Roadmap

##FY15 Q3-Q4 Goals and Measures created: 4/29/2015 last updated: July 1, 2015

Approach

Work iteratively in 1-2 week sprints, where at the beginning of each iteration we evaluate our metrics, and adjust priorities based on the data and qualitative feedback.

Decision process:

• Each sprint should validate the work scheduled against metrics, as well as a qualitative assessment of progress toward the big goals.
• Retrospective to look at what works and lessons learned during or after each sprint.
• Invite users and govt stakeholders to participate in design ideation sessions and reviews in addition to regular meetings (initially at the end of each sprint, potentially moving to monthly after clear communication patterns are established).
• When decisions are made, Open Opps will validate design against the experience of its larger community.  If other agencies or organizations with active deployments participating in open wish to experiment with alternate approaches, then we'll consider these as configurable options.
• Our intent is for Open Opportunities to be the Midas software for the federal government.  New agencies would join Open Opportunities, instead of starting up separate closed instances.
• Open Opps branding assets will be maintained in a separate repository.

We will use a single set of issues, specifying tags as needed instead of two github repositories (moving tasks over as needed).

Team

• David Cole
• Gail Swanson
• Jeremia Kimelman
• Sarah Allen
• Lisa Nelson
• Wider community
  • open source contributors
  • Open Opportunities task creators
  • OCSIT team - user acceptance testing

High level goals

• 1000 users by end of Sept!
• increased activity, enthusiasm, evangelists within other agencies

Overview

1. Scale our operation with the goal of reaching 30% of our target market in the next few years (Reduce rote tasks that can be done with software)
2. Increase the number of engaged users (task creators and task takers)
3. Improve the overall findability of participants
4. Ensure that as we scale the users, we still deliver a high quality program

###Design Refresh

1. Opportunity Creation Prompts (link task creation toolkit
2. Requirement for registering: Agency
3. Prompt to fill-in profile data  (either after signup or a meter)
4. Opportunity Details page
5. Profile Page
   1. Look at overall design / usability
   2. Badges for completed tasks
6. Wall of Fame
7. Improve the overall findability of participants
   1. Use Cases:
      1. managers to know the skills of their people (for task assignment or to answer a question or to inform hiring or training)
      2. to connect with people who have certain skills &/or interests (to do tasks, to build a community of practice, networking for the purpose of professional development)
   2. Needs design: likely to include click on tags and some kind of search

###Technical infrastructure

1. ATO
2. Authentication as a Federal Employee

###Admin support

1. Admin Dashboard
   1. Task and User activity doesn’t need to be tracked manually by Lisa
   2. Includes historical tasks and users (users will get badges for old work)

Goals

1. Scale our operation with the goal of reaching 30% of our target market in the next few years (Reduce rote tasks that can be done with software)
2. Outcome: The enhanced platform will increase participation in the program and advance the innovators network.

• Metric: # of active participants increases (active participants = task creators + people who have signed up for tasks)

###Supporting metrics:

• of new agencies (per quarter)

• of new subscribers (per month)

1. Outcome: Staff time spent per active user decreases

• Track my time on managing & tracking task creation & execution.

• This will be measured by an increase in users being able to be supported by Lisa as the only program staff person.

• As an admin I should be able to download the following data:

  • people (full list including agency, title, name, email, etc.)
  • tasks (full list including task state, name, task creator, agency creator)
  • task-sign-ups [person / task / action / time] -- when people signed up

• As an admin, the metrics on dashboard should allow for quick review of progress on goals in this document (including over time by month, quarter, year).

• As the admin I need to be able to see

  • Task by state (Archived, Assigned, Completed, Open, Draft) -- # and percent
  • How many and what agencies are participating (creating tasks or doing tasks), including new agencies over time
  • The total number of task takers, by type of task: Ongoing task or one-time task (tapas)
  • Number of task takers from a given agency.
  • Historical metrics by quarter (import historical task/user data)
  • Note: Not included in Open Opps Midas Dashboard: survey results (Survey Monkey) & newsletter click through (Govdelivery)

• As an admin I want to restrict registration to federal government domains (using data.gov catalog)

• As an admin I want notifications in the platform to task creator and participants to reduce communication tasks

  • When a deadline is past, send a reminder
  • Opportunity Complete Email should include survey prompt
  • Opportunity Complete (Email sent once the Opportunity Owner has marked the Opportunity complete) #580
  • Update completion notification to have badge info
  • When a deadline is approaching, send a reminder

2. Increase the number of engaged users

1. Make it easier for agencies to post tasks

Metric: Increase the number of  tasks posted annually by 20%

Metric: Target new agencies to increase outreach: 2 new agencies/departments will post a task per quarter

• As an admin I would like task creators to have all the tools necessary to easily create a good task with little to no assistance, self-service.
• As a task creator, the task creation process should be easier to use, making it clear what text I should write to improve my task adoption
  • As a task creator I want to be notified via email that my task has been approved and is posted as open.  midas#641
  • As a task creator I need to have access to help documents and task creator toolkit on the platform.
  • As a task creator and user I need the estimated time requirement to be clear and specific.https://github.com/18F/midas-open-opportunities/issues/35
  • As a task creator I should be able to send an email to those people who have not been selected for the task through the platform.  (Email draft has been created that TCs that should be tailor).

b. Grow the number of subscribers and task takers

Metric: Increase the number of subscribers by 50% per quarter

Metric: Increase the number of people who sign up for tasks each quarter by 3%

• As a user I want to be able to find the platform easily.

