Week4

3/Oct/2010

Many diagrams running around in my brain one after another. Get tired but anyway I need to do something. Finished use case descriptions.  Checked schedule. Today is the last day of week 4. Week 4! one third of the semester has past? I am not good at drawing sequence diagram so I need to practice more. Through this project I could review whole the stuff what I learned and could reconfirm them. That is good but the thing is time is not enough. Gantt chart is another headache. I need to learn more.


2/Oct/2010

Discussion day again. Reconfirming idea of detailed use cases. realized lots of small things are unclear. Main topic was paper prototype.  By using paper, discussed GUI of the system. Even focused on Home page and Client page, it took long time. But these are the most important parts so it's OK. As time goes by, we noticed there were too many complicated words there. Different people use different names for the same thing. No good. So confusing. Time to update word definition. Even simple word is hard like Schedule or To Do or Event? Anyway it's getting harder and busier day by day.


1/Oct/2010

Discussion day. Though we discussed again and again still not enough. We are different people. So we spend more time. Creating agenda for next client meeting. Confirming activity diagrams one by one. So that we could have same ideas for same items. Also started to think about the structure of next presentation. We rotate each role every time so next time I will be a presenter. Hope everything works well.


30/Sep/2010

Discussed function which is still not clear to us. One is about tax. There are quite few types of tax type. Understood. So what are the differences between them in point of procedure? We cannot be accountants but still need to know their work flow. Second is about payment. We are IT students so we need to think everything in IT way. How can we automate the function of payment? How to calculate? Payment method? Third one is about client side function. In our idea, their client should be able to see their information through the web. This is efficiency. This may be what clients want.


29/Sep/2010

We found misunderstanding about use cases and finally go the point. Still diagrams we created are only basic ideas so we need to expand them. we we could clearly describe use cases and then each of them will be an item in the system. We refreshed an idea of the activity diagram individually and started to draw it to make it clear what should be done to complete each use case. So that we could get clear image of each overview use case. Some functions are still fuzzy so need to talk to the client again.


28/Sep/2010


Show time. We prepared scripts and dynamic slides and then practice the presentation a lot. It is a good idea to make a script but thing is by doing that, I cannot remember my speech. That's fine. Our slides were good and structure of the presentation was good but use cases we created were not correct. Need to modify them till next week. And also I need to study about importing email. I can imagine what theUI suppose to be but no idea about how to implement this function. Especially I need to know more about security stuff. After the presentation, I watched the video of that and could not find any progress on my speech. I still used "Umm" or "Ahh" or that kind of the gap filler even I tried not to do. However my other team mates did well. At least they improved. I Really need to fix it. We discussed those wrong use cases and tried to refresh them. They will be changed totally different.


27/Sep/2010

To share files within the team, we use a share folder in a server which we borrowed from school. It's so convenient but during weekend this campus is closed so cannot use. I forgot to copy some files then could not update the task tracker and some more documents. Monday morning started with updating stuff. It made me down. We need to work on anyway. For tomorrow's presentation, we spent all day for the preparation. 1st client meeting gave us more idea about the system so we decided to  focus on the client's requirement and functions of the system. This time we use a different presentation tool so that the slides are so dynamic. A problem is speech. With creating scripts, we could manage it hopefully.

Week3

26/Sep/2010 (11:00am-17:00pm)


Completed Use Case and reorganized the client meeting agenda. In the 1st version, the first client meeting would had been just like an intro but as to the client availability, we needed to know about their business as much as possible even on the first meeting. Our client is family owned accounting company and they have worked without an integrated system. Our initial template was on the right track and they seemed to be quite happy with that. One thing is that they do not want to force their client any change so that the client side page is not needed. We only need to focus on their side. New idea from them was a time sheet like function. With this function they can calculate how much they spend for the client. They said it was not must but it is challenging for us. They explained us details of their requirements nice and politely and spent more than one hour for us regardless of Sunday. We really appreciated that.


25/Sep/2010 (11:00am-18:00pm)


To avoid misunderstanding and to understand each other well, we started to have a morning meeting everyday. So that we could know the progress of each task also. We also had team meetings as needed basis but that was not enough we realized. That was just like a chatting and this time is a real meeting. What we need to do today? Report progress of each task? What we need to consider for another week? And I think it worked really well today. To describe use cases, we found that there are so much things we need to consider but we haven't like usability of a system. Before meeting our client, we are getting much more clear ideas and it is so good. Use case itself has almost done and time to work on use case description.　To get more idea, I refereed Salesforce.com again and re-thought it is the great system.


24/Sep/2010

There are three. Two from Japan and one from Sri Lanka. There are three. One from IT and two from not. This is my team. Some times it's not easy to understand each other. Each of us need to try to understand each other. Each of us need to learn something from others with respect. I believe we can do. Today we discussed functionality of the system more. Without having any actual request from the client, there is only assumption of us there. Even though it is always good to have a discussion. And then focus on a login function. If it is absolutely must or not. What is the advantage and disadvantage. What about OpenID? Never end. But I am learning a lot. Thanks my friends. You are the best.


