Home Page Video Download Times Study

Abstract History Methodology Conclusions To Review Data

Abstract: Based on an investigative survey of home page video download times, the OurCampus! Quality Response Team has been able to make some useful deductions about the distribution of those times and is suggesting some possible action items for the administrators of the OurCampus! Web site. History: Last year, the OurCampus! Quality Response Team was constituted and charged with investigating the distribution of download times of the first video on the home page of OurCampus! In our first meeting, Cindy Geozak and Wilson Fremont were selected as Team Leaders. The QRT then held a series of five morning meetings to discuss its methodology. We agreed that we would survey download times inhouse and not at remote locations. Cindy and Wilson met and interviewed various officers of our company and the entire QRT team decided to hold a one-day conference. When attendance was less than expected, we scheduled an open forum in which interested employees asked questions. Based on that feedback, the team agreed to ask our IT department to develop a custom application that would automatically record download times. Methodology: When we were ready to begin our data collection, we loaded the latest version of Internet Explorer and the custom download time-tracking application onto 5 identical personal computers in the Technical Administration Department. Using standard 10/100 Mbps Ethernet connections, we attached the PCs to the primary Web server for the main OurCampus! server. We opened Internet Explorer, triggered the custom application, and entered the URL of the TriCities OurCampus! home page into the browser. Our custom application automatically detected when the first video on the home page was finished downloaded and it recorded in a log file the elapsed time along with a date and time stamp. We then analyzed the collected data and present for the first time publicly that data in the next section of this report.

Conclusions: We were surprised by the many different download times that were recorded. We were pleased to see that the mean time was only 12.8596 seconds. We were pleased to discover that 50 percent of download times were less than the mean and that 50 percent were greater than the mean. This fact allowed us to use the normal distribution to further analyze our data. Using the principles of this distribution, we can conclude the following: A 15-second download is less likely than a 14 or 13-second download. (Recall this was a question raised in our open conference when we began our investigation.) If we can strive to eliminate times greater than 22.7 seconds, then more times will fall within 3 standard deviations. One time out of every 10 times, an individual user will experience a download time that is greater than 17.06 seconds. Since over 99 percent of download times fall within plus or minus 3 standard deviations, our home page download process meets the Six Sigma benchmark for industrial quality. (Recall that senior management held a meeting last month on the importance of the Six Sigma methodology.) We would like to suggest that the funding for the QRT be continued into next fiscal year so that we can undertake a more complete sampling of video download times. Respectfully submitted, The OurCampus! Quality Response Team To Review Data: Open one of the attachments to this file. If you use Excel, open OC_DownloadTimes.xls. If you use Minitab, open OC_DownloadTimes.mtw.