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Project Description:

Project Description

The Algonquin Students’ Association and other community members sponsor the Algonquin College Food Cupboard, an organization that understands students’ financial challenges and is available to help. According to a recent CBC News research, 40% of Canadian students are food insecure, and campus food banks are struggling to meet demand. The AC Food Cupboard provides food and other basic essentials to students who seek assistance, they can access the service once per month to receive a 3-day supply of food and supplies. Project Fill the Shelves is a noble undertaking to help the AC Food Cupboard in meeting their desired requirements by raising funds and donations that satisfy both quality and quantity. Our team aims to raise $1000 in products by holding a bake sale and hosting an online fundraising campaign, asking team members’ friends and family for donations.
Our project begins on June 2, 2022, and concludes on July 27, 2022, with all collected donations physically delivered to the AC food cupboard.

Team Roles and Responsibilities

Our team consisted of 6 members, with each member responsible for a specific function of the project. Modupe Adara was in charge of quality management, while Fereshteh Saradar and Kavish Pastagia handled risk management and procurement management, respectively. The efficient operation of the online fundraising portal, resource management, and communication was ensured by Kapisha Tewatia and Gurpwiter Singh. Finally, Ratnamala Phukon manages the overall project, ensuring that the project’s scope is met within the decided time and budget.

Project Planning

The project is planned in three distinct phases. The first is the Planning phase where the team conducts meeting to prepare the Project Management plan. In this phase, the entire project is deconstructed into individual tasks and arranged in a sequence that will be followed during the execution phase. Ideas for fundraising are brainstormed in the meeting and discussed with the project sponsor. It is decided that our team will use the following ways to raise funds and donations:
1. Online fundraising campaign
2. Bake sale event
3. Donations from friends and family
After the project plan is approved by the project sponsors, David Solomon and Julia Mccann we were ready to execute our project in full swing!

Project Execution
In the second phase of execution, our team had 5 weeks to raise funds and purchase/ collect goods for the donation. The target amount of $1000 was divided equally into five weeks, with each week’s target being $200. We started on 27th June 2022. Our communication manager conducted research on venues and other requirements for hosting a non-profit bake sale event in Ottawa. At the same time, the online portal for fundraising was also launched and promoted through social media and personal communication channels. We reached out to our friends and family members in order to raise awareness about the cause and raise donations for the same. We set realistic target for the project and adopted tools to measure our progress each week to check if the project is on track.
We expected to raise around 40% of the funds from online portal, 10% from Bake sale, and the rest through donations from friends and family. Our team, however, discovered a different, intriguing technique to solicit money for the project during the second week of execution. We contacted the store managers of numerous well-known Ottawa superstores, explained our project concept and asked them to contribute to our cause. Despite several denials, it was thrilling to see 5 such stores voluntarily agree to assist us and provide a total of $250 worth gift cards in support of our donation.
We started preparing for our Bake sale around week 3. In light of extensive research into different locations, policies, and permits for hosting a sale event, we unanimously selected Britannia Beach. Two team members took the responsibility to prepare and pack cookies and muffins to be sold at the event. Fliers regarding the project and AC food cupboard were designed and printed to be handed out at the event. The event was held on 17th July,2022 around 5-7pm. It was an extremely successful event with each packet of cookie being sold at $2.50. The event was a huge success, with an excellent sales result and a $100 profit raised.
It was satisfying to realize that by the end of Week 4 we were able to achieve our target goal of $1000 through all the sources. We acquired $340 through online fundraising portal, $100 through bake sale, goods worth $310 through friends and $250 through superstore gift cards.

Procuring Goods

While procuring items we ensured that we take advantages of discounts and employee benefits that are available to the team members. The goods were pegged at their original retail value for calculation. Each purchased item’s name, quantity, and cost were meticulously recorded in an inventory list after which an extensive quality check was done on the donated items by the quality manager.

Delivering the Donations

The final phase of the project began in week 5. The donations collected were finally submitted to the project sponsors on 27th July,2022 in Algonquin College campus. It was extremely satisfactory to realize that our team stood firm to the commitment and was successful in handing over the targeted donations on time.
The entire project was an excellent learning opportunity for the team. As we progressed through each stage, we faced different tests that challenged us to bring out our creative side. It is our hope that our efforts will make a significant difference in the student community, even if they are small. Project Fill the Shelves hopes to support the students in every way they can and wishes AC Food Cupboard continued success in their noble work.

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Project Description:

The name of our project is ‘Fill the Shelves”, which is sponsored by David Solomon (PMP, Professor, School of Business) and Julia McCann (Manager, Algonquin Food Cupboard). It has been shown in a recent study by the CBC news that almost 40% of the students in Canada are facing the state of insufficient quantity of affordable and nutritious food since the food banks at the campus are not fulfilling the demands. This becomes the basis of the project “Fill the Shelves”.

