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WhosTheRef.com was chosen by the England Hockey to develop their Officiating Management System which is designed to be a single management tool for all elements of officiating from hockey umpiring associations (HUAs) through to the England Hockey League.
England Hockey's main objectives was that the OMS should:
One key aspect of the project would be assisting in unifying the approach taken by the different regions and associations. Each association had a system which was distinct from all others meaning that data sharing, particularly adding members from other regions, was not straightforward. England Hockey's desire to have one centralised system also meant that links could be made to other services using an API which provides automatic updates to key information with the system.
Another area which was of particular interest to England Hockey was the ability to 'white label' the system allowing their branding to be prevalent throughout the system and onto the bespoke websites provided to each region. Another aim of the project is to have this also applied to the app.
Due to our location, WhosTheRef.com worked closely with the East Region Hockey Umpiring Association to look at the existing provision within the system and identify areas for development that would be require to meet England Hockey's specification. Working with the end users in this way meant that WhosTheRef.com was able to gain a greater insight into the culture and practices of Hockey, a new sport to us, and ensure that new developments would meet the needs of appointers, membership secretaries and treasurers.
During the late spring and early summer period, staff from WhosTheRef.com toured the regions to develop the webmasters' and senior administrators' knowledge of the new system. WhosTheRef.com also used this opportunity to listen to feedback from users regarding their impressions of the system and the functions and processes they would like to see added to ensure there was no dip in performance as they moved across to the new OMS.
During this time, we began development on the public facing websites for each organisation that would be using WhosTheRef.com from the start of the season. We engaged the services of The User Story, a user experience company based in Norwich, to design sites that would display information around appointments and recent news articles. Again the East Region assisted both The User Story and WhosTheRef.com in providing feedback about the features they would like to see in the website
As the season inched ever closer, more training was provided to the wider user base, working with around 15 users with key roles in each region. The feedback was positive and user were able to give us further insight into the world of hockey and future developments to add to the plans.
England Hockey formed a user group, made from the webmasters and senior administrators from the five regions and two organisations from the national game. A review was conducted on the progress made so far and key actions that are needed to drive the project forward.
