School of Education

Internet Technologies At Work

Chapter 4: Commercializing the Internet

After completing Chapter 4, you will know how to:

E-commerce

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is the integration of digital communications, data management, and security capabilities that allow organizations to exchange information related to the sale of good and services. The three elements of e-commerce are (1) digital communications, which support the transfer of data between the buyer and the seller; (2) data management, whereby the trading partners exchange information through a common digital language; and (3) security, which guarantees the authenticity, integrity, and privacy of the transactions.

PayPal

In 1998, a company called PayPal started a person to person payment model that enables any individual or business with an e-mail address to send and receive payments online. When customers use PayPal to buy and sell products from each other, a customer-to-customer (C2C) form of e-commerce emerges. The HTML coding needed to put a PayPal payment button at a Web site is relatively straightforward. One of the step-by-step exercises in Chapter 7 will walk you through the process of creating a PayPal "Buy Now" button.

End of Chapter Labs

Lab Project 4.1: Project Planning Fundamentals

Imagine that you have been hired by a medium-sized chain of retail hobby shops that sell O-gauge model trains in traditional brick-and-mortar storefronts.  These hobby shops do not sell anything online, but they are beginning to have a hard time competing with other hobby shops that have online storefronts. The problem is that many people who come into the store to handle the products and seek advice end up buying the trains online from electronic storefronts that sell the same products at discounted prices. You have been hired to solve this dilemma by creating an online store through which your employer can sell the trains online as well as in the chain of traditional stores. Your first assignment is to develop a project plan that defines the scope of work to be done, estimates how long it will take, and informs your new employer of the steps that you will be taking to accomplish your objective. In creating such a plan, you should address the following issues:

  1. Define the scope of the project. At the outset of any project, you should write a goal statement that explains the project’s contribution to your company’s overall business needs. To ensure the goal statement is comprehensive, make a list of the criteria that you will use to determine whether the outcome of the project will meet customer needs. Then estimate the size of the project and document the e-commerce standards, regulations, and laws that you will follow as you develop the solution.
  2. Identify stakeholders, decision-makers and escalation procedures. Every project has risks. You need to state what those risks will be and identify the people who will be notified if a problem arises. Explain how problems that are not solved promptly will escalate up through the company’s hierarchy to be resolved by higher authorities.
  3. Develop a detailed task list. In any project, it is important to identify the tasks that need to be accomplished. As you make this list, document any special aspects that the developers will need to be aware of.
  4. Estimate time requirements. Estimate how much time it will take to accomplish each task identified in the previous step. Be realistic. Avoid the temptation to please management by making time estimates that you cannot realistically meet.
  5. Develop the initial project management flow chart. Some of the items on your task list can be worked on simultaneously; others will need to wait until previous steps have been completed. Create a flow chart that diagrams the simultaneous versus the sequential aspects of the project you envision. On this chart, identify the project milestones, approval points, and go/no go decision points at which you will decide whether sequential tasks have been completed well enough to proceed to the next step. In order to avoid project delays, note any tasks requiring long lead times.

Use a word processor to write up your project plan. Feel free to use spreadsheet software to create your task list and add up the time estimates for each phase of your project. If your company has Microsoft Project or some other brand of project management software, you may use it as you see fit. In the Project Management section of this chapter, Figure 4-12 shows how Microsoft Project enables you to create a task list, organize the tasks into phases, and schedule the tasks. Do not worry if you do not have this kind of project management software right now, however, because you can also create this kind of a chart with a word processor. If your instructor has asked you to hand in the recommendation, make sure you put your name at the top, then save it on disk or follow the other instructions you may have been given for submitting this assignment.

Lab Project 4.2: Securing Resources for Project Development

Imagine that your employer was intrigued by the project plan you created in lab project 4.1. To determine whether to move forward, your employer wants to know how much it will cost for you to proceed with project development. In creating a cost estimate, you will need to take the following issues into account:

  1. Identify required resources and budget. In order to convince your employer to fund items in your budget, you need to document them in a budget explanation that provides the rationale for the resources you recommend. The better you support your budget requests with relevant data, the more of a chance you will have of getting your project approved.
  2. Evaluate project requirements. You need to explain any overlap that may exist among the resources you are requesting. Otherwise, your employer may think you are requesting more funding than you need to complete the project.
  3. Identify and evaluate risks. You may get different advice from customers than you get from your superiors and fellow employees. You need to take these conflicting viewpoints into account when you write your budget explanation. Your employer will feel more confident about approving your budget if the risk identification is complete and considers the impact on the whole system.
  4. Prepare a contingency plan. According to Murphy’s Law, if anything can go wrong, it will. While Murphy’s Law will hopefully not apply to your project, your resource allocation plan must specify alternate methods of completing any tasks that could become troublesome. A special trait of successful managers is their ability to foresee things that can go wrong and have alternate plans ready in case of a failure.
  5. Identify interdependencies. In order to control costs, every member of your project team needs to be aware of any interdependencies related to their work on the project. The project will fall behind schedule if things get out of phase because members of the team did not realize the interdependent nature of their tasks and subtasks.

Use a word processor to write up your cost estimate. Feel free to use spreadsheet software to create your list of required resources and total the costs for each phase of your project. If your company has Microsoft Project or some other brand of project management software, you may use it as you see fit. If your instructor has asked you to hand in this cost estimate, make sure you put your name at the top, then save it on disk or follow the other instructions you may have been given for submitting this assignment.

Lab Project 4.3: Establishing the Project Review Cycle

Imagine that your employer is pleased by the cost estimate you created in lab project 4.2. While money is tight, your employer feels that moving forward with this project is going to be a very strategic investment in your company’s future. Before allocating the money, however, your employer wants to know how you will ensure that the beginning phases of the project will be done correctly before you proceed to subsequent phases that depend on earlier work. To answer this concern, you need to establish a project review cycle that will make your employer feel confident that you can manage effectively the project staging and ensure that each task meets its objective before spending money on dependent tasks. To create a project review cycle, you need to take the following issues into account:

  1. Identify and track critical milestones. You need to establish a method for tracking the progress toward achieving the project’s critical milestones. If you have Microsoft Project or its equivalent, you can use your project management software to do the tracking. Otherwise, you can use a spreadsheet or word processor to create a grid on which to track critical milestones.
  2. Participate in the project phase review. You should schedule meetings for appropriate members of the team to review the phases of the project for which they are responsible, or upon which they are dependent. Include these project review meetings in the project’s master schedule.
  3. Secure needed resources. You will have a greater chance of getting your project approved if your employer feels confident that the people, equipment, supplies, and services will be available when your project needs them. In your project review cycle, therefore, include appropriate checkpoints for making sure these resources are available on schedule.
  4. Manage the change control process. Implementing e-commerce will cause many changes in how the company operates. Make the necessary parties aware of the impact of these changes, and build checkpoints in to the review cycle to make sure that the required changes are documented and implemented in the company’s operating procedures
  5. Report the project status. In order to bring problems promptly to the attention of your employer, the project review mechanism needs to keep an updated report on the project’s status. This report should include an explanation of lessons learned in the event that something goes wrong and the project needs to be modified. It is hoped that the report will be mainly positive, stating the extent to which each task and subtask met its goals.

Use a word processor to write up your project review cycle. If your company has Microsoft Project or some other brand of project management software, you may use it as you see fit. If your instructor has asked you to hand in this project review cycle, make sure you put your name at the top, then save it on disk or follow the other instructions you may have been given for submitting this assignment.