The University of Massachusetts is the largest public research university in New England. Nationally ranked, it is distinguished by the excellence and breadth of its academic, research, and community outreach programs.

LCM is proud of our involvement and collaboration with UMass in both professional and community contexts.

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Agile Drupal migration.

Processes
  • Agile/Scrum
Team Leadership
  • Senior Producer
    Kelly Albrecht
  • Senior Architect
    Tom Fleming

Rapid migration and training for six departments.

The Dean of UMass Social & Behavioral Sciences (SBS) school had provided a grant to its departments to migrate and update their out-dated static websites to Drupal.

Each department had its own web team, so the engagement was more about collaboration, with LCM doing much of the heavy lifting, while also facilitating and coaching an agile process.

We recommended a rapid, iterative, agile approach to migrate each static HTML site into database-driven websites using the University’s identity management system, Shibboleth. To achieve the highest value within the budget, each department, working with a Last Call producer, could decide how to prioritize tasks for migration, training, and new feature development.

To accomplish the overall project, LCM divided the total grant and project scope into a series of one-week sprints, two sprints per department. We met with each department to develop and prioritize the initial backlog of desired tasks for each department site. Each sprint started with a sprint planning meeting, which included department web teams as collaborators. Some departments were able to prioritize training, enabling them to do more manual migration of content, which in turn freed up sprint time for LCM to do more new feature development.

Leveraging the UMass University Relations custom theme, we rapidly developed numerous websites and provided training and support for each department to develop and deploy their own websites.

The process was very fast and highly collaborative. Due to the agile approach, several departments got additional features beyond the migration of their content from their static websites.

“They’re very down to earth. They’re not hard sellers. They’re also very personable. That means a lot.”

Beth Armour, Web Designer and Strategist, UMass
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The Technology Transfer Office rebrand.

Processes
  • Continuous Delivery
Team Leadership
  • Senior Producer
    Kelly Albrecht
  • Senior Development
    Tom Fleming

The Technology Transfer Office (TTO) at the University of Massachusetts was seeking a total rebrand. They needed to divorce themselves from a department image that had become stale and tired. They replaced a large portion of their staff, brought in new fresh ideas and leadership, and wanted to demonstrate their successful internal restructuring through a bold new website.

We were hired to build a new corporate identity package including logos, branding, a slogan, and a website.

Launching later that fall, we successfully captured the spirit of the restructured department and brought forward their mission to help inventors, artists, and forward-thinkers to access patents, copyrights, protections, and most importantly, attention to their creations.

I’m impressed with the clean look, bold photos and functional organization. The mobile version is especially cool, and is really usable.

Robert MacWright, Director, Technology Transfer Office, University of Massachusetts Amherst

“I’m impressed with the clean look, bold photos and functional organization. The mobile version is especially cool, and is really usable.”

Robert MacWright, Director, Technology Transfer Office, University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Continuous delivery to the College of Natural Sciences.

Processes
  • Continuous Delivery
Team Leadership
  • Senior Producer
    Kelly Albrecht
  • Senior Architect
    Tom Fleming
  • Senior Development
    Tom Fleming

LCM has been pleased to offer our expertise whenever possible to the UMass College of Natural Sciences. 

It has been a pleasure working with you and the very knowledgeable and competent team at Last Call.

Beth Armour, Web Designer/Production Administrator, Center for Agriculture, College of Natural Sciences

We’ve worked alongside the College of Natural Sciences at UMass Amherst on numerous projects. These projects have included the migration of department sites and functionality into Drupal 7, as well as ongoing consulting on and the implementation of new functionality, such as event sharing across all departmental Drupal websites. In addition to Drupal, we’ve assisted with WordPress, Joomla, and even DevOps needs for their internal server infrastructure.

We have used the expertise of the wonderful folks at Last Call for several projects with outstanding results. Last Call has always been attentive to our needs and our budget while not compromising quality.

Beth Armour, Web Designer/Production Administrator, Center for Agriculture, College of Natural Sciences