Case Study: University of Amsterdam (UvA)
The University of Amsterdam (UvA) is a modern university with a rich history, dating back to 1632, when the Golden Age school Athenaeum Illustre was established to train students in trade and philosophy. Today, with more than 30,000 students, 5,000 staff and 250 study programs (Bachelor's and Master's), many of which are taught in English, and a budget of more than 600 million euros, it is one of the largest comprehensive universities in Europe. It is a member of the League of European Research Universities and also maintains intensive contact with other leading research universities around the world.
The project Trifork was selected to deliver was the development of the UvAweb (www.uva.nl).
Requirements
- Lead the implementation for the development of a number of new corporate websites for UvA using Hippo CMS
- Provide consultancy and guidance on how UvA should organize content
- Advise on suitable technology for the functional requirements identified
- Improve the overall technical infrastructure
- Provide recommendations for professionalizing the hosting services
- Support the migration of content from the existing system to the new environment
- Educate & train the internal web team.
Our solution
In the first instance a multidisciplinary team of experts were defined from within UvA and Trifork. As with all Trifork projects, the scrum methodology was used and thereby a dedicated project team with a scrum master and product owner were identified. This was enhanced with a team of developers, front-end specialists, interaction & graphic designers, software testers and a Hippo CMS architect.
Trifork was requested to take the lead, and guide the product owner throughout the entire project process from how to define the site functionality and requirements, to how to transform these into stories and sprints in order of priority. Thereafter, they were planned into numerous sprints over a period of time with a fixed time and budget allocation to each sprint.
The project started at the end of 2011 and went live in September 2012.
From the moment it went live the UvA has converted all web their existing web content into one system, including all faculties, business schools, and other business departments. This major achievement has given the UvA a platform to grow and expand their communication capabilities even further.
Conclusion
“Deploying a new website project for the University of Amsterdam is not only technically challenging, but ensuring all the content is well represented is just as daunting,” said Jan Repko, Project Lead for the University. “Hippo CMS and Trifork not only provided the specific expertise we needed to structure our project successfully, but the software has given us a powerful new way to engage our students and faculty for years to come.”
Read more about the HIPPO CMS implementation here.