Posted by RockSoup on December 20, 2010 at 7:24pm
At our December meeting I raised the idea of producing a Barnraising in 2011 and this is a follow up post.
I gave a brief presentation where I mentioned some ideas about what it might look like this time around:
- We help a local group/non-profit build a site from start to finish
- We document the process as a handbook page or something similar for educational purposes as well as reference for other barnraisings
- We include the surrounding work like requirement gathering, IA, version control, etc as part of the project
- We spread the work over a number of months setting achievable milestones and ending with a single day long sprint to build the site
This is a rough outline and any/all input is welcome. If you think this is a good idea and are interested in being involved in something like this please comment below and we can discuss next steps
Comments
Drupal Dojo
Gregory suggested that Drupal Dojo could be a resource for developing a handbook/courseware for barn raising. Also, this topic could be a project for a new Seattle Drupal Dojo. (see http://groups.drupal.org/node/108129 )
Barnraising in a Dojo!?!
Sounds great. The Seattle Drupal Dojo (commencing in early Jan?!?) should provide a good forum for barnraising and collaborating on projects important to the local and Drupal community. Figuring out how to best leverage the virtual Dojo tools (website, g.d.o. group, hosting, webinar software, etc.) to facilitate collaboration/house resources can also be an ongoing project. On top of that, eric_sea and I have been talking to a couple local organizations about developing/documenting their projects in such a forum.
Barnraising is already on the Seattle Drupal Dojo wiki (http://groups.drupal.org/node/108129), so that's one way we'll help move this forward.
Gus Austin
Process and people
The interesting thing about a barnraising, as opposed to a regular project, is that there are lots of people working together to make something fast. Most projects are pretty serial in nature and could be completed by one person, doing one thing at a time. But the crux of the barnraising problem is to parallelize a bunch of separate resources.
I think it's ok to produce some documentation about what's generally best-practice about building a Drupal site, but I think most of the value of this venture will be in the docs that talk about how to do that in the context of a dozen or more people in one room together for a few hours at a time. Random thoughts with this in mind:
How do you pick a project to begin with? Individual proposals, group discussion, voting? Any tips for keeping this from getting contentious?
Should the barnraising have a leader? Should it have more than one leader?
How to do rapid requirements-gathering? E.g. get all stakeholders toghether in a room, have a couple of PMs or IAs asking questions, others working the white board (maybe one whiteboard person is writing business goals, another is writing user goals, stuff like that). Devs could be there to listen but maybe it's best if they keep quiet (or not, who knows).
Similar with IA. What's fastest, and how to take advantage of having several people able to work on it at once? Maybe try to put a couple of people sketching and outlining on the whiteboard, while someone else is transcribing, and maybe even some rapid prototyping could be happening at the same time.
I can see similar guidelines coming up for other parts of the process too. How best to divide up the work on sprint days, how to keep both senior and junior devs productive and happy, etc.
good thoughts
I think this is interesting, but given my last (and admittedly only) experience with the barnraising we did was that we had trouble completing the project even when all of the prep work had been done ahead of time. This could be a scope issue, but it was not a super intense project.
-jared
Completing...
A few random thoughts:
- It seems to me that in the last project, we got about 80% there at the barn raising day, and all that was left was "finishing touches", which ended up being left to RockSoup mostly I think. A process of several different work days might help with that.
- Working in parallel and off-line is great for getting the project done, but not so good for Dojo/learning. Whoever is spearheading the barn-raising needs to figure out which of these is the primary purpose and which is the secondary -- they cannot both take first preference, IMO.
- I recall that it was really useful to have an authorized representative of the client there at the barn raising so decisions could be made.
- If this is a brand new site for an org rather than "move my existing site into Drupal", I recommend wireframes as well as written specs for functionalty. If it's a migration, then presumably the existing site can be used as the specs/prototype, but it should be made clear that it won't be pixel-for-pixel the same (doing that would be a lot of difficult and annoying work in most cases -- better to have a Drupal-aware design).
Drupal programmer - http://poplarware.com
Drupal author - http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920034612.do
Drupal contributor - https://www.drupal.org/u/jhodgdon
Different teams
Definitely think splitting development and capture/documentation into different teams would help. As commented above we can leverage the virtual Dojo tools (website, g.d.o. group, hosting, webinar software, etc.) to facilitate collaboration and capture/creation of learning materials and documentation. Needs a bit of polish, but we already have a rough process outlined - http://drupalkata.com/program/node/139
Gus Austin
Exactly
Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Getting something accomplished in a barnraising session is easy, but actually raising a barn is another matter. What's achievable, really? What is the definition of "done"?
