Project Management

Methodology

As the requirements for the BIOFIN dashboard are under constant defining and revising, a decision was made in the early months of the project to build a simple prototype, similar to the MVP (Minimal Viable Product) in order to build and test different requirements and workflows, and iterate development until it is clear that the requirements are ready for a production software system, to be complete by the end of the project.

A technical roadmap will make transparent the impact on release dates and milestones of such adjustments, allowing the project partners to manage tradeoffs between features, functionality and time. This puts the BIOFIN-EU consortium in in a resilient position to manage expectations and communicate deliverables and timelines effectively.

Kanban

A Kanban board will be implemented to track and make transparent the progress and status of the features, backlog items, tasks and bugs that technical partners in WP4, and supported by other WPs will design and develop.

There are different kinds of items which can be tracked via the Kanban board; features, backlog items, and tasks. A feature describes a chunk of functionality that fulfils user needs while adding value to the overall product. They are a collection of user stories and tasks.

A backlog item is a specific low level deliverable of a feature. By definition, such items must be linked to a feature. This supports technical partners to break down larger features into smaller deliverables, and will help WP1 and WP2 to improve the transparency between code commits and specific functionality. This is particularly important when multiple partners work on the same feature. A task is a generic term for any deliverable outside of technical features and backlog items. This may be, for example, producing some training material or documents, or any other deliverable which we want to track.

There are up to 9 lanes in our Kanban board, each describing the status for a feature or task. Too many?

• New – A placeholder for features and tasks awaiting requirement gathering and defining.
• Requirements Gathering – A temporary stage where partners are writing and defining features. Work on a feature cannot begin until this stage is complete. Need definition of ready.
• Ready To Start – All features and tasks which have been defined and agreed, but are waiting prioritization and/or development to start.
• In progress – All features and tasks being actively worked upon.
• Blocked – Any feature which has a dependency on another feature which is yet to be complete.
• Testing – A placeholder for features which are undergoing testing, be that user, unit or other testing cycles.
• Ready for production – Once testing is complete, and bugs are resolved, this lane holds features which need to be integrated into the platform.
• Done – Once fully integrated into the platform, a feature is finished and will drop off the board into this lane. Need definition of done.
• Removed – If a feature or task is no longer required, or replaced by another, it will be kept in this lane.