Week 1

What I Did

I Outlined three (3) Project Ideas and evaluated them. They are as follows;

1. An Online application that would present Teacher Leaner Resources to the Ministry registered teachers across Trinidad & Tobago.
   
   
2. ACTT - Accreditation Council of Trinidad & Tobago Online Submission, Processing and Feedback System.
   
   
3. SBCS - Dynamic web portal using web services

How I Did It

To choose one from the group of ideas an evaluation was done based on the following criteria;

• Scope
• Feasibility
• Resources
• Risk

Here is the evaluation of each topic -

Online Presentation of Learner Resource

• Scope - This project consisted of placing large amounts of documentation online for secure access by primary and or secondary teachers. The scope of the project was limited because of the nature of the resources. The system would be concerned mainly with uploading and viewing of documents.
  
  
• Feasibility - This was a feasibly project where it would have been useful and practical. The teachers if not the Ministry of Education would have welcomed the system. There are currently 5 resource centers which make the Learner Resources available to teachers across the country.
  
  
• Resources - Contacts included Secretary for the Ministry of Education; They were never pursued because the scope of the project was found to be inadequate.
  
  

• Risk - involved; lack of co-operation from sources, user rejection of the system, learning curve associates with system acceptance.
  
  

ACTT Online Submission & Processing

• Scope - This project consisted of evaluating the current processes involved in the accreditation process of a academic entity. The system would map all the forms involved and include processing of the various levels of achievement with dynamic notification to the respective body using a profile / account that would be accessible online.
  
  
• Feasibility - This project has high feasibility where this is a current undertaking by the government with all tertiary education facilities in Trinidad & Tobago. The accreditation process is paper based and required many duplicates of the same documents to individuals in the same organization - sometimes in the same building. The digitizing of documents and process would greatly aid in resource management. Also tracking of the progress of an organization going through the levels of accreditation is limited to a single contact within the ACTT. This could be greatly enhanced using an online profiling system where the organization could check their status by logging in online. Further more the same system could allow ACTT to update organizations by profile according to the requirements they meet.
  
  
• Resources - The primary contact is Ms. Kareen McPherson. She originally thought that the project would receive support from the ACTT directors as long as they were not required to be affiliated with the software end product and or purchase the system. However on further discussions the management of ACTT refused to give approval for this endevor claiming "Confilict of interest" where the student engaging in the project belonged to a tertiary education facility currently undergoing the accreditation process form the said body (ACTT).
  
  
• Risks -
  

Continuous data integration using Web Services

• Scope – This project entails reviewing an academic institution and the data used by the institution on a daily basis. Currently data generated within the organization is replicated for display on a public website. The same data is replicated and represented on two separate networks / systems. This project aims to develop a middleware solution that can dynamically join the two systems to operate “in sync” with changes made on data by staff in the most real time implementation as possible.
• Feasibility – The outcomes of this project will directly affect the staff of almost all departments within the organization. It will allow them to perform their daily activities in their regular environment (company MIS) that will dynamically update an external website without the staff’s knowledge.
• Resources – Previous lecturers form the majority of resources to date.
  
  
• Risk – The risks include gaining approval from the respective authorities, willingness of staff to participate in interviews and give input and producing a scope that will satisfy the project requirements and the institution.

Outcomes

The final selection is Continuous data integration using Web Services. The final project for the next 9 months will be based on the SBCS (School of Business and Computer Science). The proposed system will be integrated with the existing system (MIS) as a working middle ware component that will dynamically integrate the front end web site to current data procurement within the organization.


Why I Did It

The main reason the lecturer made us source more than one project was to ensure that we had a back-up.

I evaluated the projects in a systematic way so that I would not feel overwhelmed by having to choose based on just my opinion / feelings. The system helped to draw out from the situation the facts about resources and practicality of the project idea to the expectations of the project and the lecturer.

Lessons Learned

1. First choices are not always the best ones. It helps to stand back and evaluate options rather than just go with the first opportunity that comes along.
   

What I Plan to Do (Next Week)

• Get Some definitions of the technology involved -
  the key terms and what they really mean; this should give me a good idea of what type of reading material i will work with over the coming months.
  
  Web Services, SOAP, WSDL, RESTful Web Services
  
  
• Outline the link between the system that exists in the organization and what i hope to achieve with my additions.