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IT Project Management

Case Study: Prospects Learning Services

In 2003 we were invited to meet with one of the UK's leading School Inspection providers to discuss the development of a customised on-line school inspection and data management system. The project brief centered around the capture, tracking and reporting of data collected during the various stages of the school inspection cycle.

During the initial fact finding and planning phases of the project we worked closely with the senior management team in order to understand their business, document all of their requirements and understand their internal processes. We then prepared a detailed project plan outlining all expected outcomes, costs, deliverables, user training and system support. Built on our core Osiris platform, the information management system was developed and built over a 12 month period with regular meetings and remote discussions taking place to ensure the project was on schedule, to specification and to budget.

A comprehensive training program for the main users of the system was provided and a full set of user documentation was incorporated into the system interface so that users had on-line access to training guides and instructions at all times. The inspection management system increased the efficiency of the entire inspection management process and reduced the massive amounts of manual administration required to manage the previous paper based legacy system.

Based upon the success of the system and the massive impact it has made upon the inspection management process, we have continued to develop additional modules that include access to remote users throughout the United Kingdom, disaster recovery processes, system back-up procedures, security protocols, user authentication for remote access and time saving solutions and functionality to further improve the efficiency of other business critical areas of the organisation.

Today hundreds of school inspectors and consultants throughout the South East of England use the information management system on a daily basis. The system is a highly secure and robust portal that supplies weekly data feeds to Ofsted's (Office for Standards in Education) central database of School inspection data and performance. Due to the nature of the education sector where standards and methods to regulate achievement are frequently re-defined, the underlying business systems to manage inspections must also be adaptive. As Osiris is a modular development platform, we continue to consult on and deliver innovative and cost saving applications on a regular basis.