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Case Study: Spiritsoft - Web Systems Maintenance

Assignment

The Spiritsoft web site has been developed in an adhoc manner for more than a year. The web system consisted of a content management facility, which generates dynamic web pages from to be published to the web; download of evaluation software and white papers related to Spiritsoft software products.

Although the web site functioned reasonably well it suffered from the following issues:-

• The IT developer had departed the company and no other member of staff had any detailed technical knowledge of the system.
• The web system had been developed using a number of technologies and therefore demonstrated a lack of consistency in its design & implementation.
• The look & feel and system navigation required significant improvement in order to provide a professional image of the company.
• The location of the development environment source code could not be definitively identified.

JADe were invited to initially review the web system environment and to propose a way forward in terms of the ongoing support & maintenance of the environment. Additionally, the Marketing Director has raised the requirement for the web site to provide more effective experience for potential customers accessing the site via on-line search engine pages.

Solution

We undertook an initial audit of the system, via low-level code review and discussions with system users. This resulted in the following action plan being agreed:-

• Setup of a controlled development environment for the web system based on taking a copy of the live environment at the time.
• Review of the current issues and requirements for the web system and production of a prioritised list of requirements. This included the improved on-line search engine access and a mechanism for downloading evaluation software & white papers via a 3 step procedure.
• Implementation of the requirements in priority order and via a staged delivery process (e.g., approximate 2/3 week delivery schedules).
• Implementation of new sections of the web site via mini projects (e.g., 3 step procedure for downloads).

JADe is now providing ongoing support and maintenance for the company’s web system.

Result

The main benefits achieved by the introduction of the above IT infrastructure:-

• The development of the company’s core web site is handled in a reduced risk, professional manner.
• The outsourcing of the IT development removes the need to employ expensive IT development staff & allows better control of the IT spend.

Key Technologies

Microsoft .NET (C#, ASP.Net), XML, XSLT, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL Server