Bid4It is an online auction marketplace that features items and services from local businesses that are customers to Cornwall & Devon Media Ltd. Currently, the items sold on the marketplace are managed locally, however, the online marketplace package is supplied and hosted by an international company, “City Xpress.”
The objective of the final product is to replace the existing Bid4It online marketplace.
Upon preliminary inspection of the requirements, the site will consist of the following general sections. Firstly, the main website where products and services can be browsed, searched and bid upon. Secondly, a customer administration section, where the customer can keep track of their current bids and account information. Thirdly, an administration section, where staff can add, edit and remove items as well as control many other aspects of how the marketplace operates.
Motivation
Based on initial discussions with Cornwall and Devon Media Ltd, the understanding is that they wish to obtain more control over the administration and development of the Bid4It online marketplace, while reducing repeating outsourcing costs to third parties.
To achieve this they require an online marketplace package that they can host on their existing server infrastructure that can be developed and edited without the involvement of a third-party corporation. My role is to produce the online marketplace website package for Cornwall & Devon Media Ltd that will provide them with the control and reduced repeating expenditure that they require.
Cornwall & Devon Media currently have a large online presence, with staff members proficient in administrating numerous websites. However, they do not currently employ any in-house developers. Because of this, the site will be mostly managed by staff with little web development knowledge. Therefore, it is a requirement by Cornwall & Devon Media Ltd that the site is coded using technologies that have a strong supporting resources and communities.
Main Deliverable – Summary
To produce an online marketplace website package where users can place auction-style bids on items and services from local, trusted businesses and allow Cornwall & Devon Media Ltd staff to fully manage the site’s structure and content. The product will replace the existing version of Bid4It, with the aim of giving Cornwall & Devon Media Ltd full control over the online marketplace, while reducing recurring expenditure to third parties.
Method of Approach
So that the project is delivered on time and to the highest quality, I will employ the PRINC2 project management methodology. PRINC2 is a generic and flexible system that will provide structure and organisation allowing me complete control of the project.
In order to maximize productivity and code quality I am considering employing the use of the “Subversion” Version Control System with the “Trac” interface installed on top. This should hopefully provide me with the advantages of decreased build time, code revisions and directory versioning.
Validation of Product
The final product will be demonstrated to the executive staff of Cornwall & Devon Media Ltd. The features of the final product will be compared to a set of requirements, previously agreed upon by Cornwall & Devon Media Ltd and myself.
Management Issues & Resource Availability
The project will be coded using free and open-source software, including Eclipse, Ubuntu Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Web servers running with PHP and MySQL database installed are present at Cornwall & Devon Media and will be used to host the finished product.
Assessment of Skills
Currently proficient with PHP, HTML, CSS and MySQL. Good understanding of user-interaction design, databases, Linux environments, information security and W3C standards. Skills required that need to be improved include, UML and project management.
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