Sustaining Continuous Digital Project Development with Team Project Management - TRY 2014

Information Technology Services
http://its.library.utoronto.ca
Sustaining Continuous Digital Project Development with
Team Project Management
Kelli Babcock
Gordon Belray
Lisa Gayhart
Bilal Khalid
Marc Lalonde
Alumni Hall
Room 100
May 6, 2014
2 p.m. – 2:40 p.m.

http://its.library.utoronto.caInformation Technology Services
About ITS
Who we are
ITS provides and maintains a wide array of projects
and services in support of the library’s role in research,
teaching, and learning mission of the University and it’s
community, supporting scholarly research, users, and
collections
Our services
● digital projects
● library catalogue and electronic resources
● library web services
● data centre and IT infrastructure
● scholarly communications and open access
services
● staff workstation support
● administration

ITS Goals
● inspired by nimble organizations
○ adapting to change, internally and externally
○ agile workflows and iterative product development
● innovation and leadership
● user focused
● improving engagement
● enhancing discoverability and access
○ accessibility
○ analytics
○ responsive design
Many projects: its.library.utoronto.ca/web-development-schedule
Project management - high priority

Staff in ITS

Project Management
Project Management Best Practices:
● Goals designed at outset of project
● Granular tasks clearly defined responsibilities
● Milestones
● Built in risk-assessment

Project Management & ITS
Project Management Best Practices:
● Goals designed at outset of project
● Granular tasks clearly defined responsibilities
● Milestones
● Built in risk-assessment
ITS Project Management:
● Collaborative
● Iterative
● Desire for sustainability while creating team redundancy
● Integrated project communications work-flow

ITS Projects

ITS Project Management Needs
ITS Project Management Needs
Collaborative
Collaboratives software: large team working on dynamic pages,
not just one static project plan.
Iterative
Ease of implementation: fast paced work-flow with many
stages.
Desire for sustainability Ability to export templates quickly to other projects: large
project work-load, don’t need to re-invent for each
Create team redundancy Ability to integrate with development work and track website
issues: transferable tasks and document procedures/work-
completed for future use.
Integrated project
communications work-flow
Ability to share project documentation: both internal team &
project collaborators; enable external collaborators to
contribute to project based on documented work flow

ITS Project Management Tools
We use...

Project Management Tools
Issue tracking, ticketing, notifications Project management/planning
(reuse templates)
Assign tasks Share project “spaces” and
documentation on the web
Document issues Add Jira tickets
Flexible user permissions Transparency of project progress

Examples - template pages

Examples - collaboration

Examples - task management

Team Project Structure: Roles
Project Manager
Project plan
Task creation, in
collaboration with team
Project management
Feedback to stakeholders
Information Designers
Wireframing/site structure
Theming
Responsive design
AODA complience
Application Developers
Database creation
Data import
Web development
Deployment
Communications
Project communications, user outreach and feedback, accessibility requirements,
launch promotion, documentation, assessment
Systems Support
Server provisioning, security auditing, performance tuning, monitoring

Team Project Structure: Concurrent Tasks
1
Set up:
● server
● project tasks
● GIT repository
2
Development:
● system
architecture
● functionality
● branding/theming
● testing
3
Project Week Close:
● feedback
● wrap up
● summary of
tasks completed

Development Tools
● Collaboration
● Efficiency
● Flexibility

Version Control
● AKA “VCS”, “SCM”, “Revision Control”...
● “Version control is a system that records changes to
a file or set of files over time so that you can recall
specific versions later”
http://git-scm.com/book/en/Getting-Started-About-
Version-Control
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revision_controlled_project_visualization-2010-24-02.svg

Git
● DVCS (“Distributed Version Control System”)
● Important concepts: repo, clone, commit,
push, pull, branch, merge
● Plug: Learn git! http://try.github.io

Deployment Workflow
● Environments
○ Individual, Development, [Testing],
Production
● Deployment procedures
○ Merge individual work on
Development server
○ Test, test, test
○ Deploy on production server
● Minimize production server interaction

Accessibility & Responsive Design
AODA
● January 1, 2014: WCAG 2.0 Level A
● January 1, 2021: WCAG 2.0 Level AA
● WAVE tool: http://wave.webaim.org/
Responsive Web Design
● Mobile First
● Required Reading: Responsive Web Design:
What It Is and How To Use It http://www.
smashingmagazine.
com/2011/01/12/guidelines-for-responsive-
web-design/

Drupal
● Popular Content Management Software
● Open Source, Popular, Active community
● Used extensively at UTL
● Single-site/multi-site variants
● Interesting challenge for git and site deployment

Projects
Get it!

On the Road Again

On the Road Again
● legacy sites in ColdFusion/MySQL
● migrate data into individual databases
with same schema structure but ability
to customize
● move sites into Drupal multi-site
● divide the teamwork into 3 areas
Example of a multi-site
conversion to Drupal
requiring several project
sprints over the course of
several months.

On the Road Again
1
Create GIT
repository & multi-
site version control
2
Develop common
functionality,
branding and Drupal
base theme with
customized sub
themes
3
Create import scripts
to move data from
legacy platform to
Drupal
Challenge: multi-site vs individual sites, version control, data migration and integration,
develop RWD accessible common look and feel

On the Road Again
Develop an integrated web-
based framework for querying
historical itinerant theatre
databases & displaying and
sharing results in different
formats across each database
REED
JUBA American Popular
Cinema in Canada
Canada West

Get it!
● smaller project that had a tight
deadline
● expiration of our License with Access
Copyright
● old menu did not have permitted
uses
● very user unfriendly
● hosted on Serials Solutions - 24
hours request cycle for changes
● need to integrate reference service
librarians feedback for improvement
● indicate if article is peer reviewed

Get it!
1
Create GIT repository
for virtual machine
development
2
Redesign based on
librarian requests and
accessible / responsive
requirements
3
Create a locally hosted
custom PHP application
● build custom menu, helper window & article finder
● divide work into 3 development areas and 2 adjunct areas
1a
System Admin setup
virtual machine, dev
and deploy enviroment
2a
Communication - JIRA-
feedback

Get it!

Lessons Learned
● split model
● 2 weeks
● Tuesday kick off meeting essential
● ensure everyone is in the loop within the team (Thursday meetings), and also within
the department (dept meetings)
● observing the evolution of our preferred workflow
● everyone is both teacher and learner
● project planning takes a lot of time, but pays to be prepared
● added the web development schedule to ITS website to increase transparency

Thank You!
Questions?

Sustaining Continuous Digital Project Development with Team Project Management - TRY 2014

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