Image caption: N.C. State University students meet online with NCDIT process improvement engineer Missy Sawyer; Keith Briggs, director of Enterprise Architecture and Innovation; and James Tanzosch, chief procurement officer.
The N.C. Department of Information Technology is mentoring N.C. State University computer science students this spring to give them experience solving a real-world challenge related to the work of the Statewide IT Procurement Office.
As part of efforts to help develop the state’s future workforce, NCDIT proposed a semester-long capstone for NSCU’s Senior Design Center student team to study how to create a web app for agency stakeholders to track the status of procurements.
“Being involved from the early stages of this project has provided great insight into the complexities of real-world software development,” student Harsh Bhagalia said. “Seeing our ideas take shape in a way that benefits everyone involved has been both exciting and fulfilling.”
The goal is to give visibility into state IT procurements by allowing end users to track a procurement through the entire process. The tracker application will enable the user to visually identify each step in the procurement process and include reference links with instructions on how to complete each step.
“The IT Procurement Tracker project has been a great learning experience so far,” student David Sweasey said. “I have had to explore new technologies, rewire my way of thinking and have explored some inner workings of complex processes, which has been fantastic."
“It has been a very cool experience to begin work from the ground up on a problem that impacts people with a user-centric solution to maximize benefits and minimize the inconveniences for all parties involved,” student Jeremy Husle said.
Staff within NCDIT’s Enterprise Architecture and Innovation team, as well as the Statewide IT Procurement Office, are meeting weekly with the students as they determine the technical functionalities of an IT procurement tracker and develop a potential prototype.
“The process of working with NCDIT has been wonderful,” student Austin Bressler said. “They've given us a lot of freedom while keeping us on track. I couldn't ask for a better team to work with."
NCDIT will evaluate the results of the students’ work and consider whether it can be further developed as a solution used by the department.