Project

· API: Application Programming Interface-a computer application that facilitates the interaction between software intermediaries

· CMS: Content Management System is a software that facilitates the management of the information and data on the website, as well as the creation of new websites

· Data Integration: It is the process of combining a database, or several databases with an already built website

· Database Management System: A system software used in the management of data, including the process of cataloging, running queries, storage, and retrieval of data

· Interface Design: the process of modeling and building the interaction outlook of software, or an application

· LAN: Local Area Network- a system of interconnected computer nodes within a defined location, such as a building

OnBuy is an eCommerce business startup aiming at the sale of goods through an online platform. The eCommerce starts up intends to develop an online platform that will facilitate the sale of goods. OnBuy will adopt a business to consumer and business to a business model. The placing of orders and the sale of goods will be to other businesses and consumers, respectively. The business's primary requirements will involve the development of a website with an online catalog, the design and the development of a database, and the necessary networking infrastructure to support the business. Additionally, there will be a need for physical stores facilitating warehousing services; and effective supply chain management to deliver the goods to the customers.

For the above reasons, OnBuy is transitioning its services to an online platform, which will harbor its information systems. This fit will be achieved through three tiers in the project. The first will involve the design, creation, and installation of a database management system, which will serve as the central point of management for the eCommerce business. The second will involve creating an onsite information management system composed of a detailed and extensive graphical interface designed to support all the required eCommerce services. The third tier will include developing network infrastructure and security policy that will sustain the information management system.

The database management system will be the primary transitioning of the startup business. The necessitated online platform will require an information management system, and the central focus for the information management system is the database. This involves the method and infrastructure definition for managing file storage, file access, file manipulation, and the storage and running of the various applications (Lim, 2006). The central management point of the system will be stored in the server. Therefore, this tier will digitalize the OnBuy filing system, including website files, online product catalogs. Additionally, the data management design will determine the different rules and mechanisms allowed for access and manipulation and of the digital data. This database management phase will form the foundation for the development of the other phases of the project.

The second tier involves developing a detailed graphical user interface, which will be the premise for interaction between the users and the database management system. The graphical user interface will include the design and development of the eCommerce website. This innovation will integrate the needs of the customer with the different customer catalogs presented on the website. The website will serve several purposes, including order placing, where the customers will have a platform to select products of their choice and proceed to the cart. At the cart, transaction API’s will be integrated to support the online payment processing. Secondly, the website will include the APIs that will be used to manage. This information will be necessary for the data revolution, where it will be employed as input data for the recommender systems utilized on the eCommerce website (Li & He, 2017). Recommendation systems will be imperative in building customer profiles, the pricing process, and creating customer preference (Scholz et al., 2017).

The communication between the different computers and servers will be enabled in the third phase of the project. The communication will include, peer to peer communication and server-client communications. Therefore, the last phase will be the design, development, and installation of the networking system. The networking infrastructure will make it possible the increasing the robustness of the centrally managed database. The main activities will include building a logical network topology, the network’s physical topology. The developed network will then be installed and integrated with the other modules.

The grand objective of the project is to build an eCommerce platform for the OnBuy business startup. The project, however, results in other beneficial packages to the OnBuy. These include the reduced number of manhours required, owing to less paperwork within the office environment. The developed software will enhance digital business management, cutting down on the initially planned operational costs in both time and labor. Since most management operations will be done on the digital platform, the management team intends to shift management time to other crucial management activities such as decision making. The business's digital management will increase operational stability because of the increased service standardization and flow of processes. Increased service standardization will consequently guarantee customer consistency for OnBuy.

OnBuy will employ digital services to ascertain high accuracy and transparency, errors that would have otherwise resulted in human error and manual data management. Technology has remained an ever-advancing and dynamic field (Connolly-Barker et al., 2020). Implementing it at startup ascertains that the business stays aligned to the trending and necessary technology, hence remaining technologically and economically relevant.

The strategic goals of OnBuy include the maintenance of a competitive edge in the online stores. This goal is achieved through key performance indicators, including integrating technology in their daily operations and adopting an eCommerce model of business. Additionally, OnBuy intends to utilize the power of data through the adoption of business intelligence techniques and data science, premised on the vast amount of data that will be collected on their websites. This goal will be achieved through enhancing the transaction and customer data databases and processing them for imperative information. Thirdly, the business intends to offer customers a higher degree of security for their transactions, and this is catered for by the third module of the project. The project, therefore, combines its scope with the strategic goals of the startup business.

During the preliminary stages of the project development, the presumption that the project scope should not change. However, since the project scope is majorly theoretical, changes arise during the project development and implementation. It is hence crucial to develop a strategy of change management. While change is inevitable, managing the change ensures the relationship between the clients and the project team is maintained, and the needs of the client are fully catered for. In this project, the scope is controlled using five major parameters.

The initial parameter involves the need for a well-defined scope statement. A good project scope statement warrants that all the project stakeholders are aware of their tasks and the project's expected goals. The second parameter involves the clear definition of the requirements, in both the tangible and the intangible assets. In this instance, the requirement traceability matrix will be used to define the project requirements and the various changes in the requirements in the courses of the project. The matrix will be employed to track the different requirements and map them to the necessary project deliverables (Shiraz et al., 2017). The project manager has the responsibility of guaranteeing and maintaining good and clear communication among all the project stakeholders. Direct and open communication ensures a clear flow of information, and subsequently, the operations of the projects run smoothly.

