ACCESS THE DATA MVP PROJECT

ACCESS THE DATA MVP PROJECT

Status: CLOSED
Phases: Initiation > Planning > Execution > Close

Contents:

Project Summary
Methodology
Results
Lessons Learned
Next Steps
Project Artifacts
DEMO

Project Summary

It was decided that if we want to improve the LA community's understanding of open data, that the first step is to build a data catalog the community can use and contribute to. We built the MVP so that we would have a working prototype that stakeholders can interact with to get some idea of what it is we are building so they can give us input on what would best help them going forward.

Methodology

We used an hybrid approach, giving the team enough structure to know "what's next" as we would in waterfall, but also using an exploratory, agile mindset by allowing the team to create their own issues, having weekly check-ins, regular demos, and monthly retrospectives.

Results

Goal Baselines

Schedule:

• Planned:
  • Launch test site by June 2023
• Actual:
  • Launch to be rescheduled for when the Incubator project is complete
  • Demo up by December 2023
• Notes:
  • In our effort to deploy the site, we found that the HfLA deployment process needed to be updated before we were able to launch the test site which pushed our due date another semester.

Deliverables:

• Planned:
  • Develop and deploy test website
  • CKAN Implementation
  • Integrate website design
  • Develop data catalog
  • Create documentation for municipalities to adopt Access the Data
• Actual:
  • New HfLA deployment process created
  • PM Guide and onboarding/offboarding process created
  • CKAN repo created and basic MVP created
  • Design integrated into CKAN site
  • Documentation created for future AtD teams to continue developing
• Notes:
  • We had to scale back quite a bit on scope. Our largest obstacle was a hangup with deployment that took about a year to resolve and is still being updated by the Incubator team. We were able to integrate much of the design, but as we implemented CKAN we realized it has it's own site template that includes a wireframe we did not design for. For the purposes of the MVP, we decided to wait until we had a chance to get feedback from the community before we developed the design any further. We also decided that, for now, we would only create documentation enough for a new team to be able to navigate the work that has been done, and that further development for municipality adoption would be better off created with the development of V1.

Key Accomplishments

• A stylish logo was created and key design elements were established.
• An environment and process was created to onboard new volunteers.
• A CKAN repo was established, implemented, and most of our design was integrated with it.
• A new process for deployment was established with our operations engineer and the Hack for LA Ops team.

Lessons Learned

• Six month goals and project roadmaps are ideal as most volunteers stay on a project for about that length of time.
• It is helpful to check the health status of the incubator project before developing so that you know you will be able to deploy without having to put the project on hold until deployment is possible.

Next Steps

Reference the product roadmap here.

• If deployment of the test site does not happen by December 2023, that work will need to be planned as part of V1.
• The current site has been created with CKAN, an open source data catalog application used by many governments such as data.gov. The new team will need to familiarize themselves with it.
• Going into this project there was design left over from the previous version of Access the Data which did not include a data catalog. More design will be needed for parts of the wireframe that previously did not exist and were only discovered with the implementation of CKAN.
• A Product Manager will need to initiate a new project to create V1 and build a team that includes a project manager, UX designer, UX researcher, software engineer, and operations engineer.

Project Artifacts

Most of these links will redirect you to the AtD Google Drive or Figma, which is only accessible by team members.

• MVP Project Charter
• MVP Kanban
• Roadmaps:
  • 2023 Semester 2
  • 2023 Semester 1
  • 2022 Semester 2
• Team Retrospectives
• MVP Preview

DEMO

A demo of the MVP can be found here.