Capstone Project: The Communities Foundations of Texas Neighborhood Metrics Dashboard 2020

Introduction

In my senior year of college, I had the opportunity to participate in the ITS Capstone Project sponsored by a non- profit called The Communities Foundation of Texas. I have never worked on a project at this caliber through its entire project life cycle and present it to a panel of sponsors. Through this project, I was able to build my team management skills while learning new software such as Power BI all while making a real impact on a real community.

Below, I have attached my team's proposal, this was complied over the course of 16 weeks which were broken down into 3 sprints. While our team has faced some very unprecedented challenges due to the current circumstances, it truly tested our team collaboration skills and our ability to problem solve and stay versatile by taking advantage of the technology we have at our disposal.

Problem Statement

Five neighborhoods have approached The Communities Foundation of Texas for funding regarding their community-wide initiatives, and three organizations (SPCA, Fraizer Revitalization, ACT) all with their individual goals, would like a visual representation of each community’s characteristics in order to have a baseline foundation of each community and then learn to what extent their efforts affect each community’s well-being. The online dashboard will serve as a visual measurement tool to document and track the communities’ progress.

Project Goals and Target Audience

Project Goals:

· Display historical and current characteristics of each neighborhood

· Interactive, detailed data from reputable sources that updates periodically

· Easy to use platform

Target Audience:

· 3 organizations (SPCA, Fraizer Revitalization, ACT)

· Residents in the 5 neighborhoods

Project Success Metrics

Productivity | Timeliness | Quality

Productivity will be the key metric for our team. This means making sure each member is completing their assigned task by the time their deadline is reached. This metric will be measured in two ways:

• Team members are considered to be productive if they submit their portion of each assignment in a timely manner and their work upholds the team’s high- quality standard.

• Members will be deemed as productive if they attend 90% of all virtual and in-person meetings and engage with others during the meetings by asking questions, clarifying ideas and providing their input.

Schedule timeliness is the key metric for our instructor to evaluate. The overall project timeline and progress will be closely monitored by our professor through the submission of our project milestones and task deadlines. Whether or not we have our project progression completed by each due date will determine if we are on track for success. This will be measured by the professor via two distinct methods:

• Our project will be determined to be on schedule if each milestone is completed by each specified due date.

• Our project will be considered to be on track if we can provide significant updates to the professor during our weekly in-class check in with her.

Quality and satisfaction will be determined by our project sponsor as the final success metric. Once we have an outline or physical product that we can deliver, our sponsor will be able to give us feedback on whether or not it fits the vision that they have. This will be measured by the sponsor in two ways:

• Our initial proposal will be considered satisfactory if it provides the sponsors with valuable information and gives them a serious, viable option to choose from.

• Our project will be considered to be of high quality and satisfaction if our group’s end product matches with most of the sponsor’s requirements.

Software Requirements

Functional Requirements:

• Display Data For: Demographics, Economics, Crime, Education & Housing

• Ability to compare data between communities

• Ability to compare historical and current data

• Easy to use

Technical Requirements:

• Embed within a Web page

• Dynamic web page with live data

• Result are shown within 5 seconds of a search query

• Easy to routinely update data

• Data is updated as soon as it’s available (monthly/annually)

• Easy to maintain

• Dashboard should be able to run with multiple users without crashing (stability & reliability)

Software Research and Potential Options

Power BI

Power BI is a widely used software that is well known for its ease of use. For users experienced with Excel and other Microsoft products, it is especially easy to pick up. In terms of the scalability, Power BI can be used for large and small scaled companies alike, being most easily integrated with Microsoft based environments. In regard to the features, it does not have the amount of complex features such as Tableau or IBM Cognos, but has a sufficient amount to get the job done. This sufficient amount of features is why it is affordably priced at $9.99/license/month, making it a great option for smaller companies.

Tableau

Tableau is a well-known software in the field of data analytics and visualization, which offers a large variety of features, can be integrated into most software environments, making it best suited for larger scale companies. Due to the large amount of features, the product may be difficult to use for people inexperienced in the field of data visualization and analytics. The complexity of the program and the amount of features provided puts it at a price of $70.00/license/month.

IBM Cognos

Cognos is a very sophisticated analytics software that is used by very large scale companies with experienced data scientists. Due to the complexity of the software and how in depth the features are, inexperienced users would have a very hard time using the software. This essentially bars all small scale startups/nonprofits from using the program, simply because it is too complex. It is priced $75.00/license/month with a minimum of 50 users, but shoots up to $95.00/license/month if there are less.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a very popular free analytics software that is used by man small scale businesses. It offers a great amount of analytics and visualization features, but many of these are specifically meant for monitoring website traffic and SEO/SEM activities. Therefore this program is much more suited for marketing activities rather than anything else. The UI is sleek, but it can be cluttered and confusing, especially for people who are looking at the dashboard for the first time, or simply inexperienced.

