4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The project was executed based on the predefined comprehensive plan based on the project development life cycle:
• Project Initiation and Strategy Alignment: In this stage, the project was conceptualized based on the strategic direction identified by eGA. Following this process, the project team was mobilized and assigned to the project. Moreover the procurement activities were carried out gradually based on the process of raising a tender.
• Planning: In this stage, work focused on the process of developing the project plans that will help in the process of executing the project, the project plans developed for the project are comprehensively developed with a full cooperation between all the project stakeholder to ensure that everybody is aware on how the project will be executed, below a list of plans developed during the project planning:
o Project Schedule
o Stakeholder and communication plan
o Change Management Plan
o Risks Management Plan
o Issues Management Plan
o Requirement Analysis
o Change Request Management Plan
o Quality Management Plan
o Other
The planning phase was crucial for the success of the project and for that the eGA spent huge amount and effort to prepare the project plans.
• Execution: In this stage, the actual project execution was carried out based on the predefined requirements to ensure the delivery of the eMeeting Platform. The execution stage consisted of a set of activities that were conducted below as below:
o Requirement verification and analysis
o Application design, development and configuration
o Application testing
o Application Rollout and hosting on the App store
• Monitoring and Controlling: In this stage, the project conducted continuous activities to ensure the quality of the project deliverables and the proper execution of the project planning, this activities is running across all stages.
• Closing: In this last stage of the project lifecycle, the project is closed including the process of ensuring that the project objectives were addressed and full documentation of the lesson learned to ensure the knowledge transfer to the users. After this stage the solution “eMeeting Platform” became an asset for the eGA and further investment is now envisaged to enhance the current eMeeting Platform and extending its capabilities to new government entities.
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5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The eMeeting Platform project involved a lot of stakeholder during the implementation stage. Below are the stakeholders with their identified roles and responsibilities:
• eGovernment Authority:
o eGA Leadership: The leadership team was responsible for providing the required approvals to ensure that the project is delivered within the scope, time, cost and quality conceptualized earlier.
o Directorate of Strategy and eBusiness Process Reengineering “Project management”: The directorate was responsible for overseeing the escalation arrangement of the project, evaluating the risk, managing the high level communication with the ministries.
o Quality Assurance: QA’s responsibility was to perform the required testing to ensure that the product delivered has to the standard and guidelines
o Information Security: Information Security’s responsibilities are associated with the security testing and ensuring the security of the product provided
o Project Management Office (PMO): The PMO was responsible for compliance with the PMO standards support the project manager on the process of managing the project, moreover their responsibility is associated with the assurance of executing the project based on the defined plans in the planning stage also the regulation and control of the procurements activities are under the responsibility of the PMO.
• Central Informatics Organization:
o The CIO’s responsibility was associated with the technical configurations and processes that required over the hardware components to ensure the full availability of the solution
• Government Entities:
o Bahrain Tender Board: The BTB are the first organization utilizing the eMeeting Platform and for that their responsibilities are associated with the confirmation of the requirements collected.
• Vendor:
o The Vendor’s responsibility was to develop and deliver the solution based on the time, scope, quality and cost identifies and agreed on.
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6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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The skills sets of the resources utilized in the development of eMeeting Platform are provided below which comprises of a detail resourcing list with the roles and responsibilities:
• Technical Human Resources
o Developers
Number: Two Developers
Roles and Responsibilities: Conduct the actual development of the mobile apps based on the requirements identified by the users
o Designers & User Interface Expert
Number: One Designer & One User Interface Expert
Roles and Responsibilities: provide the pages design for the mobile apps as per the user interface best practices to ensure and consistent user experience throughout the system
o Testers:
Number: Two Testers
Roles and Responsibilities: conduct the required testing on the applications to capture the issues and ensure the correction of the captured issues and bugs.
