Development roadmaps

We have public roadmaps for each of our primary services:

• Online Archive of California development roadmap
• Calisphere development roadmap
• Collection Management Systems development roadmap

Online Archive of California roadmap (above)

These roadmaps reflect our goals and associated priorities for the current academic year and contain:

• high level enhancements and new features,
• significant maintenance tasks,
• major projects, and
• substantial areas of R&D.  

We’re using Trello for this effort, so all tasks and activities are described in “cards,” which are then organized in “lists” based on when staff will tackle them.  As shown below in a screenshot of the Calisphere roadmap, the leftmost list contains a brief description of the service, instructions for making new feature requests, and the service goals for that year.

Calisphere roadmap: Service Description, Feature Requests, and Goals (above)

Reading from left to right in the annotated example below, lists reflect the prioritization and completion status of a card, from “Recently Released” [1] to “In Progress” [2] to “Up Next” [3] to “Planned for AY 2018/2019” [4] to “Future Tasks” [5], with that latter column serving as a holding place for tasks we hope to get to now, but which may not be started until the following year. Cards move to the left as work progresses–or move rightward if activity is paused or reconsidered. We also have a process for evaluating new potential activities and adding them to the roadmap mid-year, when warranted.

Calisphere roadmap: “Lists” reflect prioritization and completion status (above)

Because our roadmaps are public, anyone can click on a link and see what we’re doing.  Those interested in a specific area of work can get automatically notified about updates by creating a free Trello account and choosing to “Watch” the card describe that task, as shown in the screenshot below.  

“Watching” a card from the Collection Management Systems roadmap (above)

We believe organizing our work in this way brings a host of benefits, including:

• prioritizing high level tasks within the context of ongoing needs and requests;
• increasing transparency with UC library partners, administrative stakeholders, contributors, end users, and funders; and
• adjusting priorities as needed in response to important unexpected requests and opportunities.

We are eager to learn about features and areas of work you think are important for us to tackle, so please take a moment to look at our current roadmaps, then start a discussion in our community forums to make suggestions or +1 an existing idea for the upcoming year!

To track our work on specific development tasks, please see the CDL Pivotal Tracker queues: Operations (issues, features, and bugs) and Product Development (user-facing new Calisphere features).

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