Sprint:Implementation Plan
From ssc.aspirationtech.org
Contents |
Summary
The following implementation plan documents work to be done to deliver a publicly usable version of the Social Source Commons application by 31 October 2005. The plan reflects a merger of two existing outcomes: the prototype “software list manager”, and user interface concepts and “wireframes” generated at the SSC Design Sprint in August 2005.
SSC Public Milestone Strategy
The SSC project strategy has to date been informed by several guiding principles:
- Each public milestone must have tangible value for users, so as to drive engagement and incrementally grow the community of stakeholders
- The optimal tool will combine and balance the cataloging of NPO/NGO software with collaborative features which allow community members to share knowledge about individual tools and categories of tools
- Aspiration will provide staffing to manage and steer the project, but long-term sustainability of the program depends on cultivating a substantial and diverse base of content partners and contributing users to share their knowledge and provide input from a variety of perspectives and need sets
The deliverable outlined below is informed by these principles, and is an incremental milestone toward realizing the larger vision of SSC outlined at http://ssc.aspirationtech.org.
On a historical note, the late great Rider Roundup “What's in Your Saddle Bag?” sessions inspired a good deal of the functionality below.
Goals of the next version of SSC
The primary goal of the next SSC release will be to provide a community-oriented site for collaborative sharing of NGO/NPO software knowledge and information.
In particular, the site will:
- Allow users to browse and search for software tools used by their peers in the NPO/NGO sector, and find fellow users of those tools.
- Provide support for each user to create and manage a “toolbox” of applications they use, and generate user-configurable notifications (via RSS and/or email) when new information is available about toolbox items.
- Provide support for each user to keep a “contact list” of other users in the SSC community, and track what those users are using and contributing.
- Enable users to collaborate and share knowledge around individual software tools, in the form of Q&A, sharing of opinions, tips/tricks, and documenting issues and gaps.
- Standardize views and information about software tools, providing consistent access to summaries, technical specs, community resources, support and documentation
Goals explicitly deferred in this version of the application:
- Grouping of software by taxonomical categories: while support for “vertical” groupings of software tools is planned as a feature of SSC, we will rely on collaborative tagging as the grouping mechanism in the first version of the application and solicit community feedback as to how best to address categorical groupings in subsequent releases.
- Feature enumerations per software tool: the task of designing a general-purpose feature description system is a large one, is strongly coupled with taxonomy, and will require substantial community engagement and vetting to properly design. This and categorization will stand as high priorities to address after the first version of the SSC application is delivered.
- User ratings of software: user rating systems are difficult to do well, and are often subject to gaming. This feature set will be addressed in a subsequent version of the application. In the meantime, well-defined “statistical” mechanisms (such as “appears in the most toolboxes” and “collaborated on most frequently”) will allow apps to percolate into higher visibility. Mechanisms for more subjective user ratings will be discussed with the SSC community.
- User reputation management: sites such as eBay thrive because of excellent user reputation management. SSC reputation management will be deferred until primary usage models have been vetted. In the meantime, a “most active contributors” feature will allow for visibility of community leaders.
User Stories supported by the SSC application:
As part of the SSC Design Sprint in August in San Francisco, two primary SSC user profiles were developed. These profiles are described at http://ssc.aspirationtech.org/index.php/Sprint:User_Profiles.
The following are user story titles for the NTAP user profile, Barry, to support the goals enumerated above:
- Barry can browse or search software tools by name, publisher, or tag
- Barry can build a toolbox of software he uses, 1 item at a time, and supply tags per item indicating how he categorizes his tools
- Barry can view/browse his toolbox by name or by tags
- Barry can receive notifications (via email or RSS) when new information is available about the software items in his toolbox.
- Barry can browse and search users by name, software they use, attributes of their profile, and “most active” contributors
- Barry can add users to his contact list, and receive notifications when they add items to their toolboxes and/or contribute information to the system
- Barry can view a software tool, and get summary information, specs, community information, and available documentation and resources.
- While viewing a software tool, Barry can add it to his toolbox.
- While viewing a software tool, Barry can edit attributes of the tool, and contribute additional information, such as links, documents, and community resources.
