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The internet has a vast knowledge base. There are many things which a student can learn by performing a simple search on the internet. However, not all information found on the internet is considered reliable and relevant. The project team will create and implement a website. The website, which is registered and functioning as www.sdishub.com, is an informative online resource center that can be used by international students, who are currently studying in San Diego. The project vision is to help guide the organization become a more cause-driven business. The objective is not only providing an informative online resource center but also contributing significantly to the growth and success of the community of international students in San Diego.

In the modern community, the level of education has risen and this has had an impact on international students. The manner and ability to use local education centers influence the necessity to transverse over international boundaries. The rise in the number of international studies has surpassed how students develop, process their applications and gets instant information on the level to communicate and increase interactions in the local and international colleges (Saw, Abbott, Donaghey & McDonald, 2013). Thus, there is a lack of enough information to inform and offer support for the local and international studies. This is a challenge that affects the ability, necessity, and means to offer credible information to international students.

The development of the international gateway website is a comparative solution that focuses on international students. The use of this website will focus not only on the local (the main purpose is for international students, right?) but also for international students who could like to use the services of the university website (not sure if I understand this – we’re talking about the website we’re developing) in writing and posting application letters. More importantly, these international students require information and other important need for developing and leading their educational needs (Saw, Abbott, Donaghey & McDonald, 2013). It is, therefore, essential to offer, create and allocate essential facts to support and help students make essential decisions about their favorite colleges for study. Although this is a pathway, it is also a link that expresses (don’t quite understand what is being expressed here) information for students to access the services and functional information for their needs.

The main stakeholder (there are multiple stakeholders) includes the university’s academic and international student’s coordinators. They are the main stakeholders (repeat), who are pushing for the development of such website that could help the university in attracting and retaining international based students. It is also essential in leading, promoting and supporting the international student’s leaders in the university (don’t understand). As a coordinator for the international studies, we advocate and create the role of promoting diversity through gaining and leading a normal ability to elaborate (not sure what is being said here) and influence the ability for international students to learn and study (Saw, Abbott, Donaghey & McDonald, 2013). Therefore, it is essential in supporting and influencing the role of as: which the community is essential in supporting, gaining and promoting the value based on the university’s culture.

There are many benefits the university and stakeholders will gain in developing this website. The international students studying in the university will gain a resource for communicating and information dissemination in the community. More importantly, it will a portal for communication and informing the international students on the necessity and means of supporting the community’s role in supporting and influencing the community of its students (Saw, Abbott, Donaghey & McDonald, 2013). Gathering of international students will be critical to the success and ability to learn, promote and ensure there is a growth based on improving student retention in the community and supporting the role of the community towards a more productive society.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of getting traffic, improving the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's unpaid “natural” results. The project web pages should be decently optimized for SEO by having good HTML-structure. For this particular project, the team decides to use Wix. Wix sites are search engine friendly. Wix guarantee that all of the site content can be crawled and indexed by search engines (e.g. Google and Bing). Noted from Wix that after publishing, it can take 1-3 months for the site to appear in search engine results.

Getting a high ranking in search engine results depends on the work put into optimizing the site. In order to increase the chances of getting a higher ranking in search engines, the team should improve the site's content by optimizing the site's text, add Alt-Text to images, and update the page SEO settings (Meta Tags). The project team can also take advantage of social media by linking the site to social pages and adding a blog to the site. It is important to make sure that the team has set the site to be found by search engines. Once the team has followed the steps described above, the team need to submit the sitemap directly to Google (Wix, 2016).

Wix also provides a web application called SEO Wizard. SEO Wizard offers a process by process guide to improving the site's Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This back office App is a simple way to get the site discovered by all the major search engines. According to Wix (2016), with over 250 million sites on the web, this app will allow search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to find our site. It helps attract more traffic and make it easy for current and potential users to find our site.

Furthermore, generating great content is arguably the most important thing that the project team can be doing to improve the search engine results. That said, by doing a few technical things right, it is a lot easier to achieve results. The easiest way to get these things right is to use a Content Management System (CMS) that takes care of the technical aspects. Here are the minimum features which the project team should be considered when using a CMS tool to edit each page: Title tag, meta-description, URL, semantic headlines, alt-text on images, and ability to add analytic tools.

