Aarhus Municipality chose Pentia among a total of 13 candidates who submitted their ticket for the job through an EU tender process. Pentia used Matter Design Studio a the design partner and Snitker & Co as the usability testing experts.
Aarhus Municipality had already signed an agreement with the firm web accessability comapny, Sensus.
The project has been driven by the project method PRINCE2TM. Aarhus municipality also used the project methodology internally.
Analysis phase
The project began with an analysis phase which aimed to define the total project scope.
This stage contained a number of tasks. From the initial workshops, where the actual content of the project was defined, to user tests, which ensured that the future solution was actually the solution the municipal users wanted, through to definition of the functionality as well as the graphic design. The common thread in this phase was (as in the rest of the project) continuous and extensive communication, which ensured a common understanding of the project among all participants and clear expectations. The end product of this phase was a set of agreed acceptance criteria for the solution.
Technical Implementation
The "development phase". This was when the solution was developed on the basis of the agreed guidelines. In practice, there was an overlap between this phase and the testing phase, since Pentia and Aarhus Municipality continuously educated users, tested and implemented the new content on the solution. In the actual development, the focus was on developing content templates first, so that Aarhus Municipality could quickly get started with updating the content on the new solution.
Test and stabilization
It was during this phase that the solution was tested against the agreed acceptance criteria for data migration, accessibility, usability, stress and performance tests, functionality and browser compatibility. The stage ended with a period of stabilization, which occurred immediately following approval (which was on December 18, 2009 - 1 month ahead of schedule) and following the launch of the site on the 1st of March 2010.
As well as the technical implementation of the web-based solution, Pentia has also had responsibility for:
- Research, and concept - Clarifying phase which contained the definition of wire frames, functionality and ultimately the finished design.
- Data migration from the old website's good 25,000 pages, and "cleaning" of content for HTML code.
- Facilitation of workshops as part of the preparation for the information architecture for the site's more than 15,000 pages.
- Consultancy for Fujitsu Siemens in the configuration of the operating environment for the new solution.
- Assistance to Aarhus Municipality regarding building up the internal weborganisation.
- Assistance to Aarhus Municipality regarding building up the taxonomy for marking pages up with the correct topic contexts.
- Development of web-based user documentation.
- Training the web editors.
- Ensuring that the new site fully meets the accessibility requirements specified in WCAG 2.0. - Sensus has thoroughly tested the solution and verified that it meets these requirements.
A selection of funtions:
- Multi- site functionality (relating colour themes / skins to parts of the site or even subsites with separate URL).
- Newsletter & notification mails.
- Fully integrated use of Google Maps in content pages.
- Search is carried out by means of integration between Sitecore and Google Enterprise Search Appliance.
- Advanced page-spot-functionality with the ability to reuse content spots across the platform.
- Viewing Videos on the portal - Video Integration 23Video.
- Advanced Directory Register / A to Z index.
- Tell a friend.
- RSS feeds.
Success in important areas
- The large focus at the start on agreeing the acceptance criteria for the solution has resulted in almost no corrections or changes throughout the project.
- The solution was delivered on time, budget and with agreed quality.
- The solution has already demonstrated that it is structured generically enough to be able to fulfil new requirements. During the process, we have been able to incorporate new features to a subsite for Aarhus Public Holiday Fund, without any significant problems.