Development Process

Background

uPortal is a JA-SIG sponsored open-source enterprise portal framework developed by higher education for higher education. It it currently in its 2nd generation, with a 3rd generation in a development sandbox. The project has enjoyed considerable success and is widely deployed (600+ production deployments). To ensure future success and sustainable development we are seeking to formalize our existing community processes and roles, and encourage greater transparency and wider contribution.

Goals

We wish to take advantage of the open-source model to marshal resources from a variety of contributors. As opposed to traditional processes which prioritize the allocation of a fixed pool of resources, an open-source community's available resources scale with the size and depth of the community.

We encourage a bottom-up approach to scheduling and prioritizing, focusing community resources and collaboration. Natural prioritization ensures the framework advances as members allocate resources (developer time, paid consulting, local expertise, or others) to address local needs. This has the advantage of members prioritizing work according to local needs, aligning community resources with the needs of our individual members. We seek to provide a focus for planning, coordinating, resource gathering, and tracking this progress. We encourage:

• Open Planning - Gather requirements and use an open process to advance the uPortal framework
• Sharing the load - enable collaboration, resource sharing and expertise transfer for planning and implementing requirements
• Limiting local forks - ease contributing local modifications/enhancements into the base uPortal framework
• Harness the community - Involve large & small institutions, vendors, and individuals

Deliverables

Vision

A living document capturing institutional and individual visions for an enterprise portal framework by educational institutions for educational institutions. Address problems we want to solve and descriptions of roles we see portals playing e.g customizable, personalizable user platform, service delivery mechanism

Requirements

Library of requirements and use cases for an enterprise portal framework consisting of:

Development Roadmaps

Development plans are expressed in 6 month roadmaps solidified at the semi-annual developer meetings detailing:

• planned features and scope for the next 6 months
• task assignments & resource requests
• longer term development goals

Initial Milestones & Status

Plan for initial ramp up of portal framework requirements library and incorportion into development cycle

Ongoing Milestones

wash, rinse, repeat...

Roles

Framework Coordinator

The Framework Coordinator gathers our vision and requirements for a portal framework to build a strategy for the future. He is also responsible for leading the translation of our strategy into a development roadmap and coordinating follow up and action items between development meetings and conferences.

• Point of contact for collaboration, filters (or delegates) suggestions and comments
• Coordinate activity (email lists, schedule conference calls, follow up on action items/deliverables)
• Key player in the roadmap planning process, especially pre-developer meeting groundwork
• Work with branch leads to incorporate roadmap items into specific release schedules
• Moderate discussions, maintain agendas, track progress
• Reports regularly to the JA-SIG Board on the state of uPortal development

Currently in this role: Jason Jason

Release Engineer

• Incorporate road map items into branch-specific release schedules consistent with the Release Strategy
• Coordinate development efforts related to implementing features/changes within a particular development line

Currently in this role: Andrew Petro on the uPortal 2 stream; Eric Dalquist on the uPortal 3 stream

Core Developers

Informal group of experts and leaders. Possible responsibilities include:

• coordinate/maintain requirements and plans for a specific functional area
• contribute expertise, advice, and code
• represent significant stakeholders.

Documentation Coordinator

• Point of contact for collaboration on documentation, brokering worthwhile documentation initiatives
• Cheerleader for documentation, encouraging participants to document and guiding towards productive and useful documentation approaches
• Editor in Chief of uPortal portions of the JA-SIG wiki, with particular responsibility for encouraging good organization and usability alongside inclusiveness
• Reports regularly to the Framework Coordinator on the state of documentation efforts

uPortal Manual Coordinator

• Point of contact for collaboration and updates to the uPortal Manual
• Reports regularly to the Documentation Coordinator on the state of uPortal Manual efforts

Community Contributors

Community members expressing their wants and needs for a portal framework

• Outline vision, requirements, and use cases
• Provide resources (developer time, money, expertise)