Technology
This section of the toolkit is focused on activities that will help you with establishing, stabilizing, and evolving sustainable technology for your program. It is designed to help you structure discussions and gain consensus about next steps for sustainable technology for your OSS program. It is not a toolkit for day-to-day software development.
Definition: The core of each program supported by It Takes a Village is open-source software or systems serving cultural and scientific heritage organizations. There are parallels with proprietary software development processes, but working within the open source world brings its own challenges around community, resources, and governance that affect the software development process.
Instructions
Brand new to It Takes a Village in Practice? Review the activities and goals below to select ones you want to use for sustainability planning.
These activities are designed to help you move from one phase to the next and can be used in any order. You can use any or all of them. As you use them, we are eager for feedback via ITAV@lyrasis.org
Some beta testers have kindly provided samples of their work with activities. They are included below as available.
Phase 1: Laying the Groundwork | |||
Phase 1 Objectives include: Understand Core Community Needs, Continue to Gather Data, and Communicate Progress and Process with Stakeholders | |||
1. Who Are Your Technology Stakeholders? | Goals: Identify and prioritize the community's technology stakeholders, create a high-level map of the technology stakeholder's characteristics, and identify the program's goal for high-priority stakeholder groups. Related Objectives: Understand Core Community Needs | DOC | |
2. Technical Skills Inventory (Part One) | Goal: Create an inventory of what technical skills are required for technical staff, contributors, and users to develop, support, and maintain the platform. Related Objectives: Understand Core Community Needs | DOC | |
3. Personas and Pathways | Goals: Learn how to bring contributors onto your project using tools called "personas" and "pathways," help your program plan and test how you'll interact with new contributors, and imagine what is really involved for new contributors to succeed. Related Objectives: Understand Core Community Needs | DOC | |
4. Landscape Analysis | Goal: Understand where your program fits in the technology landscape, and use results to innovate, make decisions, identify opportunities for collaboration, and/or increase your program's usefulness or effectiveness. Related Objectives: Understand Core Community Needs | DOC | |
5. Buy A Feature Game | Goals: Help users prioritize among a list of pre-defined (but not yet developed) features, and promote cooperation among end users. Related Objectives: Continue to Gather Data | DOC | |
6. Community QA Testing | Goals: Review program's current QA practices and evaluate whether they are structured in a manner that can be supported by the community, identify places for improvement, and conduct a successful round of Community QA Related Objectives: Continue to Gather Data | DOC | |
7. Documentation Friction Logging | Goal: Understand how usable your current documentation is via friction logging with documentation users. Related Objectives: Continue to Gather Data | DOC | |
Phase 2: Expanding and Integrating | |||
Phase 2 Objectives include: Engage the Community, Grow Thoughtfully, and Consider Integration over New Development | |||
8. Shadow Observations | Goal : Gain insight about users’ jobs, pains, and gains; l earn about users’ day-to-day work in a real-life setting; and incorporate end-users’ experiences into program planning. Related Objectives: Engage the Community | DOC | |
9. Recognition and Contributions | Goals: Understand how the program currently recognizes contributions, understand the kind of recognition that is most appreciated/motivating to each kind of contributor, and discover how the program can improve in this area. Related Objectives: Engage the Community | DOC | |
10. Value Propositions for Job Descriptions | Goals: Create a value proposition for a new program position (e.g. community manager, technical lead) to help articulate significance of allocating resources to program leadership, and optionally, create a job description for a new program position. Related Objectives: Engage the Community | ||
11. Building Welcoming Communities | Goals: Identify what documentation your program has that supports growing a successful community, and prioritize missing documentation and develop a plan for its development. Related Objectives: Grow Thoughtfully | DOC | |
12. Not Invented Here: Assessing Integration Options | Goals: Identify functional requirements or feature requests that may be solved by integration, and identify and assess potential integration solutions to satisfy functional requirements or feature requests. Related Objectives: Consider Integration over New Development | DOC | |
13. How We Retire Features | Goals: Identify elements of the platform that can be retired, develop a plan for communicating retirement plans with the community, and communicate the retirement decision to the community. Related Objectives: Consider Integration over New Development | DOC | |
Phase 3: Preparing for Change | |||
Phase 3 Objectives include: Reassess Community Needs, Plan for Evolution, and Document an Exit Strategy | |||
| 14. Technology Stakeholders: Does the Shoe Still Fit? | Goal: Re-identify and re-prioritize the community’s technology stakeholders, create a high-level map of the technology stakeholder’s characteristics, and support program team’s work developing strategies to advance technology sustainability. Related Objectives: Reassess Community Needs | DOC | |
| 15. Catastrophizing - Tech Edition (Part One) | Goals: Understand how the program’s current technical staff, stack, and roadmap work with unexpected issues (catastrophes), and help programs identify how resilient their staff, stack, and long-range technical strategy are. Related Objectives: Reassess Community Needs | DOC | |
| 16. List of Dreams | Goals: Articulate what future directions your core application could take, assess skills and technology requirements for future directions, and plan for and prioritize professional development opportunities for program stakeholders (staff, contributors, trainers, etc.). Related Objectives: Reassess Community Needs | DOC | |
17. Catastrophizing - Tech Edition (Part Two) | Goal: Turn the issues identified in Part 1 of Catastrophizing into actionable plans. Related Objectives: Plan for Evolution | DOC | |
18. Technical Skills Inventory (Part Two) | Goals: Update your program’s inventory of what technical skills are needed for technical staff, contributors, and users to develop, support, and maintain the platform; and identify new skills that your program will need to acquire or old skills that can be phased out as the program advances. Related Objectives: Plan for Evolution | DOC | |
19. Developing an End-of-Life Communication Plan | Goal: Develop plan to communicate end-of-life decisions with community. Related Objectives: Document an Exit Strategy | ||
20. Winding Down an Open Source Software Program | Goal : Decide when a project or program is no longer useful, understand how to disengage from a project or program, and determine what to do about code, repositories, websites, wikis, and other project or program assets. Related Objectives: Document an Exit Strategy | DOC | |