What parts of the process are serial, one-person tasks no matter what? If the goal is to be done at 3:00, what time should final QA start? Is it ok to have barn-planning be a part of a grand barn-raising superproject, or should a detailed spec be a prerequisite? When the big day comes, should there be a detailed issue queue all filled out and ready to be tackled?
Based on past experience, what roles should be present in each of the groups, for maximum efficiency? A leader who has internalized the project and can communicate a clear vision of it; some fast-working devs; a guru who doesn't take on specific tasks, but acts as more of a helper, etc.
A few barnraising candidates
There are a couple projects we're setting up to openly develop via the Drupal Kata (the project-based learning arm of Drupal Dojo) that may be good candidates for local Barnraising and/or ongoing local Dojo projects.
This longer list of community empowering, media-centric projects may also provide some good candidates - http://groups.drupal.org/node/21903
Gus Austin
Join the Seattle Dojo team for the barn raising
Click to join our Seattle SGS barn-raising team on Drupal Kata
Join the Dojo IRC - irc://irc.freenode.net/drupal-dojo - (announce yourself: Seattle Barn Raising team member) Read the log here http://druplicon.info/bot/log/drupal-dojo
A REQUEST FOR SEATTLE/DRUPLAL BARN RAISING
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
My name is Florence Harvey and I am reaching out to your group because a worthy project, called Spiritual Pathways to Wellness, desperately needs your expertise and support.
Spiritual Pathways to Wellness began as a collaboration of seven Centers for Spiritual Living Centers (CSL) here in Seattle. Our mission is to create an online spiritual center (in the Cloud) for cancer as well as other homebound patients, and link folks to it from our church and cancer org. Web sites. The Spiritual Pathways to Wellness Patient Center would offers free Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) self-care modules (audio, print, and video, remarkable recovery stories, etc.) and other spiritual tools- like compassionate listening coaches, to those who due to serious illness need comfort, hope, and support, especially in the middle of the night. A demo of how one themed Pathway on the site might work for a patient is currently available at http://www.SpiritualPathwaysToWellness.org/wp/pathways. (NOTE: all the content for this demo site has been donated.)
Recently I participated with the Compassionate Action Network and my vision expanded regarding the scope of our Spiritual Pathways to Wellness project. We now envision the site as being hosted on ANY Seattle church or Compassionate Action Network organization’s web site that has a demonstrated commitment to compassionate outreach their own communities and in the world. Eventually I can see the scope being national, probably hosted by some major Patient organization...
Part of our new vision is that every participating church with a commitment to compassion in Seattle, any Compassionate Action Network organization that chooses (Bastyr U is one) could solicit and upload CAM modules and other donated content, then create a Pathway, themed inside some diverse spiritual, religious or non- religious beliefs. Patients then could easily search the site for, and find, themes that match their particular spiritual and/or religious orientation (or lack of it.)
Although we have this wide collaborative vision, we have come up against a place where creating a site of this nature would take technical knowledge far beyond our current capabilities. We need your expertise and support. I have been advised that Drupal would be the perfect content management system to do all the things we need this site to do. I also was told that the Seattle User group often did pro-bono work on worthy projects. My prayer is that your group might donate expertise to design the complex multi-site web project we envision. We are sure that once we are up and functional we will be able to self-fund with grants, contributions, etc.. We even see this project as possibly being a contender in the City 2.0 wish project. http://www.tedprize.org/ Dream me, Build me, Make me Real.
If it will post, I will upload a one-page project overview and a diagram of how we see the various pieces of the web site interacting. If not, send me your email address and I will send it over. I was told I should come to the user meeting on April 19 and present this concept. Unfortunately, I have another commitment that night, so I was hoping I could talk with you earlier. Let me know what would work. The City 2.0 Wish submission is due in May… so we are anxious to begin.
If individuals or groups in your organization would be interested in being a part of developing the Spiritual Pathways to Wellness as a pilot, your contribution would be a blessing. There are so many people in our community and across our nation that are afflicted with cancer and homebound other serious illnesses that would so greatly benefit from a 24-7 Compassionate Care center in the middle of the night. PLUS i think it you could make it so trasparent and simple that the maintainance could be taken over easily by techies from the various churches. Please give our request your serious consideration.
Yours Truly,
Florence Harvey
206-417-3087
Florence@carebrigade.com
Florence@spiritualpathwaystowellness.org
ENCLOSURES:
Spiritual Pathways to Wellness Web site Diagram
One page description of Spiritual Pathways to Wellness project