- When viewing a software tool, Barry can post a question, share a tip or success story, or mention a feature he'd like to see. He can also respond to questions and suggestions posted by other users.
- Barry can edit his profile, indicating including personal info and picture, what's in his toolbox, and who's on his contact list, and he can specify notification preferences, including whether he wants email, RSS, or no notification when new information is available about the tools in his toolbox or from the people in his network.
Required Wireframe Feature Sets
The following are the feature sets required to support the user stories detailed above.
- User home page, providing access to toolbox and contact list
- Toolbox manager, for viewing, adding and removing tools and editing per-tool tags
- View software tool: summary information, specs, community information, and available documentation and resources
- Edit software tool information
- Search software tools by name, publisher, or tag
- Search results display, with ability to sort
- Software tool collaboration: post/answer a question, share a tip/success story, request a feature
- User profile editor, for creating and updating profile information, contact network, and notification preferences
- Add new software tool, for specification of applications not already in the system
- Contact list manager, for adding and removing users from the contact list
- Browse software tools by name, publisher, or tag
- Browse users by name, contacts, profile properties or most active contributors
- Search users by name, toolbox contents, or most active contributors
- Homepage for non-registered users
- User account creation and user login
Additional design work will address the format of email and RSS notifications.
Timeline and Milestones
Having defined upon the user experience and features we feel will drive NTAP and NPO/NGO “techie” participation in a first version of the SSC site, we are now formalizing those into the set of wireframes that will define the user interface. In parallel we are enumerating and specifying outstanding coding tasks to support those wireframes, in order to define intermediate milestones.
The following is the work schedule for those and subsequent tasks:
Week of 19 September
- Design of wireframes, to be completed by end-of-day 26 September
Estimate feature specification and coding tasks, to be completed by end-of-day 27 September
Week of 26 September
- Updated report to board, to be sent by end-of-day 28 September. This report will include the wireframes and coding task estimates, and define application feature-set milestones based on those estimates, to be delivered to the board through the end of October. Features will be prioritized, and any features considered “at risk” for the 31 October deliverable will be called out.
- Engage User Interface Design specialist(s) to transform wireframes into visually compelling, user-friendly experience.
Week of 3 October
- Community Engagement Plan, to be completed by 5 October. This plan will include:
- Talking points and messaging for the SSC project
- The launch plan for the community site and project blog to be hosted at www.socialsourcecommons.org
- Strategy for engaging the NPO/NGO tech community and other stakeholders
- Key SSC feature and usage issues we wish to resolve in dialog with the community
- Process for aggregating and publishing feedback, feature requests and other input from the community
Weeks of 10 October - 31 October
Milestones for these weeks will be defined in the 28 September board report. The plan is to make application milestones available on a staging server for board and public review, and send corresponding reports of how the project is tracking against coding estimates and milestones on a weekly basis.
Beyond the 31 October deliverable
The 31 October version of SSC will provide a tool that communicates the vision of the larger project and invites participation in creating the larger solution. Several points are worth making about process and priorities beyond this milestone:
- We will strive to release regular updates to the SSC application, at most 4-6 weeks apart, to drive ongoing participation and promptly reflect community feedback
- We will revisit all deferred functionality and re-prioritize those features into future releases
- We will do a localization assessment of the current code base and information model. While significant attention has been focused on this topic in design work to date, we are de-prioritizing it in the run-up to the next release. We will re-visit this topic in two primary ways: 1) we will engage experts in the fields of internationalization and localization to review the code base and database, and pending adoption of their recommendations we will 2) seek out content partners to create toolboxes and content sets for other locales. Timelines and implementation details will be incorporated in future deliverables.
- We will revisit the content partnering discussions we have had to date, and seek to formalize information sharing and re-syndication of partner content.
- We will directly consider how the SSC platform can be integrated with Aspiration's live event model and processes, such that events serve as opportunities to grow the user community, and knowledge present in participant groups can be effectively captured by the platform during events.
Overall, we will strive to deliver a product that reflects the needs of those folks doing technology for NPOs/NGOs, by engaging them in its creation, evolution and success.