During the planning process, the project involves using estimates in the design. The project scope will be controlled by guaranteeing that all the projects' estimates are statistically rational and calculated. Using good, rational, and statistical estimates to calculate the expected financial, labor, and time costs ensures that the cost of execution remains within the primary planned costs. Strong and professional project management coupled with detailed and good project estimates results in reduced project contingencies. Into the bargain, labor and time costs will be reached without hardship on either the project management team or the client. Using the right estimates will be necessary for guaranteeing the project remains within the defined project scope.

While going through the exercise of project planning, planning on how to control the external influences of the project will be necessary. While the external influences vary in intensity, origin, and nature, they impact the project heavily. To monitor these influences, the project team will use a risk register, a list of all possible risks to the project during its execution and a statement of how such risks will be mitigated. While managing external influences does not rest solely on the project management team, awareness of the possible risks creates a platform for risk management. Conclusively, the project management team will ascertain that changes to the scope are assessed on their value addition, market needs, their return on investments, their impact on the project schedule and project estimates, and the liability they create to the end product.

There are various possible risks in project management during project execution. Scope risks include the failure to develop well-defined goals, and the risks, therefore, jeopardize the project's objectives and deliverables. Costs risk originates from a failure to make the right financial estimates, increasing the difference between the expected and the actual costs of the various modules and sub-modules of the project. Using the expense tracker monitors the financial costs of the project and helps evade the cost risks. Often the project exceeds the scheduled period, particularly due to the wrong time estimates or possible delays at the different phases of the project execution.

In this instance, the project is premised on technology, and various technology gaps may result in technology risks. For instance, the technology field's dynamism may result in the development of a project that is behind in technology, particularly if the project schedule is elongated. These possible risks are evaded by making the right estimates and developing a change management team. The project management team has selected a team that will manage any big changes during project execution and ensures that the right technology is employed. While some of the risks are easily identifiable and evaded, other risks are hardly manageable. Procurement risks may result in increased financial and time costs, and in most cases, they are not predictable. The project management team will liaise with the procurement department to ascertain the procurement risks are evaded. However, miscellaneous risks will be dealt with as they arise.

OnBuy is a startup business, and hence it has zero data on its system users. The existence of zero data for the formulation of user-profiles is a constraint in developing the recommendation systems for the eCommerce platforms. Without primary data to build the different preferences for a personalized recommendation, users will be bombarded with a catalog of products they might not need. The suggestion of using questions to build a profile when one first enters the eCommerce platform solves the primary constraints but develops another constraint. Few users will take the time to build their profile.

Additionally, those who build their profile may use abstract information that does not portray their true product preferences, as sometimes this is implicit knowledge. Moreover, some customers may not stay on the platform long enough to build significant profiles due to the poor recommendations. Therefore, user-profiles and the preference recommendation will be low in the initial stages of using the platform until significant information is collected to model the recommendation systems.

ASSUMPTIONS

The main assumptions made in the project include the presumption that all users will use either of the two specified payment systems. The second presumption is that the business will be able to deliver goods to different customers and handle the traffic efficiently at the moment of a startup. The third presumption is that the customers will not need to return goods once sold.

As earlier mentioned, the database system will be designed and developed in the first phase. The data integration process will involve combining the graphical user interface (eCommerce website) from the second phase with the database management system. The company database will involve the use of back-end API’s, which will be employed to access and manipulate the data. The database will be managed internally on the on-premise OnBuy servers. Since the website will require third party use of web-cookies to gather information for profile development of the different users, the API’s will also be used in data combination from the different sources. The main application employed in the integration will include the searchable product directories and the content management systems (CMS). The integration processes will facilitate quick communication between the database and the interface design. Information such as product descriptions, pricing information, shipping costs, discount information, among others, is all stored in the database. Excellent integration of the eCommerce user interface and the web stores will instantly access this information at command. The back end-user interface will facilitate the change management of the catalog information, including the real-time changes accompanied by the products' sale.

The network infrastructure is the fabric that facilitates the communication between the various servers and nodes in the eCommerce network. The Local Area Network within the OnBuy premises will facilitate the intensive communication traffic within the network nodes. However, the LAN will be dependent on the internet for the communication between the end customers and their nodes. It is imperative to note that there have been increased security inconsistencies in the eCommerce sector in the recent past. As a solution, OnBuy will employ externally sourced security measures for their networks. Outsourcing security is both less expensive and shifts the burden of the security from OnBuy to an external vendor. Additionally, the external vendors are more experienced and up to date with internet security, and hence will offer better services. However, it will be important to develop an infrastructure and security policy that will dictate the requirements, access rights, technical guidance, and protection guidelines of how the OnBuy information will be handled within the OnBuy LAN.

References

Li, L., & He, H. (2020). How to Implement the Commodity Publishing System in Ecommerce Platform. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 719, No. 1, p. 012002). IOP Publishing.

Lim, K. (2018). U.S. Patent No. 9,942,271. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Scholz, M., Dorner, V., Schryen, G., & Benlian, A. (2017). A configuration-based recommender system for supporting e-commerce decisions. European Journal of Operational Research, 259(1), 205-215.

Shirazi, F., Kazemipoor, H., & Tavakkoli-Moghaddam, R. (2017). Fuzzy decision analysis for project scope change management. Decision Science Letters, 6(4), 395-406.