Community Portal

Prepare the upcoming work sprint

Created on Tuesday 1 June 2021, 04:21

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  • ID
    989910
  • Project
    Metabolism of Cities Data Hub
  • Status
    Completed
  • Priority
    Medium
  • Type
    Communication and engagement
  • Tags
    Data Hub Priority Plan 2021 General data hub improvements
  • Assigned to
    Paul Hoekman
  • Subscribers
    Carolin Bellstedt
    Paul Hoekman
    Yves Bettignies Cari

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Description

We have a work sprint scheduled for next week. The goal is to kick off work on our data hub priority plan. In order to get the most out of this event - and to allow for people to assist with this plan in general - we should prepare a few things. I am thinking we can think of two broad audiences:

  • Existing member guidance
  • New contributor guidance

For existing members who already know about MOC and the data hub, but who haven't been intimately involved over the past months with the whole new structure, we need some better ways to keep them involved. In general, we need a way in which people that do not check our site every week to pop in, see the latest status, and figure out what to work on. Even better, if we can keep them informed of our progress (e-mail? auto-generated?). Let's think about this.

For new contributors we need to curate some of the tasks that are suitable for them to work on. There needs to be some solid guidance so that people can get started and don't get overwhelmed/lost in the large task list. Let's figure this out.

Thoughts anyone??

Discussion and updates


New task was created


One thing I will work on is the voting mechanism, which will also be a nice way to get people involved, by asking them to vote for their favorite / most urgent features.


So I've been thinking about this some more. Some new ideas about stuff that should help us guide the sprint:

  • We should present all tasks by type, the same way we present our general task list. That should make it much easier for people to get an idea of what kinds of tasks there are, rather than being presented with a single, large list.
  • "Beginner-friendly" tasks should be nicely highlighted, and it may even be good to have a single "Beginners" button to group them all.
  • I can also see people wanting to assist with one of our three main threads (MFA integration, multi-scale integration, APIs). It makes sense to dive into each of them a bit more by a) adding some more write-up about each priority (I think we even had some people assigned earlier on to each topic?? maybe they can help??). In that write-up it would be useful to go over what are the core pillars that we need to put in place so that we can get going. Some key tasks people can work on to make an immediate difference and move that priority along. This needs careful thinking and curation. It would also be nice to see all related tasks for each priority. Again it needs some manual curation but is not impossible.
  • It would be good if we create an overview where we group all other tasks that don't necessarily belong to a single priority, but that are instead rather structural to the data portal itself and we write a bit of explanation around that.
  • When all that is in place we need to present those four sections (3 priorities plus general) in a cohesive way, and I think it can form the foundation of our sprint - together with the task list organized by type.

It would be really great to get some help with all the curation and writing up of these guiding texts. So if someone is able to assist, please give a shout. I am going through the existing tasks as well at the moment to try and see if we have enough and it is fully updated - any help there also most welcome.


Ahhh yes and one more thing... I was thinking of creating a certain mechanism for keeping/bringing people up to speed which is core for the old but not-so-up-to-speed people as well as new people. Firstly this outlined overview should help put people in the loop. However, they should stay in the loop after this sprint, somehow. My suggestion is to make a "sign up" button where people can sign up for updates on tasks based on;

  • The project it is part of (e.g. the entire Data Hub)
  • The type of task (e.g. Data research or Programming)
  • The sub-priority it is part of (e.g. MFA integration)

I think especially the last one will make sense, and will allow people to stay informed via e-mail about what is happening. This system needs to be built but I think it is a priority. In fact maybe we start with just the sub-priority subscription model, and we do something like an automated weekly email.


Task was assigned to Paul Hoekman


I've been working on the tasks and general prep over the past few days. Also done is this beginners guide, and I'm working on the mini-site for the priority hub. We also need to have functional specifications - at least for one of the projects and then solicit people work on the other ones. I'll write the first one if need be. And I think we need some sort of a presentation to walk people through things. If we prep this well then we can have that as some sort of a standard presentation to kick off sprints. Some of it should be sprint-nonspecific (how to get going with MOC/data hub), followed by an overview of the actual sprint's priorities. Okay let me make a task for this whole thing.

We have 10 people signed up at the moment so that looks great! Likely best to connect through Google Video as Uber has some limitations I believe.


Status change: Open → In Progress


I've e-mailed those people that introduced themselves in the forum over the last 3-4 months to let them know about the sprint - it may be a good way to get some additional people and it seems especially relevant as they all wanted to get involved and there are some very interesting perspectives that would be great to take into consideration when planning for our new features.


To facilitate the writing and review of the specification I have created a set of tasks for this (one for the spec writing, 3 for the review process). This should also help divide and assign the work.


I've now made the links in the sidebar to the beginners guide, FAQ, and scoreboard work. The last two items are actually things we need to build, but I have set up a page where this is explained and people are encouraged to help us with that. I'm now going to republish the priority hub information into a news article, so that we can have Aris' video archived there and the original launch date on our timeline, while the data priority page keeps evolving.


I've set up the meeting details in Google so that we can use a Google Video link - not sure of the capacity of Uber and we have 12 people signed up. I've sent a calendar invite to all participants and sent a separate e-mail with general details. In case there are any additional last-minute signups then they need to be added to the invite.


In order to not fall into a gap after the sprint, I've set up 3 other ones in June. As a tryout, we'll have weekly sprints, every Monday with a call at the same time. That way we can hopefully keep the momentum going and it is a nice way to build a community with the new contributors. See news announcement here. BTW the other news article writeup is here with all the priority plan details for archiving.


I've done a last review and I think all fundamentals are in place for tomorrow. If I find a gap, I'll do some polishing here and there, but I think we can work with what we have.


Status change: In Progress → Completed