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Planning for Projects Based on OFBiz

Target Audience

  1. Managers
  2. Decision Makers
  3. Developers
  4. Deployment, Maintenance and Support Staff
  5. Other Involved in Projects

Topics Covered

  1. Primary Constraints Identification
    1. Time
    2. Money
    3. Feature & Requirements
    4. For the best chance of success these three should be prioritized and the project plan should be based on these priorities so that if estimates are not met then the hit will be taken in the less critical areas.
  2. People & Companies Involved
    1. General Activities to be Assigned
      1. Specification & Requirements
      2. Design
      3. Development Planning
      4. Management & Tracking
      5. Implementation (Applications, Reports, etc)
      6. Testing & Qualification
      7. Production Deployment and Maintenance
      8. Issue Research & Resolution
      9. End-user & Technical Training
      10. End-user & Technical Support
    2. End-user Company
      1. Desired level of involvement
      2. Expertise available for project
      3. Feelings about open source software and proprietary versus open source results
    3. Service Providers
      1. Existing and/or trusted third party service providers
      2. Initial Design, Development, Training, et cetera
      3. Long Term Services (such as hosting, technical support, etc)
      4. Contract Structure
        1. Fixed rate service over time (like hosting, some types of support)
        2. Fixed rate for a one-time fixed service (fixed bid)
        3. Hourly service, to make sure services are available may purchase hours in advance or agree on a certain number of hours over a period of time
        4. Progressive fixed-bid, perhaps with a contract for work over a certain period of time (works well with Agile and XP methodologies)
      5. When using one or more service providers make sure it is understood who will do what, and who is responsible for unplanned needs that come up. For example, is the solution provider offering a "complete package", and what does that mean, or a only specific functionality and services?
  3. Load & Scale Planning
    1. Visits & Page Hits
      1. Typical & Peak Loads
      2. Estimate periodic peaks using lower numbers of time periods per day, for example 14 hours per day; these should be based on (if available) historic load distributions
    2. Orders, Customer Service Calls, Work Efforts, Catalog Changes, and so on
    3. Total Products, Customers, etc
    4. HTML & Image sizing, bandwidth use
    5. Use these for a rough estimate and as a basis for the pre-production load tests
  4. General Issues
    1. Business Process Analysis
      1. Existing Processes
      2. Desired Processes
      3. Design & Optimize Processes
        1. Based on Physical and Business Constraints
        2. Based on Software Constraints
        3. As Preparation for Custom Software
    2. User Interface Design & Specifications (including administrative and customer facing)
    3. Reports: Existing, Necessary, and Desired (with parameters, specific fields, etc)
    4. System Analysis & Division of Labor
      1. Old Systems to be Replaced
        1. Migrate data to new or existing systems
        2. What did the system do, and what will replace it?
      2. Existing System to be Kept
        1. Integrate with new or existing systems
        2. What will these systems do and what will new system(s) do?
        3. Data Migrated to or from the System
      3. New System(s) to be Added
        1. Data Migrated to the System
        2. Integration with Existing Systems
      4. Location and Responsibility for Systems
        1. End-user Internal
          1. May be ERP, fulfillment, CRM, reporting, system monitoring and many other types of systems
        2. Hosted on Behalf of End-user
          1. Common for eCommerce, System Monitoring
          2. Sometimes used (especially with web based applications) for other types, including ERP, CRM, reporting, etc
        3. Third Party Systems
          1. Common for Payment Processing, System Montoring
          2. Sometimes used for General Content, Catalog/Product Information, Shipping Calculation, reporting, and more
    5. Security
      1. Network configuration and systems access
      2. Encryption
        1. SSL Certificates and other web-based encryption issues
        2. Email Certificates
      3. Planning Roles and Permissions for all users and system functions
  5. eCommerce and Retail Specific Issues
    1. Product Information
      1. Finding Products
        1. Browsing & Categorization
          1. Special Categories (promotions, top 10, new products, etc)
          2. By product type
          3. By target audience
          4. Number of tree levels
          5. Searching in Categories
        2. Searching (keyword, parametric, in categories, sorting, etc)
      2. Describing Products
        1. Variants
        2. Product Content
          1. Name, Short & Long Description
          2. Images
          3. Special Content (warnings, directions, etc)
        3. Cross- & Up-Sells, and other Product Associations
        4. Product Features (size, color, brand, ingredients, packaging, material, functions, etc)
        5. Pricing
          1. Type of Product Prices
          2. Price Rules
      3. Promotions
        1. Promotion Rules
        2. Promotion Codes
        3. Use Limits
        4. Lots of options!
    2. Customer Information
      1. Profile
        1. Personal Information (name, birthdate, gender, etc, etc)
        2. Contact Mechanisms
          1. Telephone Numbers
          2. Postal Addresses
          3. Email Addresses
          4. Other electronic addresses
          5. Contact Mechanism Purpose Types (home phone, work phone, shipping address, billing address, etc)
        3. Payment Methods
          1. Credit Cards
          2. EFT Accounts
          3. Gift Cards (ValueLink)
      2. Order History
      3. Shopping Lists
    3. Order Placement (check-out)
      1. Shopping Cart
      2. Order Information
        1. Shipping Address
        2. Shipment Method,  Shipping Costs
        3. Options such as split/no-split, gift flagging, gift message, special intructions, additional order verification emails
        4. Payment Method(s)
      3. Automated Activities
        1. Tax Calculation
          1. Default OFBiz simple tax-calculation
          2. ZipSales tax database (with OFBiz code to calculate taxes using it)
          3. TaxWare tax calculation software integration
        2. Shipping Calculation
          1. Default OFBiz simple shipping calculation
          2. Web-service based shipping calculation for specific carriers
          3. Shipping calculation software integration
        3. Payment Processing
          1. Credit Card Authorization, Capture, Refunds, etc
            1. Cybersource (most complete, recommended)
            2. Clear Commerce
            3. Verisign PayFlow Pro
            4. WorldPay
            5. PayPal
            6. Others
          2. EFT Accounts
          3. Offline Payments
            1. Mailed (check, money order, western union, etc)
            2. By Phone
          4. ValueLink Gift Cards
          5. Store Credit (Billing Accounts with unused payments and/or a credit limit)
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