Ramping up
By Wenlei Fang, Development Lead

We are ramping up the new ZIMS development process. This means interviewing many vendors - the companies that will actually finish writing the code for ZIMS - and also building our internal team at ISIS. In the last few weeks we have hired two new excellent developers and we will continue to add more technical staff.

"Ramping up" means a lot more than hiring developers. Over many months, ISIS has developed a plan for a new ZIMS process, how that process must be staffed, and how long this should all take. Our plan is very different from the previous development approach. We have spent a great deal of effort on "proof of concept" - meticulously researching and providing evidence that this new plan is feasible. We are leaving no stone unturned, and we know we must have no gaps in our thinking to make sure that what we are about to launch into will work.

We have arrived at a place where we feel we have indeed proved our concept. The ISIS board has given us the green light on our new development plan. We are interviewing a couple of finalists to be the new vendor. We are analyzing vendors’ capabilities with as much energy as we have done in every other part of this plan. We want to move fast, but our priority is less on speed and more on making the absolute right decision.

No one likes that ZIMS got so far behind, but purely from the standpoint of a developer there is an upside. We have amazing new tools now that will make ZIMS so much better than we had originally thought. Software development evolves so fast that even a two-year period makes for a whole next generation of tools, and that is what we have now at our disposal.

In the new ZIMS plan, we put more emphasis than ever on the usability of the application. We will utilize partial page updates (AJAX) to keep the page refreshes as few as possible. We will use type ahead to speed up data entry. We will research and implement a more user friendly menu system that will provide consistent navigation and look-and-feel.

For specific ZIMS areas that involve intensive data entry and/or require offline access, we will also provide a "Smart Client" alternative. Smart Client is a term used to describe an application environment which:
· delivers applications over a web http connection
· provides automated installation and updates
· has the look and feel of desktop applications
· Provides an interactive and highly responsive user interface

I know that probably means nothing to most of you reading, but believe me, it means a lot to us! And though all of what I’ve described here will be invisible to you, your work will be easier and faster because all these functions are present in ZIMS. We are thrilled to have this next generation of tools to build ZIMS in a better way – a way not possible even a short while ago.