Skip to content

Home

Jump to bottom
Julia Lindpaintner — she/her edited this page Feb 14, 2023 · 21 revisions

Welcome to the 18F Guides + Methods wiki

We're using this to document our work to centralize the 18F Guides + Methods.

The primary audience for the wiki is new and current 18F team members working on the Guides + Methods. 18F folks working on this might also want to check out this Welcome new 18F Guides teammate doc (18F only 🔒) that explains a bit more about this team and how we're managing centralization work.

Problem statement

The 18F Guides and Methods are important foundation documentation and are used across government and beyond.

Some of them have become outdated over time or otherwise need a revamp. They’re often supported unevenly, by TTS guilds or 18F chapters as people have time available rather than with ongoing steady and resourced support. Most need an assessment of how people use them today and what improvements would be most effective in the near-term, as well as recommendations for what metrics will help them improve on an ongoing basis. The guides are currently maintained in discrete repositories; this investigation is also an opportunity to identify maintenance efficiencies.

Background

The Guides + Methods launched in 2015 in a very different configuration: at that time, the list included Accessibility, Analytics, Agile, APIs, Automated Testing, Before You Ship, Content, Design Methods, Federalist Content Guide, Frontend, Grouplets, the Guides Template, Inter-Agency Agreements with 18F, Joining 18F!, and Open Source. Today, they include:

Between 2015 and 2022 they have been variably created, decommissioned, updated, researched, combined — and also neglected in various ways and at various times. All have had periods of time when their ownership was uncertain and their maintenance ignored. A few currently do not have product owners or content contributors. No individual guide has dedicated time allotted to updates or maintenance: it's a side project, volunteered on in staff's spare time (what spare time? you might ask, and be correct), done "in the margins of our other work," as one research participant put it. As a result, many are well out of date with our current practices.

In early 2022, a solo 18F staff member (all that was allotted by 18F leadership) worked on a research sprint with individual guide product owners to assess the current state and develop next steps for ongoing support of 18F Guides & Methods including near-term improvements and maintenance efficiencies, as well as recommendations for ongoing support, measurement, governance, content plan, coordination, etc.
Full report | Summary deck

Based on that product owner research report's recommendations, 18F leadership identified a plan for a six-month investment in the 18F Guides and Methods (GSA only). The report described some of the risks of continuing in the current state (GSA-only), including recruiting, onboarding, and reputation risks.

This initial solo staffing issue was built upon by the more recent team assigned for six months, developing a research-based, coded prototype and a lightly tested initial combined information architecture.

The future of this work is currently (now being February 2023) in question, pending 18F leadership decisions. A three-month more limited team has been approved; this staffing issue (GSA-only) is being drafted now.

Vision / Polestar

We’re creating principles, standards, technical infrastructure, and governance that 18F can follow to improve the quality of its Guides so that our employees, agency partners, and the civic tech community can learn and apply our methods to their technology modernization projects.

Foundational documentation

Clone this wiki locally