Rosenberg, Hammer & Shaw (1998) defines that reliability is the ability of a system to perform its required functions under stated conditions for a specific period of time. Once the project’s site is functioning (as specified) and delivered, the reliability characteristic defines the capability of the system to maintain its service under defined conditions for specific periods of time. In this particular project, performance test, stress test, and volume test should be performed by the project team to ensure that the system is operating correctly during both normal and mission critical situations.

A website needs to be maintained as well as developed. Designers of the website must consider how easy the site will be to add onto and to maintain during its lifetime (Locke, 2015). A maintainable system is understandable and modifiable. This means it is easy and simple to add new functions and features.

Ease of maintaining could mean several things:

· Our Website is maintained through our third party service and in accordance with our Service Level Agreements.

Users want the system to be secure so that they feel confident using it. However, security is not visible as-is and need to be clearly defined in the non-functional requirements section. Security requirements are included in a system to ensure unauthorized access to the system and its data is not allowed, safeguard the integrity of the system from accidental or malicious damage. Overall security of our website will be the responsibility of our third party service provided and is outlined in our Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Our team conducted a feasibility study to help decide if the proposed project could be implemented successfully and in scope. The study took into consideration items such as available technology, market staffing, and our time constraints. Figure 1.0 shows the items we considered during our study.

· The project team is made up of 5 individuals with experience that cover various markets. All team members hold bachelor’s degrees with two holding Masters degrees. The team also has team members that are certified in Agile. Combined the team has over 50 years of work experience with the majority of the experience coming in the Information Technology Industry and Project Management.  

· The project team also has a vast network. This network will be a great asset when designing the website and marketing. The team also has enough capital resources to fund the project from design to implementation.

· There are currently other sites that are geared towards the international students. However, the majority of the site is geared to the entire market. Sites that are geared to a specific locality are underserved.

· Low startup and maintenance cost. The website offers low startup cost along with low maintenance cost.  

•   The biggest weakness affecting our project is the lack of identity and an unknown entity.

These weaknesses can be reduced by implementing a solid and effective marketing plan. •   Some customers will be cautious with using our site with concerns about the authenticity of

our site.     1.4.3 Opportunities •   There are a number of schools in the San Diego area that are popular with International

Students, this increases the number of potential partners. •   San Diego has a vast and diverse culture which makes it an attractive destination for

International Students. •   By utilizing the data gathered from our members and our sites traffic will allow us to utilize

that data to sell advertising space as well in future marketing campaign.

•   Our site with is available 24/7 which will accommodate user from multiple time zones.

•   With any startup, there are always challenges. These challenges mostly come from the

unknown. These unknown factors come from issues that might arise during the project. 2016

is a Presidential Election year. One of the biggest issues in this year’s election is

immigrations. The outcome of the election may have an impact on the number of new

international students entering the San Diego market.  

•   There is competition in this market. There is nothing that is currently keeping additional

competitors from entering the market.  

•   Privacy concerns will also be an issue. Users will want to protect their privacy and their

personal information.  

The key objective of this project is to create a practical and useful online resource center. Our target users will be international students who are studying in San Diego area. Users will have the ability to search for links related to different topics such as universities and colleges in San Diego, Transportation (both public and car rental services), library locations, housing service, tutoring service, and online book/school supply stores. Users can recover their login passwords in case of losing or forgetting. In addition, a user can also create or edit blogs on the website.

Guiding principle for this project:

· Cost effective

· User-friendly interfaces

· Easy Navigation

· Quick, simple, and efficient on-site search engine

· Capable of handling the web traffic

· Room for improvement (new functions/features or web application add-ons)

Considerations for future expansions and upgrade projects:

· Users can register via social media such as Twitter or Facebook

· Adding webstore for textbooks and school supplies (payable via PayPal or credit cards)

· Development of a mobile app (android or iOS platform) for the website

· Integrating off-site search engine such as Google or Bing to the website

· Improving online support by providing live chat feature

In the present Capstone project, the website design and development process will be done in Six different phases. The basic design of the project has the following steps:

1. Initiating & Planning

2. Designing

3. Developing

4. Testing & Documenting

5. Implementation

6. Post-Implementation

Phase One: Initiating & Planning

In order to initiate the project and designing a successful website, we need to gather the information related to the website development. How the website looks like, what information is provided on the website and who are the users, and what content should be provided to the targeted audience.