o Project Manager
Number: One Project Manager
Roles & responsibilities: managing the project to ensuring delivering the project within the expect time, scope, cost and level of quality
o Project Coordinator
Number: One Project Coordinator
Roles & responsibilities: coordinate the project related activities with between the project manager and project team and support the project manager in the liaison activities within the project boundaries
o System Analyst
Number: One System Analyst
Roles & responsibilities: perform the requirement analysis to overcome the gap between the collected requirements (technical / Business) and the requirement utilized in the process of developing the solution
o System Integrator
Number: One System Integrator
Roles & responsibilities: collect the requirements for the integration and perform the actual technical integration required for the solution with the backend
o Network Specialist
Number: One Network Specialist
Roles & responsibilities: ensure the availability of the network and the connection to the network
o Change Management Coordinator
Number: One Change Management Coordinator
Roles & responsibilities: hand and ensure the execution of the change management plan to ensure the smooth transformation and utilization of the new system
o Security Specialist
Number: One Security Specialist
Roles & responsibilities: perform the required security testing to ensure the security of the application developed
o Quality Assurance Specialist
Number: One Quality Assurance Specialist
Roles & responsibilities: conduct the QA testing to ensure the compliance with the QA standard and guidelines while developing the solution; also they are testing the usability and user experience.
• Financial Resource
o The project was funded from the eGA project budget as one of the initiatives under the National eGovernment Strategy 2016
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7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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1) Strategic Planning: The eMeeting initiative had a SMART objective along with measures of success and key milestones where progress was reviewed constantly. The benefits of the initiative were clearly articulated at the beginning so that there was a clear link to the success of the initiative and the impact on overall business aims.
2) Solution Development: The development of the eMeeting Platform was closely linked to meeting-defined business objectives and adding value to the stakeholders especially the Government entities.
3) Communication: One of the vital factors for the success of the eMeeting Initiative was the effective communication to those who were affected during the implementation of the initiative and by the initiatives final outcome. Special efforts were made by eGA to ensure that the right message is set so that the end users and potential buyers understand the benefits of the initiative.
4) Resources: The success of the initiative was also due to the presence of adequate resources in terms of right people, appropriate time, right finance and right equipments
5) People: Finally, the success of the initiative owes to the contribution of the people who were involved in the planning, execution and monitoring of the initiative. The key stakeholders who drive the project heavily contributed to the success of the project and they include but not limited to Project sponsor, project manager, and project team members.
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8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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The monitoring and control of all aspects of the project is a principle the project team from the outset to ensure the proper execution of the project. Within this monitoring and control principle, the involvement of senior leadership from the eGA was one of the key determinants of success. Weekly meetings were arranged to discuss the project outcomes, issues, risks and deliverables with the mid management level, a comprehensive escalation plan with a specific Service Level Agreement across the different level. To elaborate more below the project meetings structure across different level:
• Weekly meeting:
o Attendees: project owner, project manager, vendor project manager and project team members (technical team)
o Purpose: discuss the project status against the project schedule and highlight any issues or risks associated with the project, identify any escalation required for leadership and discussing any change requests required for the project
o Frequency: Weekly
• Two-Weekly meeting:
o Attendees: Project owner, project manager, leadership team (all directors and asst. directors)
o Purpose: discuss the project status against the project schedule and highlight any escalated issues or risks associated with the project, approved/ reject and change requests required for the project
o Frequency: every two weeks
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9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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The project execution is usually associated with the a set of obstacles, in our case the obstacles are divided into the below:
• Technical Obstacles:
o Integration requirements: the requirements for the integration with the back end solution was not very clear and the idea of developing mobile apps was fresh during the period of implementing the eMeeting Platform, the technical integration faced a set of constraint the add more delay on the delivery of the project, the team has overcomes such constraints by expediting the activities and providing an expert resource in mobile apps integration to support the team in the process of finalizing the integration activities and at the same time the team was building the internal capabilities by obtaining the required knowledge.
o Secure app host on private app store (where it is only visible for the authenticated users): due to the fact that the eMeeting platform required a fully secure environment the project team faced an issues of having private app store within the official app stores, but our team discovered a solution to utilized some functionalities offered by the official mobile apps store to have a restricted access for the developed mobile apps.
• Business Obstacles:
o Change management was one of the main obstacles associated with the project implementation because the change that is associated with the project implementation is impacting the actual business for that the team faced a lot of resistance during the roll out period which was overcome by creating change agents with the organizations to adopt the change and support the project team and users in the process of adopting the proposed solution.
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