Established in 1966, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that promotes industrial development for poverty reduction, inclusive globalization, and environmental sustainability. It provides technical assistance, policy advice, and capacity-building support to developing countries and economies in transition. UNIDO focuses on key areas such as industrial policy, trade capacity building, green industry, energy, and agribusiness. Its ultimate goal is to promote inclusive and sustainable industrial development that contributes to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
In December of 2021, Dr. Gerd Müller from Germany took the helm of UNIDO as the Director General. His vision for UNIDO is to provide concrete and practical solutions to pressing global challenges like sustainability, climate change and hunger. As he set out to bring his vision to life, he has introduced a major restructuring to the organization and has prioritized digital transformation to better deliver UNIDO's mandate.
My name is Pavan Malji and I work at UNIDO as a Web Applications Management Officer or WAMO. My team and I develop, manage and support the web applications portfolio of UNIDO under the central IT. I wear several hats on my job including developer, technical lead, project manager, team lead, support engineer, etc. My duties also include resource management, vendor evaluation, technical advisor, etc. Today, I am am going to share with you the journey of the UNIDO’s Public Website revamp project where I wore most of these hats. I will be touching the technical aspects of this project in brief but my main focus is to share the lessons learnt working on a project on a tight budget, tight schedule, fluid requirements while making almost no compromises on the quality, maintainability and scalability.
Chapter 1: The Business Case
“It has been determined by office of the Director General that the current UNIDO public website does not accurately reflect the priorities, work and achievements of the organization. It is also in a serious need of a visual upgrade to a more modern and vibrant look.”
This formed the basis of the project. As the WAMO (hope this does not catch on) in UNIDO, I was given this mandate by the IT department chief. This is also an opportunity for IT to demonstrate that they are fully embracing the new mantra, “Do more with less”
Chapter 2: The Requirements - Management Vs. IT understanding
Chapter 3: The Team
Chapter 4: Execution
Chapter 5: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
Chapter 6: If only we had more time
Chapter 7: How do you like that?
Chapter 8: Are we there yet?
Chapter 9: Let’s go live now
Chapter 10: What did we learn
Q & A ?
