I have not seen "lower than normal" market rates around D.C. It's crazy expensive to live here (I'm in NoVA).
It currently has 72 ranked (racked and stacked by priority) SCRs, ending at page 4. There are, believe it, 11 full pages. So, whoever gets selected for this position has hundreds of software items as a backlog on arrival. Obviously, the team already on board are busy crunching away.
Quote from: Spam on April 14, 2017, 09:03:53 PMIt currently has 72 ranked (racked and stacked by priority) SCRs, ending at page 4. There are, believe it, 11 full pages. So, whoever gets selected for this position has hundreds of software items as a backlog on arrival. Obviously, the team already on board are busy crunching away.So you're thinking we will be keeping the existing WMIRS, eServices, etc., ... and it'll just be patches rolled out here and there?I was hoping for clean slate status ....
So prior to Kathy showing up, IT projects were rack and stacked by Joe Hall with input from a committee of volunteers on a monthly basis. At any one time, there were about 130 items on the backlog; most were eServices modules (OpsQual and WMIRS being the top 2, with some other stuff sprinkled in). With competing priorities (ops needs this, PD needs that, CP needs everything, etc), it took a long time for backlog items to bubble up. BTW, this doesn't even touch help desk tickets that hadn't made it to the list. Fast forward to Kathy showing up, she threw the list out, threw the help desk tickets that were bigger than simple bug fixes out, and went to all of the functionals at NHQ and asked them what was most important, thus the creation of the IT functional user group or whatever it's called now. The list you see is the product of that conversation, and now the SM's job is to play rodeo clown as these backlog items get burned down.Going forward, if you ever want to see something changed through IT, your best bet is to channel it through the chain to the national volunteer for the functional that owns that process or module in eServices and get them to have their corporate staff counterpart (e.g., the Desmarais, Parker, Tourville, and LaFond's of NHQ) make the request to IT. That's how the stuff gets visibility anymore. BTW NIN: Personify
Rather than building all this homegrown stuff, has there been any discussion in simply ponying up for a configurable out of box solution that meets our needs? K.I.S.S. There would be an upfront expense but the ongoing expenses and maintenance could be less and provide greater agility for leveraging changing technology.
Is there an "out of box" solution that does what eServices does? Think about all of the modules in there. What software package do you know of that does all that?
Would not going back, clearing everything, and using (Google Aps, SharePoint) be more painful?Not everyone here knows (Google Aps, SharePoint) so it would be nearly impossible to have something functional in about at least 6 months. Assuming the membership would like to start learning a new system. And new terminology. As (Google Aps, SharePoint) do not call every single module there the same as in e-Services. Getting to rename them would entail changing some of the code, no?Believe me, we would be getting the same complaints we get from members about e-Services if we select GA, SP, Brand X, Brand Y, or Brand Z. If it seems to be working, do not mess with it (other than fixes).
"If done correctly..."
My vote would be a custom web app which decouples UI from backend. Build the data system on a RESTful/JSON (though technically with RESTful you're supposed to support XML and JSON) API, then sit a UI on top of the API. You can interchange the UI design, or access the data programmatically, with no change to the backend - it doesn't care, it's just an API.