Information System for a Volunteer Center:
System Design for Not-For-Profit Organizations with Limited Resources
Introduction
This case discusses information system project for the Volunteer Center Organization of Racine(VCR). The focus of the project was the development of an application that helped the VCR place and track volunteers at various volunteer opportunities. To track the progress of the project, Gantt chart and a standardized project status report were used. This case explains the current system and the problems in current systems along with few alternative solutions.
Client Mission & Organization
The Volunteer Center of Racine(VCR) is a non-profit organization located in Racine, WI. It was not formally managed but by volunteers with no full-time employees. That's why it became difficult to coordinate activities of the volunteers and obtain much needed funds for volunteer activities. The Programs and services offered by VCR are Retired & senior Volunteer Program, Youth with a mission, Volunteer recruitment and training. VCR is funded by grants and donations primarily from federal or state grants, private companies, and individual donors.
The Current System
The project team consists of Jeff McCoy, Lyndsay Nash, Rick Harrington, Judy Taft and some graduate & senior students. VCR maintained and processed four general types of information: payroll, expenses, donors, and volunteer information. But all the information was manually gathered from each system to produce a variety of reports in preparation of grants. Currently VCR uses an electronic system for maintaining senior volunteers and their activities under the Retired & Senior Volunteer Program.
Analysis of the Current System: Problems & Opportunities
The current system is using hybrid of paper of electronic system which can be replaced by one unified electronic system. Another important problem is manually entered data which can lead to input errors and data integrity issues. This problem can be resolved by maintaining consistent names and categories in the system. Also, minimizing the user input in the form of free text in system. In the current system, security on the system seems to be non-existent, there is no automatic backing up of data in the current system. Moreover, data could be typed over or errors made without proper verification at the time of entry. For such problem, minimizing the entry of free text by the users can help.
Proposed Designs
They come up with four alternative solutions for the Volunteer Center Project. Alternatives range from complete off-the-shelf packages to total custom developed system approaches.
1.Purchase off-the-shelf 2. Purchase Configurable 3. Custom Develop 4. Reengineer Existing System
Alternative #1 requires at least $5,000 and as high as $15,000. Alternative #2 has similar costs for purchasing the software. In addition, some of these products require customers to sign a multiyear maintenance deal that can run into hundreds of dollars per year. Alternative #3, a custom-developed solution requires a significant amount of time to be spent in system design and development. The VCR will not have to pay for this alternative, since this will be done by the IS project team.
On analyzing all the four alternatives VCR decided to go with the project team decided to go with custom-developed option which entails the purchasing of no software by Volunteer Center. But all software will be built by the project team. Advantages of this alternative are low cost, ability to build to meet user’s needs. Also, standard programming languages can be used. But downside is special skills needed to build and undefined maintenance responsibility. For this alternative waterfall method has been followed until the design phase. After that, project team decided to use phased approach that will implement the system in three different phases of the VCR site.
Unresolved Issues
Jeff, who was the project lead of the team his drive for perfection created friction between him and some of the team members who felt belittled by his criticism of their work. Jeff completed the task himself to obtain satisfactory results, but the team members had a problem with this approach. Along with personal issues, several other issues needed to be considered. There were risks associated with project schedule, project completion time and project scope management.