2023-01-16 - Internal kick off OS2Valghalla 3.0

Owned by Jesper Borup
Last updated: Jan 23, 2023 by Mogens Kjeldsen (Unlicensed)
6 min read

 Date

Jan 16, 2023

 Participants

  • @Mogens Kjeldsen (Unlicensed)

  • @Anne-Marie Mikkelsen

  • @Dan Nobel

  • @Jesper Borup

  • @Hao Le Anh

  • @Phuong Huynh Thanh (Unlicensed)

 Goals

  • Internal project kick-off

  • Team introduction

  • Scrum and Agile introduction

  • Way of working

Agenda

  • Welcome

    • Agenda

    • Around the table

      • Presentation & expectations

  • Presentation of OS2Valghalla 3.0 v. Mogens

  • Presentation of OS2Valghalla 3.0

    • Development project

    • Shared core platform

    • Danish branch

  • Break

  • Scrum framework

    • Team

    • Roles and responsibility

    • Scrum

  • Backlog

    • User stories

    • Non-technical requirements

  • Ways of working

    • Jira

    • Confluence

    • Sprints

    • Increments & demo

 

Introduction

  • Hao and Phuong will be back the 30th of January

  • Todays purpose is to set the stage for the project

  • Mogens will be the product owner and customer representative

  • Anne-Marie: If needed, feel free to ask questions directly to Mogens. It is important that we keep the communication flow very transparent.

  • Remember; if you are in doubt at any time what your responsibilities are or what is expected of you, please do not be afraid to ask.

 

Presentation round

  • Dan: Lead architect/developer. Will be the equivalent of Daniel from the Swedish team.

  • Hao: Developer for 6 years at Precio Fishbone, with main focus on Omnia.

  • Phuong: Working with Omnia for 8 years. Working currently with Danish customer tickets.

  • Mogens: Have a background as a project lead/coordinator. Worked a lot with websites. Will also be looking at data models.

  • Jesper: Been at precio fishbone for a little over a year. Got a background in front-end dev and design. Big Data dev and Python development.

  • Anne-Marie (or Ann or Annie): Will be the project lead for the project and setting the project framework. One of my main tasks will be to support the rest of the team and help answering questions. I'm very excited to get started and work with everyone on the team.

 

Presentation of OS2Valghalla 3.0 v. Mogens

  • Project background

    • Danish elections

      • Usually no more than once a year

      • Sometimes they are not announced more than 3-4 weeks before the election, which means the municipalities are in a hurry to start recruiting people and handling who does what and where.

    • Motivation for a system

      • Some municipalities use a combination of several different software solutions, which can become a mess

      • The municipalities lack manpower and need to reduce the number of trivial manual tasks

      • Danish citizens are used to being able handle tasks themselves/self-service

      • It is difficult to ensure that the person has a right to vote

    • Why "3.0"?

      • Version 1.0 was based on Drupal 7

      • Version 2.0 is an upgraded version, but still has issues in relation to bad UX and bugs. Drupal 7 has end of life this year.

      • Version 3.0. Completely fresh (in relation to tech, as it will no longer be based on Drupal).

    • OS2valghalla 3.0 will offer

      • Improved task solving

      • More self-service

      • Compliance with GDPR.

      • Support for recruitment and handling of external and employees, both before, during and after the election.

    • Success criteria

      • Top 5 most important:

        1. Ready for the election, reliable, and up-to-date.

        2. Validation of participants. Ensure the person is entitled to vote.

        3. More self-service. Reduce manual tasks.

        4. A modern system. The system needs to be intuitive, easy to use and up-to-date.

    • OS2 - public digitization community

      • OS2

        • Open source and public collaboration

        • OS2 is not a supplier but offers a framework for collaboration on OS2valghalla

        • OS2valgahalla will also be open source and a part of the OS2 framework.

    • Crowdfunding

      • Financed by crowdfunding between 22 municipalities

      • Consists of product coordinator, project group and steering group.

 

Presentation of OS2Valghalla 3.0 v. Anne-Marie

Development project

  • The project is very important, as it will be a part of the Danish democratic process

  • No fixed scope, but Mogens have created a lot of epics and user stories.

  • Mogens and his stakeholders has bought consultant hours from us, which means we (Precio Fishbone) have to be transparent when working and keep the communication flow transparent. Everyone is welcome to present ideas or ask questions.

