people
introduction
The LIC provides Internet services. The people who use the Internet services are the customers of the enterprise, the end users. The people who provide the Internet services are the developers and the support staff.
what it is
The people who use the LIC fall into three categories.
- end users, the B2B and B2C customers who use the organisation's Internet services. The customers are the people who use the web sites. The customer is the end user; the customer of an internet website is a member of the general public. The customer of an extranet site is a business client.
- developers, the people who create the web sites. Developers build and maintain custom applications, as well as make any necessary modifications to third-party software.
- support staff , the people who help the developers, make sure the LIC stays running 24 hours a day and manage the whole thing.
end users
The end-users are the B2B and B2C customers. They are direct customers of the organisation. end-users may employees of other businesses, web services of business partners, and private individuals who live out there in the Internet and connect to the external websites. End users are also internal, such as the organisation's employees reading intranet news. End user access is strictly controlled for security reasons: they are not allowed to use much of the LIC. Customers fall into the following main categories.
| LIC table: end users | ||
|---|---|---|
| who | what | why |
| General Public | Internet websites | B2C. Insurance is bought by the general public, generating revenue. |
| business partners | extranet websites, web services | B2B. Online information exchange. |
| organisation employees | intranet websites | B2B. |
developers
A development team is a factory for creating web sites. The development team create windows to the products and services that end-users spend their money on. Developers need access to some areas of the LIC to be able to do their work. A development team may also create the products and services.
| LIC table: developers | ||
|---|---|---|
| this person | makes | why |
| graphic designer | pretty pictures | Provides the look and feel of a web site. People expect a well-made and easy to use web site. Automated web clients don't. |
| producer | the web site | The producer is the sheep herder. The development team are his flock. |
| editor | text | Provides the writing for a site. Very important for news sites. |
| programmer | programs | Program development is very complicated and involves big words like conceptualisation, methodology, ontology and integration. Program development is also called software engineering. |
A development team consisits of one or more programmers who use programming languages to make computers do virtual tricks. A development team provides each Internet service and its supporting programs by either writing the programs from scratch or taking ready-made programs and customising them. Program writing is long, hard and expensive so a lot of use is made of other people's programs.
The open source movement has put an end to a lot of repetitive programming. The apache web server is a huge program that has consumed vast quantities of programmers' time. It is given away free. You can't argue with those economics.
support staff
The people who organise and run the LIC are the support staff. The people who look at the big picture and organise everything are the support managers. The people who keep the LIC running 24 hours a day are the support team. Technical support can be seperated from customer support so a team does not deal with both things and with people. Some geeks are not good mixers.
what it isn't
People in general. We are only interested in people who have something to do with the LIC.
where it is
End-users may be dotted all over the world. Developers don't really need to even be connected to the Internet. Support staff can be anywhere that there is a good Internet connection.