According to our project scope, the website for the International Students provides information about universities in San Diego area where they can pursue their majors, they can get the details about the neighborhood where the International students reside. This website also provides information regarding the transportation and commuting facilities in San Diego. It also gives details about students’ course textbooks which are sold online at the lesser price. The website also gives information about local recreation centers in San Diego area. This is the objective of the project.

Using the information gathered from phase one, it is the time to put together to plan for the website. In this phase where a sitemaps is developed. The main topic areas of the site are enlisted in the site map, as well as sub-topics if applicable. This serves as a guide as to what content will be on the site and is essential to develop and understand navigational system. While the end user of the website (customer), needs has to be in mind while designing the site, as a good user interface will create an easy way to navigate the website, and is the basis for this. During this planning phase, web designer needs to decide which technologies should be implemented.

Phase Two: Designing

This is the most crucial step for the project as we will create the prototype of the website based on the information gathered as per the requirements of the project. Target audience is one of the key factors taken into consideration. As part of the design phase in this phase communication between designer and the project manager which is crucial to ensure that the final website will match the needs and taste. It is important that you work closely with the designer and exchanging ideas until the final design of the website is done.

Phase Three: Developing

It is the phase where the final website is created in this level the website will take all the individual graphic elements from prototype and use them to create the final functional site. It is the shell which serves as a template for a content page which will contain the main navigational structure for the website. On the technical side, the website requires an understanding of front-end web development.

Phase Four: Testing and Documenting

This is the phase where the web designer will attend to the final details and test the website. They test complete functionality of forms or other scripts as well last testing for last minute compatibility issues ensuring that website is optimized which helps while checking for issues such as cross- browser compatibility. Once the final approval for the web designer is done, it is the time to deliver the site. Domain name and web hosting services are setups, later the Search Engine Optimization of the website like title, description is integrated.

Phase Five: Implementation

Our project is basically an informative site which gives all the details to the International Student in San Diego. The information is related to the various universities in San Diego, housing, books related to the course. Our website will direct the user to the related website where he can find all information at one site. A single click on the website will redirect them to the particular website of a university or book rental site or the housing site.

In the present project as we just have three months of time-period, and we choose Wix to create our website as we have a simple drag and drop technology as we do not have programming background. As the first Beta version of Wix which released in 2008, it is not a newcomer to the website creation arena. But Wix is free, premium plans which start at a very less affordable price of 5$ per month has reinvented itself.

With the new Wix, we can create a modern looking business website without writing a single line of code or without running a Flash. It had ready- made HTML5 templates, which are single- page personal profile templates, and do not contain content management systems. The simple method to set up website builder is to choose a template and start working on the content of the page and images. The process of developing a website is very easy with drag and drop method and affordable and can get the first version of the website in a very short period of time. Wix covers all the basic SEO settings is Google friendly and allows creating custom web page addresses.

Implementation part in the website creation includes various steps:

The Definitive Checklist

The initial phase of creating the website is to make the checklist of the requirements. Below is the list of the things needed to build a functional website:

1. Domain Name. This is the first thing we need to choose before starting the website. Domain name is the digital address that people will use to get connected to the website. The domain name of our website is “www.sdishub.com”

2. Choosing a website building Software. In this project, we choose Wix as website builder software. It has more features and tools of drag-and-drop website builders. The main reason for choosing Wix for building our website is it supports and has ability of e-commerce, online booking abilities, online portfolio, blog, and also can create a business website, where we can get basic version comes standard. It requires No code knowledge. It is a one-click installation for third party app; we can customize page layout design. It is easy to design elements like an image slider, textbox, tabs, and elements. This website builder has an option to add, edit and remove content like text and images, it can also add, edit and remove blog posts. There will be a full level of technical support with email, phone, forum, and knowledge base.