23/Sep/2010

Still working on the proposal document. Many things I cannot understand clearly are there. Code of ethics? Have we learned what this is? Well, started to create UML diagrams. First one is use cases. It supposed to have been my favorite but,,,cannot remember well. Got idea from my teammate. Getting clear now. We divided it into three parts like login, creating users and creating cases. As to the function of their client, we better suggest our ideas to our client. If possible, 2-3 options should be provided. Anyway hope we can finish it till this Saturday. I created new account for free hosting then we can upload our website for testing purpose. However, still internet connectivity is disgusting. After 6pm is the worst. Never connected. AIS doesn't allow us to use FTP and has got only poor network service.  Any other options?


22/Sep/2010

AIS changed their Wi-Fi network system. We don't need to register our device anymore to use wireless network. It's OK. BUT, the connectivity is terribly bad. The login page comes up every 10min and disconnected quite often. We are working on the important project all day long which is recommended by college and we waste time there to try to re-connect. Network at my place is extremely better than college one. Not only connectivity but also speed. I wonder what the network administrator there doing? What is the solution for this problem? IT programme has got IT environment problem. Awful. Anyway, we are trying to create a first prototype in such a bad environment and found there is a new technique of ASP.Net there. ASP.Net MVC. It's different from traditional ASP.Net framework and it is more like manual coding way of programming. We can separate controls from design file so that it makes unit test easy. Unfortunately developing time is limited though it is worth knowing. So we will create prototype with using traditional ASP.Net and at the same time, try to understand this new technique for later final application developing if it's possible. Again, I lost my concentration because of the,,,,disappointed so much.


21/Sep/2010

1st presentation, project proposal. We really want to improve our presentation skills so we rehearse 3 times in the morning before the time. I don't think 3 times are enough but we all improved a lot from yesterday. Show time. For reviewing purpose, we decided to shoot video of our presentation. Be confident and relax, talked to myself. Without having a client meeting, we did it too well I thought. However, when I reviewed the video I realized it wasn't such a good. I used too much "Ah,,," and "Um,,,," and I don't like the way I behaved and the worst thing is we couldn't get synchronized with the audience. It clearly showed our presentation was not attractive enough. The good thing is that I could not satisfied that. It means still we could improve more. We have already got some idea to make our show dynamic so next will be much better.


20/Sep/2010

Checked the visibility of PPT in the presentation room and discussed what we need to present on a first presentation tomorrow. Project description is my part. It's not easy. Think I need to place on audience side. How much they can understand without knowing anything in advance. Need to explain about what is a CRM, of course, and what is an accountant perhaps. A CRM is obviously a key word so I created a diagram to explain it. It seemed to be all right. What about an accountant. In a first team rehearsal, I explained it without any visual material and got suggestion. Better to draw another diagram. I agreed though I am not good in drawing. Then we performed in front of our supervisor. We got many valuable advice from him. First in spite of our best efforts,there were still many reputations in our slides like introduction of team members. We cut it. Second, time is money as usual. So if we want to show something besides slides, we better prepare in advance like links to referential websites or other documents. And finally, to grab audience, we we need to gather their attentions using effective words and phrases. I remember when I did the first presentation in semester1, I researched a bit about what are the points of presentation and slides and found article about Apple CEO Steve Jobs' presentation. Presentation is not a small part of a project. It is important without doubt. I believe we could improve our presentation skills as well.

Week2

Sun, 19/Sep/2010

Working on a proposal document. Studied the template from the beginning to the end. Bit different from what we have done in semester1. Lots of stuff needed to fill in. What is a goal of the CRM project? What is objectives? And actually think that Proposal and that Definition what I created in semester1 and 2 was terrible though I did quite well after the Analysis Report. But this time, I will make them beautiful from the beginning.


Sat, 18/Sep/2010

So what functionality the CRM application need to have? We discussed within the team. Login, client details, case descriptions, upload documents,,, and who can do what? Insert, update, delete, and search? There should be at least three different sort of users, a client, an accountant and a system admin. OK. We are getting more clear ideas. Then what about our schedule? No. Not enough time we have, we re-realized.



Fri, 17/Sep/2010

As usual, there would be many things we need to consider when we develop a CRM system.  What will be happened if we miss even only one of them? A reference says 70% of developing CRM project end up with fail. 70%. Not a good rate at all. We got a reading material of CRM today. Yes. First, we need to understand CRM more. My understanding is like this. CRM is a tool to communicate with customers. CRM makes is possible to provide customers what they want or what they expect. We even could say CRM optimize business chance. In Japan, it is often said that the customer is God though I do not like this phrase. Anyway, a customer oriented cultural mindset is MUST in developing CRM.



Thu, 16/Sep/2010


Salesforce's CRM wins the admiration. The best in the world, maybe. But it seems that too many functions are there. Perhaps it is perfectly OK for big companies. On the other hands, I do not think small companies need the same functions. The simplified Salesforce's CRM is the one what we need to create, I suppose.

Wed, 15/Sep/2010

About a month ago, I read a book named "Cloud Computing" by chance.  It explained a little about Salesforce.com but I could not get clearly what it is. And a CRM project came to me. Salesforce.com is the company of CRM! Now I got it a bit better. Think this web-based CRM is an amazing system. A point is that in any place of the world, business is there. Business is a business. There are customers, products/services and sellers. No difference even in another side of the globe. This is why Salesforce.com has established. Great idea. The CEO used to be a vice-president of the Oracle. So he knows database very well.



Tue, 14/Sep/2010

I have worked in two different small companies in Japan. One was an international academic book seller and another one was a household products importer. I worked there as sales and marketing staff. None of them did not have a customer relationship management system.  And this is what we are going to develop in three months.