ReliefWeb & Development Seed: Building Status, Design, and Planning

Thursday, September 2nd

• Concepting & Strategy Update (Eric G.)• Build Progress Update (Eric G.)• Drupal 7 Update (Eric G.)• Lunch• Design Review (Eric G.)• Build Plans (Alex B.)• Taxonomy/Content Update (Mark M.)• Project Management Overview (Ian C.) • Planning for Launch & Support (Eric G.)• Q&A (All)

Agenda

• Concepting + strategy

• Technical architecture

• Design

• Prepping for Drupal 7

Development Seed’s Summer Focus:

• Concepting + strategy focusing on making it:

• Easier to add content to the site

• Easier to find content + jobs on the site

• Easier to see all types of content the site offers

• Balancing expanding audience w/ building for power users

Development Seed’s Summer Focus:

• Technical Architecture

• Going Drupal 6 vs. Drupal 7

• Key modules needed

• Importing content

• Integration with the jobs site

• Making everything wicked FAST!

Development Seed’s Summer Focus:

• Design Goals

• Focus on the content

• Light = FAST!

• Clean

Development Seed’s Summer Focus:

• Concepting and strategy

• Technical architecture ~70% (need to present plan in official writeup still)

• Designs ~ underway

• Key module refactoring

• Drupal 7 technical base prep

What is done:

• Drupal 7

What is NOT done:

• It is late.

Drupal 7

Yes.... that really says October 27th

... and we think that date is optimistic

• Drupal 7 is _still_ the right choice.

• We are actively building on Drupal 7 for you, in its pre release state.

• This is messing with our timing badly

• ... and costing us a lot more.

What does a Drupal 7 slow down mean?

• Under development for 3 years

• Primary base for the next 2 years AKA you will have access to the latest new tools by being on the latest platform

• Reducing total costs of ownership by reducing an upgrade cycle.

• More attractive for developers to work on.

Drupal 7

• Development Seed is burdening almost all of the Drupal 7 costs on this project.

• This is long term strategic investment for the larger international development space.

• We are adjusting our build plans to try to stay on target. (Alex will speak to this)

• We need to slip delivery till December 3rd,

Timing and cost plans:

Design: this is not another website

Design process: going agile

• There are still mockups.

• mockups ensure:

• style/theme

• general layout

• information architecture

• The designs need to be flexible though.

Agile Design

• Go with the grain of the software

• Reducing total costs of ownership via upgrades.

• Taking advantage of built in workflows.

• Experimenting and playing.

• Things will need to change

How to make design flexible

Design: this is not another website

My ReliefWeb

Keeping it simple to help users know where to go

River of fresh updates

Where events are happening

Hilight key emergencies

Hilight other key content on ReliefWeb

format for LOTS of updates

Visualization tools

filter in context

in-context power filtering

Real time mapping of reports

Show key emergencies + make it easy to find countries

Better integration of jobs

add context to countries

feature key reports

trying to better integrate emergencies w/ countries

integration with data.worldbank.org

river of updates

which can be visualized

and filtered by everything!

Building reliefweb.int

How do you normally build a web site?

Plan

BuildMigrate Review

AdjustLaunch

You’ll be waiting for us

Light build + early migrationto move up

reviews + launch

Plan

BuildMigrate Review

AdjustLaunch

PlanLight build

BuildMigrate Review

AdjustLaunch

PlanLight build

Migrate | Build

Review

AdjustLaunch

PlanLight build

Migrate | BuildReview

AdjustLaunch

Delivery: 3rd week of September

Step I DS builds light shell site

(won’t need all of Drupal 7)

Delivery: End of October

Step 2 RW migrates content

(DS helps)

Delivery: First week of November

Step 3 DS builds out site

(parallel to migration)

Delivery: mid November

Step 4 RW reviews

Delivery: First week of December

Step 5 DS delivers adjustments

Expected launch date: mid December

Step 6 Final QA and launch

PlanLight build

Migrate | BuildReview

AdjustLaunch

The Process

Agile = Working Code, Fast

✓ Prioritize Launch Date✓ Ensure Top Quality on What Is Delivered✓ Collaborate to Manage Scope & Risk

Why Agile?

Result: Very Tight Site Delivered ASAP

• Content Migration (including Jobs)• Core Site Functionality• New Design• Drupal 7• Stable Launch in December• THEN Additional Phase 1 Scope

Fixed Elements

Gathering Feedback

• All Ideas Welcomed & Captured Online• Overall Backlog Triaged with Mark McCarthy• Priority Ideas Moved to Phase 1 Backlog• Remaining Ideas Saved for Phase 2

Feedback Process

What is Phase 2?

• New Aggregation Solution• Community Features• ReliefWeb “Apps”• TBD?

Phase 2

Result: Very Tight Site Delivered ASAP

ReliefWeb’s Involvement

September:

• Confirm Design (early Sept.)• Confirm Migration Plans (early Sept.)• Confirm Hosting Plans (mid Sept.)• Confirm Overall Architecture (late Sept.)

Outcome: Solid Plan by End of September

ReliefWeb Tasks

October:

• Do Basic Migration into Drupal (early Oct.)

Outcome: Content in Drupal by end of October

ReliefWeb Tasks

November:

• Review Content in New Site (mid Nov.)• Training on Using New Site (mid Nov.)

Outcome: Migration Done by end of November

ReliefWeb Tasks

December:

• QA Final Site (early Dec.)• Launch Site (mid Dec.)

Outcome: New ReliefWeb Live in December

ReliefWeb Tasks

• Launching Before Christmas• Support Plans

Risks