning data. On finishing the project I belief that the product resulting from my efforts can aid the organisation plan, report and control development projects with greater precision than was ever possible previously.

Technology

The technology used to create the project management application was all open source technology. The decision making process to use open source applications and the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl / PHP / Python) software stack was two fold:

1. Firstly due to choices made by Loughborough University greater emphasis to web technologies included in the open source LAMP stack.
2. Secondly the choice to develop with PHP and MySQL was inferred by the current preferences and staffing of Andalucia Web Solutions.

Staffing was the ultimate driver in the decision because after launch of the application modification and additions are made to applications. Development using unfamiliar programming languages would prevent the organisations development team from maintaining the application.

Implementation Technologies

• Server Programming - PHP
• Client Programming - jQuery
• Data Storage - MySQL
• Interface - XHTML / CSS or SVG

Graphical Data Representation

“A picture is worth a thousand words”.

The use of graphics can be extremely beneficial for the transfer of information by condensing concepts into easy to grasp renditions which would have otherwise required considerable explanation through verbal or written communication. I worked and develop the functionality to generate graphically Gantt charts depicting the life of the project.

The Scalable Vector Graphic is a XML markup language to describe two dimensional vector graphics, animations and graphical interfaces which has been produced under the governance of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Vector graphics describe the shape and colour of the image, unlike the traditional Raster graphic identifying each pixel point and its associated colouring.

I achieved the chart functionality of the application by using the Scalable Vector Graphic format using PHP to parse out the information required to draw the intended graphic.

Summary

The goal which I have met was to develop a web application to aid project managers to plan, organising, staff, monitor and control projects with minimal effort. Previously it was neigh impossible to collect metrics on the current progress and project billing. After completing this development cycle I have produce an application which reports critical information about the current positions and hours employed to the project thus far.

Bibliography

1. Human-Computer Interaction, A. Dix, J. Finlay, G. D. Abowd & R. Beale, 1993, Pearson Education Limited.
2. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, L Rosenfeld & P Morville, 2002, O’Reilly.
3. Information Technology for Management - Transforming Organisations in the Digital Economy, E. Turban, D. Leidner, E. McLean & J. Wetherbe, 2006, John Wiley & Sons.
4. Open Source Database Driven Web Development: A Guide for Information Professionals, I. H. Dunlap, 2006, Chandos Publishing.
5. PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practices - Second Edition, M. Zandstra, 2008, Apress.
6. Relational Database Design and Use - Fourth Edition, R Dawson, 2005, Group D Publications.
7. Sams Teach Yourself Shell Programming in 24 Hours - Second Edition, S Veeraraghavan, 2002 Sams Publishing
8. Software Project Management, B. Hughes & M. Cotterell, 2006, McGraw-Hill Education.
9. SVG for Web Developers, E Pearlman & L House, 2003, Prentice Hall.
10. The Impact of Organisational Culture on Knowledge Management, Marina du Plessis, 2006, Chandos Publishing.
11. The Essence of Information Systems, C. Edwards, J. Ward & A. Bytheway, 1995, Prentice Hall Europe.
12. The World Wide Web Consortium. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) - XML Graphics for the Web. Available at: http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/ Accessed 26th August 2008.

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence