Assignment 2: Post-Implementation Assessment

1. Assignment 2: Post-Implementation Assessment Judy Blostein, Jennifer Hocko, and Bob Lim (Waltham Interactive Design) March 21st, 2001

2. What Does This Assessment Include? • Our project team’s overall approach to Project 1 (Jen). • Our project team’s principal findings and recommendations (Bob). • A critique of our team’s project strategy and tactics - strengths and weaknesses (Judy).

3. Approach To Project 1 Jennifer Hocko, Project Lead

4. Approach To Project 1 • Evaluate the Concord Communications, Inc. Web site at http://www.concord.com. • Management solutions for applications, systems & networks in eHealth Suite product.

5. Approach To Project 1 • Defined visitor persona: • Engineering job candidate with upcoming interview at Concord. • Established visitor goals/business issues: • Candidate to prepare by gathering relevant company, technology, and job position information. • Concord’s Web site must draw the right mixture of players into their community, strengthening the company from the inside out.

6. Approach To Project 1 • Divided goals into specific tasks: • What specific questions would candidate ask himself & how would he browse for answers? • Constructed evaluation criteria: • Based on information gathering goals. • Team members individually evaluated site, assuming job candidate persona.

7. Approach To Project 1 • Identified main categories for findings: • Navigation: implied hierarchy or site architecture. • Content: information displayed to visitors, should answer visitor questions. • Consistency in Terminology & Labeling: facilitates the previous two; helps avoid confusion. • Feedback: how the site responds to visitor-initiated actions.

8. Approach To Project 1 • Consolidated recommendations into: • Tactical: small modifications that enhance usability without requiring a major overhaul or site redesign; quick & easy. • Strategic: integrated as part of larger, longer-term redesign efforts; usability/human factors issues considered at the beginning of project.

9. Findings & Recommendations Bob Lim, Project Team Member

10. Findings & Recommendations • General findings: • Information-rich Web site. • Usability could be improved. • Specific findings: • Problems present in all four “findings” categories (navigation, content, consistency, feedback).

11. Findings & Recommendations • Navigation: • Poor site structure increased time to achieve goals. • Content: • Absent or unnecessary information. • Consistency in Terminology and Labeling: • Poor labeling when referring to other content. • Redundancies. • Feedback: • Home page download/reload time. • Scrolling text.

12. Findings & Recommendations • Some tactical recommendations: • Consistency in Terminology and Labeling: • “Corporate Mergers” page • “Press Releases” page • Feedback: • Scrolling text

13. Findings & Recommendations • Key strategic recommendations: • Conduct a user and task analysis. • Invest in a larger Web site redesign effort. • Home page redesign • Internal pages • Site map

14. Project Management & PEAT Judy Blostein, Project Team Member

15. Project Management & PEAT • Project work plan: • Strengths: • Tasks and team members • End dates in the schedule • Weaknesses: • Task decomposition • Communication • Staying on schedule

16. Project Management & PEAT • WBS process: • Strengths: • Agreement of visitor persona • Even distribution of workload • Good plan • Weaknesses: • Narrow Web site evaluation criteria (“findings” categories too broad) • Actual team member contributions varied • Tracking time on task

17. Project Management & PEAT • Total project cost: • Initial estimate was 124 hours at $100 per person, for a total cost of $12,400. • Actual time on task for all team members was 125.25 hours, for a total cost of $12,525. • We estimated accurately!

18. Project Management & PEAT • Activities that took longer: • Iterations of research, writing drafts, getting team comments, and revising. • Activities that took less time: • Assigning tasks/responsibilities. • Performing the Web site evaluation.

19. Project Management & PEAT

20. Project Management & PEAT • Relevant PEAT question: • “Project core team members are located together when they work on this project.” • Reasons: • Our remote situation. • Shared information verbally and electronically. • Our storage repository.

21. The End • Questions?