Three municipal web systems accepted within the contract deadline

Three municipal systems, one deadline at risk

A web agency needed to rework a city administration website's backend and update two website-building systems used by public-sector organizations. All three systems were covered by one contract. The scope was substantial, and little time remained.

By the time I joined, the risk of missing the deadline was already significant. My primary role was systems analyst, but I also took on some project-management responsibilities. I needed to understand the existing systems, specify changes, and help the team get the work accepted within the time available.

Complex rules behind familiar interfaces

The systems had no documentation. Even seemingly simple actions depended on numerous rules. Publishing a news item, for example, involved many settings that controlled both publication and system behavior.

Without understanding these dependencies, a change could affect undocumented functionality. I started by exploring the interfaces and testing the systems in test environments: varying settings, observing results, and recording the rules I uncovered. This reconstructed behavior became the basis for specifying changes.

Documentation for development and acceptance

Documentation was a required deliverable under this public-sector contract, with strict requirements. From the start, I structured my findings so they could be used in the client documentation. I ultimately documented all existing functionality across the three systems.

This served two purposes. For developers, it described current behavior and helped identify the changes needed. For acceptance, it became the basis of the documentation package I prepared with the agency's technical writing team.

Defining tasks and working with developers

I specified new features based on the behavior I had investigated and defined implementation tasks for developers. As implementation revealed further details, we updated the documentation.

Formal acceptance and a completed contract

I personally led every acceptance stage with the city administration, presenting the work and explaining how it met the requirements. The full process took under six months: investigating and documenting the systems, specifying changes, working with developers on implementation, and completing acceptance.

The client accepted the work on all three systems, and the agency completed the contract within the deadline. The administration received a reworked website backend, two updated website builders, and documentation covering all system functionality, which had previously been missing. After the project's successful completion, I ended my engagement with the agency.

I describe my approach to fixed delivery deadlines in a separate article: what to do when a project is behind schedule.