All the technical issues like hosting, security, app compatibility issues are all dealt by Wix so there is no need to worry. The basic budget for developing the website through Wix, minimum startup cost for Connect Doman it is $4.08, Combo is $9.75, if it is Unlimited is $ 12.92, for e-commerce site $16.58. It has all hosting for the website, security, technical support is also included. There is an optional cost for the apps it can be either paid or free.

3. Website Hosting and Technical Needs. It is the storage unit where all the website content will be online. When the user types the domain name into the web browser, it will fetch website content from website host. Initially for the project, we want to use free hosting. Once we get the better idea about the traffic then we can shift to VPS hosting.

It will also help in managing technical issues such as security upgrades, and it ensures that the website works properly. But Wix does not have an export feature. So basically we cannot take the website out of Wix as the website is been maintained by the Wix administrator.

4. Website Template Design. Our website has a template design of the home page tab, university, housing, recreation, textbook, and contact us. The home page gives a brief explanation of the website and the blog. The different tab leads to the subpages of Housing where the international students can get information about the accommodation, rental apartments in San Diego. The University tab will give information about the different universities in San Diego. Recreation is the tab which gives information about the travel spots in this area. The textbook tab will give information about the different textbooks related with the different courses and the rental websites which provide online purchase of books.

Phase Six: Post-Implementation

Once the website is created it is the responsibility of the organization to make things secure and maintenance. This can be in terms of upgrading the site, security issues and about data backup.

Figure 2 illustrates the project team structure which includes the Project Sponsor (Dr. Lu Zhang), the Project Manager (PM), and the other four members of the team. Due to a limited number of team members, some individuals are responsible for more than one role.

· Project Manager (PM) – Swetha Yarra. The PM coordinates all activities of project team members, tracks and monitors schedules and progress against milestones, facilitates communication between team members, and works as a point of contact between the team and the sponsor. The PM does not necessarily need to be an expert in all roles, but the PM should know enough about each role to be able to effectively communicate with all team members and the sponsor.

· Key relationships: All team members

· Key deliverables: Project proposal, ongoing progress reports, and general communication

· Web Content Specialist & Database Administrator – Christopher Millard. The web content specialist is in charge of organizing, preparing and loading website content. The web content specialist should have a basic understanding of HTML and/or XML, and a strong familiarity with site content and the overall business or organization behind the website. The web content specialist should also have strong copywriting and editing skills. Web content specialists may also work with media files such as audio, video or interactive (Flash), and therefore may need those skills or may work with another media specialist outside of the core web team to develop rich media content.

The Database administrator is responsible for building the database using Caspio web application and ensuring that the site and database are working together. The Database Administrator is also responsible for establishing relations between the entities.

· Key relationships: User Experience (UX) designer, User Interface (UI) designer, Information Architect (IA), Quality Assurance (QA) Tester, and PM

· Key deliverables: Web contents and the database.

· Information Architect (IA) – Hau Le. The IA is the chief planner of the website. The IA collects and documents requirements, including key objectives, functional requirements, and content requirements. The IA works closely with the UX designer and the project manager.

· Key relationships: UX designer, QA tester, and PM

· Key deliverables: Site map and requirements documentation.

· User Experience (UX) & User Interface (UI) Designer – Emery Bullock. The UX designer uses the defined functional and content requirements for the site to formulate a set of page layouts designs and flowcharts describing how users will interact with the site. The UX designer works closely with an IA in developing an overall strategic plan for building the website, and with the project manager to keep the project on target.

The UI designer (also referred to as a web designer) is concerned with the visual presentation of the website. The UI designer may work with other graphic or print designers to synchronize the website’s appearance with related materials, or if needed, develop from scratch a visual identity, including logos, fonts and color palettes. The UI designer then takes these elements, along with the page layouts designs, and develops a set of web page designs with full visual treatments. The UI designer may then turn these designs into web page templates using HTML and CSS, or may manage this task with the web developer.