  • Complete the final steps to implement new domain name:  openopps.digitalgov.gov
  • Complete ATO so that the platform can be found via Google

• As a user I want the list of open opportunities to load faster

• The task detail page has a pleasing layout with clear information architecture

• As a user, I want to quickly and easily find tasks I am interested in through different avenues. Improvements:

• As a user I need tags to be dynamic (search by tag by clicking on it), (https://github.com/18F/midas-open-opportunities/issues/71)possible include a way to visualize tasks by tags

• Search functionality (on the back-end as well as public-facing side) that allows admins, task creators, and task takers to find tasks based on keywords.

• As a user, I should be able to see my badges on my profile.

• As a user I should be able to see badges for all the tasks I have created and completed on the Wall of Fame  

• As a user I would like see a Wall of Fame so I can see where I stand compared to others.

3. Improve the overall findability of participants

Metric: Increase the number of subscribers by 50% per quarter

Metric: Increase the number of people who sign up for tasks each quarter by 3%

• As an admin I would like the platform to prompt participants to fill out their profile.
• As a user, I would like to be able to see other people on a map (open source contribution in progress)
• As a task creator and user I would like to be able to search innovator profiles by agency, keywords, skills, interests and experience.
• As a user I would like there to be able to find people with specific interests or skills.
• As a user, a “Find People” button or section would be helpful.

4. Ensure that as we scale the users, we still deliver a high quality program

Metric: Participant satisfaction remains high

• 85% would do it again

• 85% would recommend to a friend

• QA plans, user acceptance tests

• Qualitative assessment (review sessions with users, surveys or quick follow-up phone calls)

  • interview task creators, review new prompts and interaction design as images or click through
  • interview people who are not using open opps (who used to or who are on the mailing list), that might lead to software improvements  [or if there are specific complaints, consider addressing them]

• As an admin we will prioritize the following:

  • security / availability
  • bugs with no workaround that affect task viewing, creation & signup
  • regressions (things that just broke, even if otherwise would be low priority -- optimize dev time by fixing things quickly if a new bug is introduced)
  • developer documentation & responding to open source contributors

Stretch goals

• As a user, I would like to import a team (csv)
• As a task creator I need a clear and simple way to create bullets (simple but not obvious currently) and links (process not clear or simple) when I enter a task.
• As a user I want to be able to sort tasks to find the newest or tasks type (e.g. mobile
• Widget for promoting open opportunities on other sites

Deferred

• Prompt people 1 month after they’ve joined or some time interval after last activity to fill out profiles, maybe send them a list of profiles as examples (which might be people they might like to meet -- near their location or in same agency or different agency or just random people who recently filled out their profiles

• As a user, I would like to connect my LinkedIn (this would connect my skills)

• As a task creator I should easily be able to share the task with others using the share button (without special browser configuration).

• As a user, when I click “I’m in” a message should appear that says you have been sent an email with further instructions.

• Newsletter integration

  • new members automatically signed up for newsletter

  • of new members (inclusive of newsletter subscribers) over time

  • Single list of community members: Govdelivery integration: all members should just get the newsletter and everyone who gets the newsletter should be a member.

• As an adminI should be able to see open tasks by age (how long open) -- most recent at top of task dashboard view

• Number of task takers that have have done multiple projects.  

• Admin dashboard includes

  • Tasks created by agency
  • Metrics for Repeat Engagement

    • repeat participants

    • participants for ongoing tasks

• As a task creator I should be automatically notified if my task has not picked up after X months -- if the task is still needed maybe prompt to promote or archive if not needed anymore?

Ideas for the future

• Personalized home page with activity stream, leaderboard, favorites task…

• Social media integration

  • tweet acknowledging task completed
  • people can tweet / facebook share a task
  • Automatic tweeting feature so every time we post a new opp, a tweet got scheduled so that we could approve and decide to send if we wanted to

• Notifications when tasks are posted that go to specific users based on their skills or interested

• Salesforce integration

• Home page optimization (currently focused on task-based marketing)

• As an adminI should be able to pull metrics reports by date filter (let’s wait until we have a huge number of rows in the spreadsheet that downloading is slow -- for now we’ll include all the data and people can sort in Excel or Google Sheets)

• SEO (search engine optimization) - after ATO & new domain name, then we could consider this, but near term goal is to focus on getting task creators to promote tasks to get high quality leads

• As a task creator I should be able to embed videos and images in the task posting.