The objective of our project is to help the food cupboard program at the Algonquin by bringing the different items collected by either donation or purchasing while maintaining the quantity as well as quality at the same time.

We are team ‘Life Saviors’’ consists of a total of six members – Jay Bhavsar (Project Manager), Olive Smith (Procurement Manager), Zaid Syed (Stakeholder Manager), Karandeep Singh (Quality Manager), Vanshika (Risk Manager), Harkamalpreet (Communication Manager).

We got a fund of $40.00 as a starter for our project from the School of Business and our target was to collect goods worth a minimum of $1000 over the given period. The delivery date of the goods at the Algonquin Food Cupboard was July 27, 2022. We are extremely happy to announce that we collected over $2246 worth of items in the form of funds and goods that were listed in the list provided by our sponsors. This indicates that we completed our project in a well-managed manner within the given time and budget with our team’s remarkable effort.

Let’s talk about the various phases of our project. Our project commenced with the planning phase (Phase 1) – we submitted our project plan to Professor David Solomon on June 17, 2022. This project plan includes – Project summary and goals, Scope management, Schedule and time management, Human resource management, Communication Management, Risk Management Plan, Procurement Plan, and Stakeholder Management plan. This project plan document helped us a lot during the entire duration of the project as we remained focused on the tasks and schedule without any doubts in our minds.

Next was Donation Collection Phase (Phase 2) – It started on June 17, 2022, and we started visiting small-scale businesses (Event 1) to ask the owners and the customers there to contribute towards our project and we collected $1696.00 from our event 1. Afterward, we focused on our planned next event – Online Fundraising (Event 2), for which we created a website Go fund me, where we tried to encourage people to get donations. However, as expected we successfully raised $50.00 from this online portal. Then came our Event 3 – Asking Friends and Family. We have collected $500.00 from this event spreading awareness about the Algonquin food cupboard and the activities they do for students.

During our project, we provided our project’s status reports and one upgraded status report to the sponsors of our project through the live presentations on the zoom sessions. During our project, we tracked all the processes as a part of an applied project such as cost, quality, procurement, risk, and other subject areas.

Finally, we delivered our goods to the Food cupboard on the plan at the Algonquin in the presence of our project sponsors – David Solomon and Julia McCann in the given timeline.

We are extremely grateful to Professor David Solomon for his continuous motivation and direction without which we couldn’t complete the project ‘Fill the Shelves’.

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Project Description:

Earlier this year, the Algonquin College School of Business recognized that difficulty navigating the Algonquin College Ottawa Campus was a serious issue for the Algonquin College community. The combination of the campus’s increasingly large size with the unintuitive layout for room numbering can cause difficulty for students, staff, and visitors in finding their destination.

Previously, a Room Finder Web Application existed, but it faced several challenges and was ultimately shut down. As such, our project team and one other project team were each assigned to analyze the issues that led to the failure of the original AC Room Finder and create a project proposal document outlining our suggestions for the creation of a new wayfinding application.

As part of our research, we contacted and conducted several interviews with key subject matter experts and the original AC Room Finder application creator. Through that research, we discovered the background and initial development process for the Room Finder. This was critical as it helped us determine the business case for a new Wayfinder application and helped us develop timeframes for the development of an application.

Learning more background information about the challenges and pitfalls that the Room Finder had not been able to overcome proved even more helpful in developing our proposal. This information helped us identify which threats to the project existed and would need to be addressed, as well as which obstacles existed exclusively due to the circumstances of the original project.

Using the information acquired through research and stakeholder interviews, we created project planning documents and our project proposal for submission to our Project Sponsor. The documents we prepared include high-level plans for Scope Management, Quality Management, Communications Management, and the Project Schedule.

The Project Proposal included summaries of the above components, information for Resource Management, Risk Management, and a cost summary for the development and maintenance of the application. We hope that this proposal and the documents that we prepared will help jump-start the creation of the Algonquin College Wayfinder Application.

We wish to thank our Project Sponsors and the Algonquin College School of Business for their support, and we look forward to presenting our proposal to the Executive Committee.

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Project Description:

The Synthera Health App collects relevant health data via user input, app integrations and blood tests and generates a customizable treatment plan for Iron Deficiency or Iron Deficiency Anemia. Users can visualize their data, view their treatment plan, track their supplement dosage, and communicate with their Synthera Health team. The apps responsive design allows users to access their accounts from either a web browser or mobile phone. The data collected by the Synthera Health team will be used to improve their treatment algorithm.

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Project Description:

The 2SLGBTQ+ is a collective term that refers to two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer. As this movement gains momentum and more resources are becoming available for 2SLGBTQ+ members and ideas change. There becomes a need not only for resources but also for ways to connect people in need with these resources. In addition, over the past few decades, various 2SLGBTQ+ organizations in the world have been founded in order to provide guidance and informative resources.