· Key relationships: IA, web developer, QA tester, and PM

· Key deliverables: Page layouts designs and flowcharts, web page designs, and web page templates (HTML/CSS)

· Web Administrator & Quality Assurance (QA) Tester – Hector Roman. The web administrator is responsible for managing web environment design, deployment, development and maintenance activities. Web administrator collaborates with development teams to discuss, analyze, or resolve usability issues. The web administrator tracks, compiles, and analyzes website usage data. The web administrator also documents application and website changes or change procedures and develops or implements procedures for ongoing web site revision. The web administrator’s duties also include testing new software packages for use in web operations or other applications and setting up or maintaining monitor tools on web servers or web sites. Moreover, web administrator tests backup or recovery plans regularly and resolve any problems.

The QA tester ensures that the website functions as intended. The QA tester works with the IA and UX designer to identify a set of tests to be performed once the site is complete, to determine whether or not the site does what it is intended to do, and that it is free of bugs or other defects. When development and content preparation are complete, the QA tester will direct one or more rounds of testing, gathering feedback to deliver to the web developer for troubleshooting. This process will be repeated as necessary until the site is ready for launch.

· Key relationships: web developer, IA, UX designer, and PM

· Key deliverables: fully functioning and well-maintained website, test cases, test process coordination, and feedback documentation for web developer

1.0 Admin Setup

1.1 Create Yahoo email account

1.2 Create Wix Account

1.2 Create Caspio account

2.0 Design

2.1 Must have a Logo

2.2 Must have the title International Students San Diego

2.3 Must have Tabs that contain: Home, Housing, Universities, Recreation, Textbooks, Contact Us

2.4 Background must be standardized for all pages.

3.0 Login

3.1 When clicking on ‘Login/Setup’ must popup registration window.

3.2 Popup window for Signup must contain: Email, Password, Retype Password.

3.3 User must be able close the Sign Up Pop Up window by clicking cancel or “X”.

3.4 Has to have a forgot password link

4.0 Technical and Usability

4.1 User can see public blog posts

4.2 Users can comment on Public Blog Posts

4.4 Cross-browser/platform support (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari – PC and Mac)

4.5 Mobile accessibility for IPhone and Android

4.6 The site will fully function in major browsers

Safari

IE

Google Chrome

Modizilla

Project management is the art of adequately balancing communication, knowledge, skills, risk, technologies, tools, and techniques in the hopes of delivering a project as agreed upon or as expected. Project management must also account for competing demands, including the project’s goals as articulated through scope, almost certain time constraints, planned and unplanned financial costs, and quality – regardless of its measurement. While project management is an art that must adjust to constraints, project planning is, comparatively speaking, black and white. Known as the “quadruple constraint,” the project manager must choose which of the four constraints – scope, time, cost and quality – are the most important and adjust accordingly (Schwalbe, 2006).

The nature of this Capstone necessitated an unordinary and disproportionate focus on scope and time. In short, the group chose to emphasize scope and time over cost and, to a degree, quality if it hoped to be relatively successful. The group managed the project’s scope through statements (e.g., vision and feasibility), by quasi-formal work breakdown structures via detailed tasking and through continuous requirements analysis. Time was managed primarily through milestones, Gnatt-like charts, critical-path scheduling, and fast tracking. The latter technique shortens project schedules by doing activities in parallel that one would normally do in sequence (Schwalbe, 2006). Fast tracking was also utilized by encouraging group members to design and write based on assumptions. (See Appendix E: Task Assignments for further detail.)

Project planning and execution enabled quick adjustments to task slips. The project did not suffer from any deviation from its vision or feasibility. Early, strong planning may have actually strengthened it. All functional and non-functional requirements were initially identified from the outcome of the interviews with the sponsor as to the look, navigation, and output of the system. While there were also no deviations from the project’s project plan or work plan estimates, the project did slip during Milestone Three, when web interface development did not show needed progress by the end of the fifth week. Since interface design simplicity was central to the project’s scope, the goal by the end of Milestone Two was to have a pre-existing, template-driven site enabled for functional prototyping. These templates, save for minor adjustments, also served as the final layout.

Finally, while there were changes to areas of responsibility assigned to two group members at the conclusion of Milestone Two, work plan estimates remained accurate. Where some members fell short in level of effort, understanding, and/or quality of work required to realize these estimates, others were effective in filling subsequent gaps. This was also evident during system testing when test cases were not written as planned or produced when needed. (See Appendix L: Meeting Minutes for further information.)