Zoho Analytics

Zoho Analytics is a lesser known bare bones analytics program that is used by many small businesses. Its free and open source, making it a great budget program, but it can be a little underwhelming. The capabilities of Zoho Analytics don’t get the job done as well as software like Power BI, and is not easy to integrate. Overall, it is a great option for very small scale businesses, but may not get the job done as efficiently as needed.

Overall Software Recommendation

After reviewing these 5 software, we feel that Power BI is the best choice for our project.

It may not be as sophisticated as Tableau or IBM Cognos, but it gets the job done to the extent that we need it to be done. If we were to go with Tableau or Cognos, many functions and processes of our project may be over complicated. In Addition, the complexity of the program would make our solution less maintainable in the long term, and harder to analyze and pick up for future users of the program. On the other hand, Zoho Analytics is a little too bare bones for what we need. It's a great budget option, but we require a little bit more sophistication than what it offers. In terms of Google Analytics, it is a fantastic, affordable program, but simply not meant for what we are trying to do. It is much better suited for a marketing platform solution, rather than a crime data dashboard solution. Overall, we believe Power BI is the best option in terms of development and maintainability. Power BI offers the right amount of sophistication, with a relatively low learning curve. This means students will be able to quickly learn how to extensively use Power BI to make dashboards that fit the sponsor’s criterion. In addition to its wide range of visualization capabilities and low learning curve, it is also a relatively low-cost solution. This means it would be financially viable for the non-profit organization to continue its lifespan post-development. Other than costs, it is a long-term solution due to the reasonable maintenance needs. Mastery of the tool to use and maintain the solution is feasible due to not only the low learning curve, but the abundance of free learning resources and support found online. An intern would realistically be able to self-learn and be self-sufficient in maintaining and improving the tool.

User Stories

Communities Foundation of Texas

As Communities Foundation of Texas

I want to have access to challenges within the community

So that I can find solutions to help create a better neighborhood

Caruth Foundation

As Caruth Foundation

I want to determine how much grant money needs to be spent

So that I can provide to all the needs and requirements of the communities

Primary Customer – Neighborhood

As the Neighborhood

We want to have access to data to our community

So that we can have a better understanding of what our community needs

SPCA – Rescuing Animals

As SPCA

I want to have better access to data about the local neighborhoods

So that I can reduce the number of stray animals on the streets and determine the impact of loose dogs on the streets.

Frazier Revitalization

As Frazier Revitalization

I want to have access to data about the local neighborhoods

So that I can determine the amount of funding the community requires based on medical needs/healthcare conditions.

ACT – Nonprofit lawyers

As ACT

I want to have access to data about the local neighborhoods

So that I can analyze the data to determine the trends in crime rates and the impact a shutdown drug house can have on a neighborhood.

Wire frame

Implementation Plan

In order to get this dashboard up and running, it should be implemented in a proper manner along with regular maintenance and support features to ensure that it functions without any difficulties for the foreseeable future.

In terms of implementation, Power Bi allows us to seamlessly upload our dashboard to any existing website. We will save our entire dashboard using the “publish to web” option available on Power Bi. This will create an embedded code for us. Using this HTML code, all we need to do is copy and paste it onto the correct web page. In order to do so, anyone with technology access to the CFT’s website can navigate to the corresponding web page's code and simply paste the code into the body of the HTML. Once the dashboard code is embedded into the web page,

you can easily see if it’s working or not by refreshing the page. This will allow the dashboard to be implemented onto the CFT website for all relevant organizations and residents to be able to view and interact with it.

For support and maintenance, several steps and measures will have to be put in place to ensure that the dashboard is up to date and operating without any technical difficulties. Firstly, 2-3 Power Bi Pro licenses will have to be purchased. 1 license will be for a possible summer intern and 1-2 licenses, depending on your operations, will be for shared administration purposes. Although the dashboard will be static and not undergoing any massive processes, it’s still a good idea to have an administration license in hand in case some changes need to be made or something malfunctions. However, for the most part, the dashboard will be up and running without too many issues, providing residents and organizations a platform to easily view metrics. The real maintenance and support aspects come into play with a summer intern, something that CFT has mentioned they would be pursuing. The summer intern should have some basic knowledge of Power BI before hiring or at least an affinity for software and technology. The intern doesn’t have to be an expert on the software because there are plenty of tutorials and videos online that go over each and every step of how to use Power BI effectively. The intern’s main job will be to accumulate all of the different data sources and find out how often each metric can be updated. For instance, data such as housing and crime is updated yearly whilst census data isn’t available for the next 10 years. Keeping that in mind, whenever any new data is published by one of the data sources, the intern will have to upload the new data set into the dashboard to ensure that it displays the most up to date and accurate information. He/she may also be in charge of responding to any resident complaints/suggestions regarding the dashboard and making any necessary changes.

Overall, the implementation and future maintenance requirements for this dashboard will be rudimentary and won’t require a lot of money, time or effort. The dashboard will be able to run smoothly and efficiently without too much interference, enabling the residents and organizations to view and interact with the dashboard, learn more about their community and track the progress of any ongoing project ventures.