Simply Voting Website Conversion Solution

A small private school has retained your services as a systems analyst to assist in the conversion of a new voting system for the school’s administrative needs. You will provide an analysis of how to move to the new site.

The small school of 800 students currently has an aged custom voting system and is considering using a cloud website (using SimplyVoting.com) that has all the features they currently have and more. They have recently lost their technical resource which was a cost of approximately 3 times the cost of the proposed hosted site.

You sit down with the administration to discuss the preliminary investigation. During your discussion they ask about how you plan to control costs and provide a quality system within a reasonable timeframe. You begin to explain the concepts of project management and how they are used in developing an information system. You tell them that project management involves managing the cost of the project, staying on its time schedule, and keeping it within the scope that is defined for the project.

You explain that in the case of a voting application the first step begins with listing all of the tasks that are required to complete a project and the following:

The first thing to do is develop a plan
In the next step, we will spend a few weeks on the analysis phase

In the first part of this phase we will determine the features of the new system, which involves analysis of the SimplyVoting website.
The next step is to model the data conversion of the new system based on our research.
After the data and processes are analyzed, we will determine if the online site is feasible
After the analysis phase is completed, we will begin the system design phase.

This phase of the project includes the review of the user interface; screens that users will work with and reports that are generated from the system.
The final step of this phase is designing the system architecture for features that are missing from the online system (if any).
The next phase of the new system will be implementation where we will configure the new system and train the users.

The implementation phase will include the “go live”, which will be a date where the new system will start and the old system will stop.
The final phase will be to review the ongoing support of the new system. As it is hosted by SimplyVoting.com.
You go on to explain that for project management, all of these major tasks and more specific, detailed tasks go into a chart that is used to create a work breakdown structure (WBS). You offer to show her the WBS charts you will create for voting project. At the end of your discussion, you sit down to set up the project management for the new information system by organizing the tasks to be done, and creating a WBS.





Tasks

Create a list of tasks that need to be completed for the new information system based on the information given in the case. Organize your list by estimating how long it will take to complete each task, and list each task’s predecessor task or tasks. Use Figure 3-30 or 3-31 from the text as examples.
Create a budget for the project showing how the new system will save money over 3 years’ time. Show how much the cost will be for SimplyVoting.com for 800 voters and the number of voter’s increases 10% a year.
Prepare a comparison chart of 5 benefits (not including costs) of the cloud based system instead of the aged custom legacy voting system.
Using SimplyVoting.com, prepare a presentation of this assignment include screenshots of a prototype voting website showing the features of an example vote, costs and timeline.