This post is the last in my current retrospective series, that sampled the projects I was working on years ago. You can see the previous posts here and here.

While the previous posts were about projects that span through years, this will be about a project that took no longer than a couple of months.

I was desperately looking for a screeenshot in my archives, to add as an illustration. I finally gave up, and tried to go with the University logo from the Internet. Imagine my surprise, to find the application is still up and running! It wasn’t used since 2013, but considering it was not maintained since the end of 2010, it was quite well done. You can see the version number on the bottom of the screen.

Disclaimer: The project is described best from my memories. I tried to keep the story professional, still there were emotional aspects that I tried to present in the back story. 

Background

I was running a small company of IT professionals between 2003 and 2010. Our main strength was getting into projects with obscure technology requirements, and helping out the customer with the project deliveries. These were times, when there were so many major projects, where the customer prescribed a certain technology and the supplier had no idea, how to deliver. Our clients were mostly engaged on projects in the telecommunications and financial sectors. We were going strong until the financial decline around 2008. Most large projects were cancelled and we were struggling to find jobs anywhere.

Corvinus University in Budapest is the most well-known University of Economics in Hungary. They offer several grants, participate in consortial projects, as well as run their own departmental projects. As usual the department responsible for this was undermanned and was floating in paperwork. Thus came the idea of having a system that keeps track of the tasks.

We were previously involved in a filing and records management project that turned out as a complete disaster for both the University and ourselves. The company that originally won that project disappeared into thin air, leaving them without the promised government mandated electronic records management system, and us with the unpaid bills for months of business analysis and development.

To cut our losses we took on this task, salvaged whatever we could from the previous project and tried to meet the short deadline.