Webtrieve – Setting The Scene

I am starting a new series of posts about a project that I am working through. This project is the re-development of an existing web application. The application is called Webtrieve and it is a customer portal where users can view information that is secured according to their userid. The current application is quite dated (over 10 years old) and needs an update for both aesthetic and technological reasons.

This series will detail the progress of the project from initial discussions all the way through to go-live and ongoing maintenance.

The project is based on an Agile methodology but does not strictly adhere to the traditional approach. Let me detail some of the technology that I am using and the overall approach to the project.

Firstly, the new application will be an MVC.Net C# application. The application will be a multi-tiered application using Entity Framework, SQL database, MVC v4 and Knockout.js. There are many more aspects of the project but these are the key components. All developers are using Visual Studio 2012 and TFS Cloud on virtualised development machines hosted on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-v.

The timeframes are yet to be determined and this series will explain how I estimate the timeframes and the required number of sprints involved in development and testing. I will be examining the existing application, estimating the work involved to re-design it, co-ordinating developers and testers (a global team), arranging demonstrations at the end of each sprint and planning for deployment once the project is complete.

Stay tuned for more details over the coming weeks as the project progresses and I detail the successes and issues faced. Jump to the next article here.

Til next time...