• JiscProjectReviewTemplate

1. Introduction

This page contains templates in the form of tables that allow to summarize important aspects of JISC projects.

The tables are being created with information gathered from:

• the review of JISC projects that took place from 6 March to 1 April 2007

• the review of SurveyTools in August 2007

and will be used by OSS Watch to inform the development of the catalogue building tool Simal.

If there is one thing that became clear in the reviews cited above, it is that a single template/table would be impractical for JISC projects. The reason is that JISC projects have such a wide range of deliverables (software, services, documentation, data, infrastructure...), sizes, structures and products (from writing one small stand-alone application to integrating scores of them in a Virtual Research Environment) that a single template would either need to lack any specific information, or be too large and burdensome.

Instead, this page proposes to use cascading tables. That is, information is split between different tables, that go from more general to more specific in the type of features they address.

All projects have a common table called Project Info. This table can be used to compile information about the project team, community tools, etc. and also has entries for Products.

Each Product entry is a pointer to a Product Info table. A different Product Info table will exist for each type of product. For example, the table for software applications will be different from the table for digitised data.

In turn, tables will be designed for each category within each type, as required. Take as an example the review of SurveyTools. For survey tools we have identified 3 tables of interest, each with features that are relevant to different aspects of a surveys software application:

• Survey design: e.g. the layout editor, or file format to export the questionnaire
• Survey running time: e.g. whether it is possible to go back in the survey, or save and later load a partially answered survey
• Question types: as it is useful to have a list of all possible question types in a single table

2 final advantages of this scheme are that

• if the tables need to be upgraded, only a subset of projects will be affected, smaller the more specific the table is
• it will be easier to get projects to fill their Simal project files if they have only fields that are relevant to them

2. Tables

2.1. Basic Project Info

These are categories that explain general aspects about the project, development, community, etc.

• Products: list of products released by this project

• Leader: project leader or project manager

• Website: homepage of the project

  • system used for the project's website, if any
  • general quality of the website, in terms of presentation and usefulness

• Version ctrl: version control system used by the development team, if any

• Issue tracker: bug tracking, feature request, etc. system used by the development team, if any

• Mailing lists: mailing lists available for the project

  • system
  • what is it used for (subscribers/messages)

• Forums: forums available for the project (subscribers/messages)

• IRC: IRC channels

  • system
  • what is it used for

• Blogs: blogs available for the project

  • system
  • what is it used for (level of activity)

• Wikis: wikis available for the project

  • system
  • what is it used for (level of activity)

2.2. Advanced Project Info

The advanced project info table consists of information that can either be automatically retrieved or cannot reliably be captured by those outside of the project team.

These are categories that explain general aspects about the project, development, community, etc.

• Team: roles in the project team/community, and number of people in each (try to avoid overlapping duplicating role descriptions if necessary)

• Governance: governance model for the project, e.g. benevolent dictator, codehaus-like, meritocracy... (for more info see ExamplesOfOpenSourceGovernanceModels)

• Activity: perceived activity in the project

• Web val: validation tests for website

  • W3C HTML: W3C XHTML/HTML validation result
  • W3C CSS: W3C CSS validation result
  • W3C WCAG: W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines validation result (errors/warnings)

• Paid dev: whether the project offers the opportunity to hire developers to fix bugs, develop new features, etc

• Paid support: whether the project offers the opportunity to get dedicated support paying a fee

• Sponsors: companies, institutions, etc that finance the project

• Relations: connections of this project to other projects

2.3. Software application product info

Categories specific about a software application product.

• Type: all products in this review are expected to be "Web software application", but this category has been added for compatibility with the JISC projects review

• Version: latest version numbers of the application

• Released: how the application is released, if it is released

• Main Licence/©: list of licences in the main application, and the copyright holder (number of files with that licence)

• Dep Licence/©: list of licences in plugins, extensions, etc., and the copyright holder (number of files with that licence)

• Platform: system(s) the application is available for

• Language: programming languages for the application

• Reqs (man): mandatory hardware/software requisites to run the application

• Reqs (man): mandatory hardware/software requisites to run the application

• Dev doc: documentation available for developers

  • formats used for documents
  • perceived quality

• DD Licence/©: licence of the dev documentation / copyright holder

• User doc: documentation available for users

  • formats used for documents
  • perceived quality

• UD Licence/©: licence of the user documentation / copyright holder

The content of this wiki is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 England & Wales Licence.

OSS Watch is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and is situated within the Research Technologies Service (RTS) of the University of Oxford.