Web service strategic update July 2014

By Ed Mitchell 21st July 2014

This is a brief update on where the web project is at the end of July 2014

 

People / management structure

Jim Kirkpatrick, our venerable and brilliant lead developer since the beginning, moved on to a permanent role in January 2014. This was a great loss personally and professionally, but we’re all still friends.

Following his departure we had a period of hiatus without a lead developer which was rather fraught. However, it was a great opportunity, as it showed us how dependent we can become on great people (I have heard similar stories in other small organisations), and the importance of designing for easy role-sharing and documenting our work for handover which we will be better at from now on.

We also used the time to reflect on how to procure technology and services, considering having a permanent role in staff, using an agency, or managing a team of freelancers.

We chose to continue working with freelancers and produced a ‘Terms of Reference’ about what this means collaboriatively with the technologist group.

During this period, Sam Rossiter started working 2 days per week as web and comms operations, which has eased the ongoing workload significantly. Sam is very strong on effective User Experience design which we will weave deeply into the ‘TNv3’ website, and does a lot of social media work.

Paul Booker stepped in to hold the lead developer role temporarily while we sought a lead developer and has been reliable and sturdy; his focus will now shift to helping with the web hosting and code publishing decisions as Annesley Newholm takes over the lead developer role.

We advertised for a new lead developer and met many fine people. Annesley Newholm was the most suitable and has taken the role on. He has been programming computers since primary school, has experience in a wide range of programming languages, managed tech teams, and been a number of Transition groups. He enjoys frisbee, is vegan and lives in Hungary. We are very pleased to have him onboard.

We have also been working on a management structure for the new ‘TNv3’ project and have a few groups

  • Steering
  • Production
  • International
  • Users
  • Transition Technologists

This is work in progress, but you can see the outline here:

See the people / management model on mindmeister

Architecture

Our intention last year was that we would host one main ‘International’ website with separate national hub Drupal distributions spun up within the same hosted Drupal architecture, and that we would offer centralised services (e.g. the ‘International Initiatives Registration Service (IIRS)) as as hosted features. You can read more about this in August 2013’s web strategy update.

Since then, we have been reviewing this proposal technically and organisationally, and have agreed that a different architecture may be more straightforward and less expensive, and that it would be suitable to consult more deeply with the Transition National hubs and base our work around their ongoing plans.

The basic principle of sharing power and data remains the same – Transition Network wants to use technology to widen the distribution of power around the Transition movement, and give national hubs as much freedom and ownership of their data as possible.

We are currently considering an architecture based on one international site and a range of options for distributed services. This is in discussion at the moment, but we are 75% decided on these options:

  1. International site:
    1. One shared database, one website. Any national hub can use it to host their website within a standard features range in their own language. National hubs using this service, has a place on the web service steering group, which will shape the direction of the web service.
  2. Using ‘distributed features’ – currently the ‘IIRS’:
    1. Hosted and centralised: Javascript widget: using centralised services entirely embedded, but not integrated, into the national hubs website. All data for users and Initiatives is kept on Transition Network servers.
    2. Using ‘native’ plugins / modules: build a ‘national hubs IIRS’ plugin in WordPress (initially) for national hubs to install into their own websites. All data for users and Initiatives is kept on the national hub website and shared with Transition Network’s website.

Timeline

We had hoped to have moved onto a new Drupal 7 platform by October 2014. This is not going to happen. It’s been a big year. This is frustrating and stressful, while also being empowering; the delay has given us time to reflect on our technical strategy, management structure, procurement principles and more. Perhaps it has been a blessing in disguise.

We are now re-considering our choice of Drupal as a platform (can we do this in WordPress?), and/or skipping Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 if possible. This delay will also give us more time to consult with a wider group of people.

We will work on the urgent big jobs (Support and the IIRS) on our existing platform, which means that we can have them functioning in October 2014, and means that we can use our existing platform as a trial base for our new one – giving us a chance to ‘trial’ the jobs.

Annesley and Ed are now breaking this high level plan into more detail over August on the timeline wiki page.

Big jobs: IIRS

This has been delayed and we hope to produce a working widget or plugin for Transition Portugal for October 2014.

As per the architecture paragraph above, the IIRS could have a few options, which we hope to discuss with the national hubs (starting with Portugal!).

We are going to use this work as an opportunity to enhance our registration process significantly, and side-step some of the location problems we have been struggling with in Drupal 6, while also making the process of registration much more user-friendly.

  1. Using ‘distributed features’ – currently the ‘IIRS’:
    1. Hosted and centralised: Javascript widget: using centralised services entirely embedded, but not integrated, into the national hubs website. All data for users and Initiatives is kept on Transition Network servers.
    2. Using ‘native’ plugins / modules: build a ‘national hubs IIRS’ plugin in WordPress (initially) for national hubs to install into their own websites. All data for users and Initiatives is kept on the national hub website and shared with Transition Network’s website.

You can read the design discussions (we have gone back to first principles) on the IIRS wiki page.

Big jobs: Support framework

The support group have been hard at work designing and consulting on the Transition Support Framework. We had been planning to build this in the next website only. Further to various discussions, we now plan to build this in the existing website so that we can road-test the content, and the workflows rather than wait for another few months.

Ed and Mike are meeting in early August to draft the first set of wireframes and agree next steps.

Very important long term job: Move onto a new site

This is a massive piece of work which we have held on hold while seeking a new lead developer – who holds the responsibility for overseeing this process and decision.

We are now thinking hard about what the architecture will be, what platform we will use (not solely thinking Drupal), how we will host it, and manage the code. We are also considering how to take a more ‘CRM’/relationship/process based design approach to the architecture than the existing ‘directory’ styled site.

Meanwhile, Transition Network staff have formed a ‘production’ team to write out Transition Network’s requirements.

We will also use this time on the old site to ‘prune’ it; archive and then remove the features we aren’t using, archive and then strip out data that is not useful, work on new easy to use workflows.

Then we will start building the new site in the new location, and migrate.

Discussions are begining in August on the Tnv3 wiki pages

Budget

Wrapping all of the various strands together, we have approximately, for all works:

  1. Maintenance: £1,000 per month: which we are trying to reduce as much as possible
  2. Development ‘TNv3’ project: £30,000 total: including work done already, to get us to TNv3.1 (launch version)

We are actively seeking more funding for TNv3 as it will cost far more than £30,000.

Recent meeting notes

Links to earlier strategy updates

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