The project status - update March 10.

There are 4 active projects in the DELIVER programme at the moment. A short status overview:

1. The Fleet Management System:
   This project was suspended for a while awaiting the recruitment of the new HQ Fleet Manager, and for one of the field resources to be freed up.
   Both "conditions" are now in place, and we should be able to pick up this project by April.
   According to the planning, April and May will be dedicated to the development of the last remaining reports and input forms.
   
   
2. The PastFood application:
   The first phase of this application, facilitating the registration and evaluation of food procurement transactions, was delivered a while ago. The Food procurement unit collected the field users' feedback on basis of which they defined the requirements for the second phase of the project. This will providing additional features and reports, increasing the usability of the product.
   The software development for this phase has started, to be finished April 9.
   
   
3. The Compas assessment:
   Compas is our food commodity tracking system. It is THE core corporate logistics application tracking the movement of over 3 million Metric Tons of food per year.
   This Oracle based system was developed in the late 90's, and now in for a major upgrade. The first phase is to look at quick wins in the areas of data replication, data integrity and systems support.
   The ICT department (on basis of input from the logistics business units) has just finished a survey of all 400 Compas locations we have in the field. Add a technological review to this survey, and we have an excellent basis to define a number of changes. The review is to be finished by end March. The development and roll-out of the recommendations will take us until the end of the year.
   The survey and review will also give us a good base line to assess what we want to do with this application in the farther future: move to the corporate SAP ERP system? Integrate Non-Food Commodity tracking into the Food Commodity tracking?
   
   
4. The Portal:
   The Portal is really the cornerstone of all new systems being developed. We are coming to the end of the 14 month's requirements gathering, testing, prototyping, developing, testing again... Now that all pieces are coming together, it looks like some unforeseen problems are popping up causing delays in the development cycle. We were supposed to get the Portal for testing mid December, but we're already 2 months late. And what is worse: it is difficult to get an overview of when we will get this product out of development. The worst state for a project to be in: in trouble, and not knowing when one is going to be out of trouble.
   But... we're on the case and are working closely with the ICT department to asses what is needed to bring this first development cycle to a closure, so we can start testing the product before releasing it to the users.
   Once we get the product for testing, we will need one month of testing. The question is: "When will we get this product for testing". -- Clearly work in progress. Stay tuned.
   One thing is for sure: this Portal will be good. Better than good. The pieces we have seen already have been impressive.