Similarly, There have been several organizations in the Ottawa area which are helping the community but unfortunately not many are aware of it, or they are run at a small scale. These organizations are operated independently and do not have a uniform platform to advertise their services and events. Due to several reasons such as some organizations do not have enough funds and technical expertise to support advertising their services on websites, applications, newspapers, and advertisements on the radio. The challenges are humongous and to overcome these challenges. Our client, Charlie Dazé from the TenOaks project organization, wants to create an online platform to help the 2SLGBTQ+ community. We as a team come up with a solution for hosting the website 2SLGBTQ+. The website requirements from the client are:

● Be able to store, and display information and services of different organizations in the Ottawa area.
● Be able to provide a secure website to promote 2SLGBTQ+ content.
● Be able to use the website publicly without any cost.
● Be able to provide contact information of the organizations.
● Be able to provide an interface for changing data later after the site is deployed.

Once implemented, the 2SLGBTQ+ Website will provide everyone, especially those in the 2SLGBTQ+ community, with easy and quick access to 2SLGBTQ+ resources and the contact information of 2SLGBTQ+ organizations based in Ottawa. As a result, more people will receive the appropriate and necessary help they need. Although this project is focused on the Ottawa region only, anyone on the Internet can view the website and read the resources uploaded. This will contribute to a more open and diverse world between communities. The scope of this project is the design, research, information gathering from different organizations, product creation, database build-up and connection, front-end coding, database creation, version control system, testing, admin control page coding, documentation of all parts, list of all test cases, and admin operation guide.

While researching, planning, and working for the website we learned a lot about the community. We learned terminology, organization, resources, and events happening around the Ottawa area.

On a professional level, we learned the importance of time, teamwork, communication, and commitment required to work in a real-world working environment. We also learned backend programming mainly database, password hashing, website security, and UI fundamentals of making websites.

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Project Description:

As per a recent study “Rising tuition driving more students to campus food banks” by CBC News, 40% of Canadian students are facing food insecurity, and campus food banks cannot keep up with demands. The project “Fill the Shelves” aimed to provide assistance to the Algonquin College Food Cupboard Program which provides for the students who require services with food and other basic necessities. The support was extended in the form of donated and purchased items from the most pressing needs of the Food Cupboard in the last twelve months, meeting both quality and quantity goals.

The execution of the project started on the 4th of July, 2022. The team ran a fundraiser seeking donations as well as an online yard sale by procuring used or old items from free or cheap garage sales, Facebook marketplace, Kijiji, etc. and reselling the same obtaining profit to be used to fulfill the project’s goal. Some of the team members channeled their creative side towards the initiative and managed to sell their paintings, making some profit. The corporate chains though did not run the donation campaign on their retail floor as per the team’s original plan, yet agreed to give a percentage discount for the items bought from their stores, helping a lot in the project’s success.

AC Food Cupboard has been helping students for quite some time now and during the campaign, the team met a few ex-students who have benefitted from the program in the past and were willing to extend their helping hands to the cause now. For the online yard sale, the members kept the online market in check throughout, procuring items such as cycle, sofa, lamps, table, etc. for a very cheap price and reselling them for a good margin.

Overall, the project aimed at achieving an ROI of at least 25:1 on the initial starter fund of $40.00 provided by the School of Business, Algonquin College, Ottawa and was able to meet the goal by procuring items worth $1,007.81 from the amount of money collected and planning on smart buying techniques. The procured items were delivered successfully to the AC Food Cupboard on 29th July 2022, i.e., in less than a month’s time of execution.

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Project Description:

The webform tracker is a ticket number solution developed for Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) with the goal of decreasing the number of calls the Client Support Centre (CSC) receives. This solution provides clients with the ability to track the webforms with they have submitted with the ticket system in their IRCC application portal.

The project was developed by a team of four students from the Interdisciplinary Studies in Human-Centred Design program. The team selected a line of business to focus their research on, which is the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). After meeting with IRCC, as well as clients and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) of the TFWP, they identified their needs and pain points and developed a solution that would help provide clients with the reassurance they need.

After conducting secondary research analysis, questionnaires, and interviews with SMEs and TFW’s, the team decided on the following problem statement: How might we improve the IRCC call center operations for temporary foreign workers?
While developing personas, and journey maps, and analyzing the collected data, the team concluded that one major factor in why clients call the CSC is for reassurance regarding the webform. Currently, when clients submit a webform to IRCC, they have no way of tracking how many webforms they have submitted or the status of the webform. Clients are not sure what happens to their webform after it is submitted and don’t know whether IRCC received their information or enquiry. This can lead to clients calling the CSC in a panic.

