E-Liberate Plan

From apse

Contents 1 e-Liberate 1.1 Project Plan Authors 1.2 Project Participants 1.3 Domain Objectives 1.4 Purpose 1.5 Description of main activities 1.6 Description of main deliverables 1.7 Project Scope 1.7.1 Complexity 1.7.2 Magnitude 1.7.3 Resources 1.7.4 Research 1.7.5 Training 1.7.6 Work with other people or bureaucracies 1.7.7 Uncertainties and other risks 1.8 Work Breakdown 1.8.1 Chris 1.8.2 Jodie 1.8.3 Nat 1.8.4 Unassigned 1.9 Audience 1.10 Budget 1.11 Schedule 1.11.1 List of tasks, milestones, deliverables, status 1.11.2 List of Tasks (grouped by task type) 1.12 Constraints 1.13 Resources 1.14 Start Date 1.15 Finish Date 1.16 Deliverable(s) 1.17 Status 1.18 Notes 1.19 Project Evaluation

[edit] e-Liberate

[edit] Project Plan Authors

• Christopher Cramer (Evergreen State College)
• Jodie Blaylock (Evergreen State College)
• Nat Taylor (Evergreen State College)

[edit] Project Participants

• ibid.

[edit] Domain Objectives

What are you trying to obtain as a result of this project?

• A Ruby and AJAX powered online deliberation tool.

[edit] Purpose

Digression and inconclusion are pervasive in online discussion. In face-to-face meetings, parliamentary procedure is used to ensure decisions are made. Utilizing parliamentary procedure in online meetings will enable a civic participation model that can faciliate social change.

[edit] Description of main activities

• Learn Ruby and some AJAX (Jodie and Nat)
• Learn more Ruby and AJAX (Chris)
• Learn project management skills
• Leverage open-source tools to accomplish our goals
• Develop Ruby-based e-liberate software

[edit] Description of main deliverables

• e-liberate software

[edit] Project Scope

(include a section on each aspect listed below)

[edit] Complexity

Are there multiple activities that must happen in parallel? Are there tricky scheduling issues? (degree of coordination)

• Use of mediaWiki to produce collaborative documentation
• Use of subversion for software version control and collaborative development

[edit] Magnitude

[edit] Resources

What's needed? When? How will the resources be obtained? (includes special skills, consultants, other people and organizations, software, web hosting, money, physical space, equipment, transportation, etc.)

• Web host. Currently supplied by b3nt development, gratis.

[edit] Research

What type is needed and how will it be conducted or acquired.

• Web research on other chat programs and how they work
• Programming Ruby, The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide - Dave Thomas, Pragmatic Bookshelf
• humblerubybook.pdf , from infoq.com
• Rolling with Ruby on Rails Revisited, [1]
• O'Reilly - AJAX on Rails
• Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails, Pragmatic Bookshelf
• Rails Recipes, Pragmatic Bookshelf
• Four Days on Rails, [2]

[edit] Training

What type is needed and how will it be conducted or acquired.

• Read Programming Ruby, and complete tutorials.
• Complete online Ruby tutorials

[edit] Work with other people or bureaucracies

• Just the three of us, and Doug

[edit] Uncertainties and other risks

• Can three Evergreen students work together to produce tangible results?

[edit] Work Breakdown

[edit] Chris

• Functional specification
• Asynchronous update support
• Database schema

[edit] Jodie

[edit] Nat

• Source repository

[edit] Unassigned

• Deployment server
• Login page
• Registration page
• Meeting List page
• Meeting page
• New Meeting page

[edit] Audience

Anyone that needs to make group decisions and wants to make them without the constraints of a physical face-to-face meeting. This includes:

• community organizations
• non-government organizations
• trade associations
• political organizations
• corporations

[edit] Budget

A shoestring.

[edit] Schedule

[edit] List of tasks, milestones, deliverables, status

• Proofs of Concept (little programs that demonstrate some functionality)
  • AJAX chat (program from net)
    • phpfreechat
      • uses flat files for storage. may be a good idea for server status updates.
  • Open chat with persistent storage
  • Juggernaut and Zinzani, flash-based server push interaction and chat
  • rtrails, real-time rails

[edit] List of Tasks (grouped by task type)

Milestone or activity (indicate which type of task)

Task description

• Determine where the application will be hosted
• Implement Login System - Put SOMETHING on the server.
• Design CSS
• Class Hierarchy with methods
  • User Interface Module
  • Rule Implementation Module
  • Refresh Techniques
• Define interface between User Interface and Rule Implementation
• List Discussion Page
• Discussion Page

[edit] Constraints

• Web Server Constraints, we may need a VPS to implement rails... may not be available on conventional servers.
• May be able to install ruby and rails in home directory on Grace, not sure.

[edit] Resources

[edit] Start Date

A date and/or based on some event

• January 08, 2007

[edit] Finish Date

End of Spring Quarter, June 10, 2007.

[edit] Deliverable(s)

• e-liberate software, available to the public and tested by at least one community organization

[edit] Status

(to be updated during the project implementation as appropriate)

• Framework in place.
  • Communication (irc)
  • Project Management (PHProject)
  • Documentation (mediaWiki)

[edit] Notes

(to be updated during the project implementation as appropriate)

[edit] Project Evaluation

Doug Schuler, the faculty and originator of the project, will evaluate. The evaluation will be based on acquisitin of practical knowledge and skills of developing a web application that the participants acquired during the course of the project. These include:

• multiple-participant project planning and organization
• web application development
• marketing to community organizations
• the Ruby programming language
• the Rails web application framework