[p2pu-dev] functional design and roadmap (Re: UI commentary for new design)

Joe Corneli holtzermann17 at gmail.com
Fri Jan 28 18:23:20 UTC 2011


Hi: For what it's worth, in the UK Meetup, Nadeem, Niels, and I
realised that the homepage can (and perhaps should) serve as a map to
how people can get involved with the site.  The design we're
discussing in this thread *looks* awesome, but maybe doesn't take full
account of the *functional* specification of the P2PU platform.

I've expanded on the notes from the UK meetup here:

http://pad.p2pu.org/roadmap

The basic idea is that, at least to a new visitor, P2PU "is" a bunch
of feeds.  Can we make it easy for people to find these feeds?  Can we
get some understanding about what new features (new feeds) will be
coming along in the future?  And when they might arrive?

Plain text of the pad mentioned above is copied below for reference purposes.

Joe

Meeting: Joe, Nadeem, Niels in Milton Keynes, UK.  Notes:
http://wiki.p2pu.org/w/page/35311045/P2PU-UK-Meetup-Jan-2011

 -- That was my most recent point of contact with things P2PU.  We
came up with something that I think is a nice little gem, which I'll
recopy here.

"How can I get involved today/right now?" :: "P2PU Features" --> rough
spec of current platform or possible design for a homepage of sorts

We have a reasonable picture of that.  We currently have less of a
clue about the related question "How will things change/develop in the
future?".

Right now stuff:

This *could* be used as

        - By asking some questions (link/feed RSS from OSQA)
        - By starting some courses (link/feed bla bla)
        - Participate in some courses ...
        - Write some code ...
        - Do some research ...
        - try to do something around governance? (to grow the organization)
           - mailing lists
           - community calls
           - irc
           - wiki pages about organisational practices (link/feed
recent changes page(s))
        - ... Roadmap <<< this is where we need to get some more
clarity, so we're working on it on this page! (Eventually I could see
this having its own RSS feed, e.g. as items are being crossed off or
added into the roadmap)
         :: P2PU "Future Features"-->Specify Lernata?

Future stuff:

With outstanding questions flagged up in color:

            - org side:
              - incorporation as a US-based 501(c)3 nonprofit
                (how might this change things, what will it change?)
            - dev side:
              - switch from current platform to Lernata
                 (when is this going to happen?)
                 (what new features will Lernata support?)
            - possible partnerships side:
               - (what about the idea of creating a P2PU "namespace"
on Wikiversity?)

If no one here is ready/able to answer these questions, maybe what we
need is some guidance to the people who can/will be able to answer
them.  Tracing that sort of thing out will help clarify both the
roadmap & how to work on the roadmap.

Outstanding issues (this stuff still need to be "roadmappized"):

Note, these are mostly focusing on development side:

 * Pivotal tracker: https://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/213283
 * Github issues: https://github.com/p2pu/lernanta/issues (empty)
 * Atrium Tracker: http://tracker.p2pu.org/
 * ... ?

Information from the wiki, taking a broader view:

 http://wiki.p2pu.org/w/page/28694756/techsprint
 http://wiki.p2pu.org/w/page/31806705/BCNWebSitePlanning
 http://wiki.p2pu.org/w/page/31809404/BCNOffline
 http://wiki.p2pu.org/w/page/31854890/BCNFutureOfTheWebsite
 http://wiki.p2pu.org/w/page/31890551/BCNFirstImpression

Likely requirements moving forward with the roadmap-creating and
maintaining process:

1. We need some sense of the priority of the issues.

   - Perhaps the prioritisation could come in part from looking at
OSQA/UserVoice.  Is P2PU getting a list of "feature requests"?
   - Of course, there will be development-side priorities that users
will not generally be aware of. It's good if users can become aware of
major points, but can't ask them to know about everything.

2.  We need some sense of the outcomes in terms of "features" (see
above bullet list).

   - for example, one of my current annoyances is the P2PU wiki (which
I feel is not easy to use), and similarly the rich text editor that is
used on the site for courses isn't much good, and the plain text
version just supports HTML markup.  All of that could stand to be
improved and might be "important" as a feature request

   - HOWEVER, it doesn't necessarily get at more major issues about
"direction" -- like, it's not really a "new feature".  Which could be
OK.

3.  We need good questions and we need to know who to ask them to.

   - See comment in "Future Stuff" section.

4.  We need to find a suitable format to extract "legacy" planning
formats into...


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