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CASE STUDY
SEAFARERS MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM (SMIS)
Seafarers International Union (SIU)
The Seafarers International Union (SIU) is the largest North American union representing merchant mariners sailing aboard U.S.-flag vessels in the Deep Sea, Great Lakes and Inland trades. In November 2006, GCR & Associates, Inc. initiated a multiple phase project with SIU to undertake a complete business process analysis, and develop functional and software requirements specifications documents for the migration of the Seafarers Management Information System (SMIS) to a new technological environment. GCR is currently completing the third phase of the project - the redevelopment of SMIS according to specifications developed in earlier phases. All phases of the SMIS project have been conducted in accordance with the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) framework developed by the Software Engineering Institute at (SEI) Carnegie Mellon University. SMIS is an enterprise-level, mission-critical financial and scheduling system for recording dues information, union benefits, and the work history of union members.
Phase I of the project was to develop recommendations for a new enterprise solution that would address current business needs. The GCR team interviewed over 12 departments and developed written documentation of their processes as well as recommendations to address business requirements, hardware, software and data feeds with external providers. A functional requirements document described the tasks that the system accomplished for its users and provided information that allowed SIU to prioritize the development of system features so that budgetary and logistical constraints could be mitigated.
Phase II of the project involved creation of a software specifications document. The document incorporated a prototype of all screens and reports that required custom software development. The completed document was approximately 1,500 pages and described 400 software data screens and 200 reports.
For Phase III of the project - development and implementation of the new application - GCR utilizes a project management approach that involves a senior management oversight team, a quality assurance team, subject matter experts, a technical design and coding team, and an implementation and support team. This organization allows the management team to appropriately plan, oversee, and schedule the requisite work with client stakeholders and users of the new SMIS enterprise software. This project management team prepares internal weekly meeting minutes and provides monthly reporting to the client. The monitoring procedures were developed according to CMMI level II guidelines and GCR's software development processes. The project’s work breakdown structure includes numerous milestones for client briefings and participation from stakeholders at each point in the process. These milestones include software designs reviews, beta software releases, acceptance testing, and production rollout.
