Archive for the ‘PROJECT’ Category

Portal & Collaboration Software


2010
06.28

Collaboration and integration is one of the primary requirements of every organisation now. It increases the productivity, single platform for communication and interaction. Employees interact in three primary ways: conversations, transactions, and collaborations. Understanding their differences is necessary to ensure the appropriate software technology is employed to meet your needs. Conversational interaction is an exchange of information and transactional interaction is an exchange of transaction entity between two or more participants, while collaborative interaction is meant for a change of collaboration entity, ex.: achievement of a shared goal.

Collaborative software is software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve their goals. Collaboration software transform the way documents and rich media are shared in order to enable more effective team collaboration.

Benefits of Collaboration:-
• Provide access to all documents and tasks securely via intranet to internal team members, based upon their roles or individual permissions
• Maintain common and individual to do lists, projects and schedules to simplify the management of group activities
• Make tasks assignments and status visible and transparent by automatically sending and receiving appropriate notifications
• Build and work a visible action plan to achieve assigned goals and objectives, helping the organization be more strategic, less reactive in overall performance
• Organize and coordinate work effort, with reduced slip-ups, mistakes, errors due to miss-communication or verbal direction
Different products available in the market in collaboration segment. LIFERAY is one of the open source portal & collaboration solution. LIFERAY delivers open source enterprise solutions for portals, publishing, content and collaboration. Some high level features:-
1. Wikis
2. Message Boards
3. Blogs
4. Activity tracking
5. Instant Message
6. E-Mail
7. Shared Calendar
8. Announcements & Alerts
9. Polls
10. Document Library & Image Gallery
11. Integration with Microsoft office
12. Search & Tagging

Read More:- LIFERAY

IT Project Business Case


2010
03.10

A business case captures the reasoning for initiating a project or task. It is often presented in a well-structured written document or presentation. The logic of the business case is that, whenever resources such as money or effort are consumed, they should be in support of a specific business need.

Business cases can range from comprehensive and highly structured, as required by formal project management methodologies, to informal and brief. Information included in a formal business case could be the background of the project, the expected business benefits, the options considered (with reasons for rejecting or carrying forward each option), the expected costs of the project, a gap analysis and the expected risks. Consideration should also be given to the option of doing nothing including the costs and risks of inactivity.

How to create a Business

Organizations follow different formats and structure to prepare a business case. But the main relevant data should be included and considered. Below are some steps to prepare business case.

Identify the Business Problem

Usually, projects are undertaken to solve a particular business problem or opportunity. So you need to investigate that business problem or opportunity and describe what it is, how it’s come about and the timeframes in which it needs to be addressed.

Only with this knowledge, will you truly understand the purpose of the project and the timeframes for delivery. Without this knowledge, it’s like building a house without a solid foundation.

Recommend a Preferred Solution

From the available solution to resolve the issue or gain a business benefit suggest that in business case. With valid ranking and cost benefits.

Describe the Implementation Approach

You have selected a solution and you have confirmed its benefits and costs. The next step is to convince your Project Sponsors that you have thought through the approach for implementing it. So document the steps you’re going to take to build the solution for your client.

Ref:-Wikipedia