The project size stayed in line with provided timelines to include an absolute inability to miss specified delivery dates. Project alignment remained evident throughout its life. In short, SchoolTicketsOnline.com was delivered on time and the design exceeded stakeholder expectations. The Principal Developer and Quality Assurance Manager provide high quality and exhaustive contributions. See “Implementation,” p. 44 for the project’s history and implementation status at delivery. Also see the project’s “Final Usability Report,” p. 51, which details the likelihood of the presence of minor system errors at delivery and recommended improvements based on end user testing.

As a team, we choose to focus on scope and time over cost with a quality product. With a vision of developing a website for International students which provide information about the different universities in San Diego, local places to visit and also about the different textbook to enhance the skills of the courses they enroll which can be built through work breakdown structure with a detailed tasking through continuous requirement analysis. Time is the most important factor which needs to follow through every milestone and Gantt chart.

This is one of the most important phases of SDLC. For making a project success it is compulsory to ensure that it meets all the requirements and are implemented to a project’s success. If at any stage or even at the end of the project if it does not meet the requirement of the project will likely be considered as a failure, even if some derivative value is gained (Bandara et al, 2005). Analysts can create logical models, based on the requirements which are gathered, the logical models like activity diagrams, entity relationship without disturbing the implementation details, (Dennis et al, 2009) from which a risk analysis is conducted.

The major risk is associated with the key factors of the project that is scope, time, cost and quality (Galway, 2004). The highest impact risks of this project are:

1. Unexpected Software abnormalities: If the project team unable to identify or resolve problems of software it will cause these problems to escalate as the website develops further. This will cause a threat to the website’s completion will be delayed or even cause the website to undergo over problems. These problems will be raised because of human errors, hardware, and software incompatibility or found in the development tools used by the project team.

2. Over Estimation of the project team’s abilities: This risk assessment will lead to the underestimation of project timeline which indirectly has an impact on project’s performance.

3. Over-emphasis on low priority details: The basic requirements of the website development should be emphasized as Low Priority and High Priority. The changes in project requirements of the website development should be prioritized based on time and cost factors. As the high priority requirements are time consuming, very difficult to change the project plan in the last minute. A delay will happen if in case a low priority task is focused and a lot of time is spent on it then the project would be delayed.

4. Failure to meet the final deadline: The major mitigation to this risk is time management. Every phase in milestone needs to complete within time. According to schedule if any task is not completed then the risk associated with failing to meet the deadline will be lead to failure in completing the project.

5. Security issues: During initial planning and technical review the security concerns are addressed. They can be addressed through system testing. The database and web interfaces are sufficiently protected against the password, access to database and login details should be protected from the unauthorized users through high security.

Our Risk Management Process includes the following five steps:

· Risk identification: The project team determines risks that could potentially prevent the team from achieving project’s objectives or satisfying project’s requirements. This step involves documenting and communicating the concerns during the team meeting.

· Risk assessment: The project team analyzes the probabilities and consequences of identified risk events. The results of this assessment are then used in the next step.

· Risk prioritization: The project team evaluates and ranks the analyzed risks in terms of their criticality or importance. This provides insights to the team on where resources may be needed to manage or mitigate a high probability/high impact risk.

· Risk treatment: The project team develops options and actions to improve opportunities and eliminate or decrease threats to an acceptable level.

· Risk monitoring & control: The project team track identified risks, identifies new risks, and evaluates risk process effectiveness throughout the course of risk management.

For the risk factors discussed above they can be analyzed with a positive scope. If the Bugs are identified them the quality assurance team will look into the issue and the senior programmer will fix the problem before the completion of the sprint, as the development team will report to the quality assurance team prior to the task completion day. Hence this planning will help to resolve the issue and have sufficient time to overcome the problem.

For the over- emphasis on low priority details is the responsibility of the project team to adopt the features driven approach in developing the website as the requirements of the project and do analysis and discuss with the team in every sprint meeting. The project team does the designing of the web page and develops the backend technologies in parallel

Another factor of problem analysis is the environment of the organization and the team members working, (Schwalbe, 2006). It can be a systems backup recovery plan, even the system testing in concern with the performance should be stimulated in a live environment.

2.3 Website Design

2.3.1 Prototype