The Webform Tracker System would provide clients with a ticket number when they submit the webform, and users would be able to view previously submitted webforms in their account, as well as their status. This solution requires some user interface alterations to the account portals, as well as some system changes to adjust for the ticket system.

The team faced some challenges in this process, such as struggling to find targeted participants to interview in the time frame they were provided. But with determination and perseverance, they collected the data they needed to validate the concerns they discovered. They learned that tools such as Miro and Slack are valuable to communicate and organize research data, insights, and ideas. They also discovered that by identifying the strengths of each teammate and utilizing their skills accordingly, they could overcome any challenges they faced.

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Project Description:

This Excel application contains the contact information, training, certification, and various other information of UCSR stakeholders. By utilizing Visual Basic for Applications and other Excel features, we are able to dynamically generate and export accurate reports for the users. This application is low maintenance, user-friendly, and able to be shared on cloud storage services such as Microsoft OneDrive.

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Project Description:

Over the years, the number of people aspiring to migrate to Canada has steadily increased. The pandemic has caused longer than usual application timelines. This increase has led to a drastic overload of IRCC’s Client Support Centre, resulting in long wait times on calls and a sharp increase in client dissatisfaction.
This project investigates the systems to address the issue. Our team focuses on curating satisfactory call-center experiences for applicants applying through the Family Class immigration pathway. We take the Human-centred Design methods to redesign the client service experiences to boost caller satisfaction and relieve the overload on the current client service departments of IRCC.
The research team began by developing a multi-method approach to collect data on the current situation within the IRCC. To do so, a survey was designed in order to produce a high-level understanding of the most prevalent points of frustration amongst a diverse participant sample. This survey also functioned as a method of recruiting participants for a qualitative analysis of the problem space.
The recruited participants underwent comprehensive interviews in a semi-structured format, based on a line of questions informed by our data from the survey. In this portion of the research, the team delved deeper into the causes and mental models that resulted in the patterns of repeated calls to IRCC.

Information from these sources, along with an exhaustive literature review helped us derive a few key-insights. This phase of the research was interesting because it validated a few of our initial assumptions while discarding others. For instance, the team started off with the assumption that the immigration application process was complex thereby causing people to call the IRCC client support. However, we learned that a majority of the applicants found the application procedure to be fairly straightforward.
Through the key insights, we confirmed that most of the calls to IRCC happen after the application is submitted. These calls are mostly to gain updates on the status of their application. It was also discovered that due to the lack of communication between the application process steps, clients felt like their application was lost or forgotten about. The team realized that the long silences between updates and the opaque nature of the current application process give rise to a lot of anxiety that quickly translated into an increased number of avoidable calls to the IRCC.

This anxiety, the study found, manifests in applicants forming groups on social media to compare timelines and share information with each other. Unfortunately, it turns out that, even though the applicants form these groups to relieve anxiety and stress, they are instead subjected to misinformation. Moreover, the act of comparing timelines also elevated stress and panic, directly resulting in calls to the customer support line.

The team recognized this to be our area of intervention.
The researchers decided to revisit the application portal and see how the issue of transparency could be tackled. We learned that by merely breaking down the application process into smaller milestones, the clients feel a sense of movement in their application. This reduces anxiety and will combat the feeling of applications being lost or stagnant. Moreover, showing more of the application process will also increase transparency in the IRCC process and dissuade panicking applicants from comparing timelines by showing that every timeline is unique.
Additionally, having more information online about the application process will also help fight unhelpful and untrue rumours about the IRCC that causes additional distress… Thereby, freeing up space for IRCC to tackle more urgent issues.

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Project Description:

The OMS Food Ordering System is a cross platform online food ordering application designed to integrate with existing Tech Track Canada POS (point of sale) systems in restaurants. Users can look for restaurants in their area and order food for pickup, which is seamlessly integrated into that restaurant’s order system, with real time order tracking.
Our clients Afaq Bukhari & Kareem Yussuf wanted an application that could replicate the features of existing food delivery applications (I.e., UberEats, Door Dash, etc.) but for restaurants who cannot afford the large fees of other platforms. Competitors also lack integration and flexibility for restaurants to efficiently use their services. The OMS Food Ordering System will allow restaurants to limit the number of orders coming in, the distance customers can order from, and update menu item availability in real-time synced with a restaurant inventory tracking system (POS system needed). Competitors often place restaurants into situations where the number of in-person and online orders becomes overwhelming and do not account for on-hand inventory leading to unsatisfactory customer service and backlogged order queues.
During development, the largest issue faced was deciding which framework would allow full inclusion of key features, while being lightweight and deployable on multiple platforms with minimal retooling testing. React was chosen and used to develop the OMS Food Ordering System with OAuth being used for login, and the database managed by Tech Track Canada.

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