Shared core platform

  • Based on the Swedish Kaskelot system

  • The shared core platform will have two branches: OS2valghalla (the Danish branch) and Kaskelot 2.0 (the Swedish branch).

  • We will already start building the Danish branch while the core is being worked on

OS2Valghalla 3.0

  • Unique requirements from the Swedish branch

    • The Danish branch, OS2valghalla, will especially differ on:

      • Functionality

      • Integrations

      • Layout

 

Scrum Framework

  • Important that we encourage transparency, inspection and adaption.

  • The three most important words; Yes, No, and Help.

    • Yes: If you agree to a task.

    • No: Say no if you cannot do a task or you feel it does not fit your strengths. Do not be afraid to say No.

    • Help: Ask for help when you need it, no matter the size of the question. We are a team and we need to help each other and play on our different strengths.

 

Teamwork

  • Our teamwork is crucial for the project.

  • It is important at all times that everyone in the team understands why we are doing the activities/tasks and where we are heading

  • Five important team values, that everyone in the team needs to follow.

    • Commitment

      • Committed to the goals of the product and sprint

    • Courage

      • If we for instance are getting off-track, we should have the courage to get everyone back on track and achieve what we have committed to do.

    • Focus

      • Staying on track at all time and have our focus at the right place.

    • Openness

      • We are going to be very open to talk about new ideas. If, for instance, you have some ideas to changes to the architecture then please bring them up and share.

    • Respect

      • We need to know each other's strengths and weaknesses. This way we can play on each other's strengths. For instance, if a different task suits your strengths better, then bring it up with the group or Anne-Marie.

      • Bear in mind that English is second language for everyone on the team. No one speaks English perfectly, so do not be afraid to ask if there is something you did not understand.

Roles and responsibilities

  • Scrum team

    • We are a scrum team

  • Product owner

    • Mogens is the product owner

      • Responsible for the product backlog

      • Defining user stories

      • Stakeholders

    • Mogens will be present in all our meetings

  • Scrum master

    • Facilitator

    • Manages the project framework and process

    • Helps eliminate "old fashioned" form of control

  • Developers

    • Committed to developing a usable increment for each sprint

The Scrum Framework

  • Product backlog

    • Every known requirement that we have

    • Requirements will have different priorities

    • Product refinement meetings

    • Planning poker will be used to help estimate tasks based on their complexity.

  • Sprint planning

    • Every sprint will be two weeks

    • There will be a sprint planning meeting before each sprint, to create a sprint backlog

  • Sprint backlog

    • Will be the backlog for the two weeks sprint

  • Scrum Team

    • Daily scrum is mainly for the developers, but Anne-Marie and Mogens will participate as well.

  • Increment

    • Each sprint has deliverables

  • Sprint Review

    • Review of the two week sprint

    • Will include demos

  • Sprint Retrospective

    • We'll discuss, after the sprint, what needs to be changed (if anything needs to be changed) to improve the next sprint.

The Agile Framework

  • Manifesto

    • Focus on high transparency throughout each sprint. Everyone needs to know what the goal is the project and sprint.

      • Sprint planning

      • Daily scrum

      • Sprint review

      • Sprint retrospective

    • Inspection.

      • Backlog refinement. The backlog is a living document and will continue to change with new requirements. What is important today might therefore not be important in two weeks.

      • Acceptance criteria & DoDs (Definition of Done). Needs to be clear to everyone what the DoDs are.

      • Team collaboration.

    • Adaption. We will adapt as the project goes along.

      • Action improvements

      • Daily plans

      • Forecasting

    • Principles.

      • "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools." Please ask questions and communication with each other, so we can play on each other's strengths.

      • "Working software over comprehensive documentation." Our main focus is to hand over a workable software at the deadline at 1st of September. We still need documentation, but working software takes priority.

      • "Customer collaboration over contract negotiation." The contract is already signed. Mogens and his team bought consultant hours from us. So we need to be transparent about our work.

      • "Responding to change over following a plan."

 

Artifacts

  • Product backlog

    • There will be a backlog for the shared core and one for each of the two branches (OS2Valghalla 3.0 and Kaskelot 2.0)

  • Sprint backlog

  • Increments

  • Burn down chart

Scrum of Scrums

  • Multiple teams working together

  • We are going to be component and feature based teams.

  • We are all part of the product (the infrastructure and business logic) but will branch out when it comes to design and integrations.

Backlog (Danish)

Product backlog

  • A living document, meaning new requirements will be added and removed throughout the project. It is one of the most important artifacts.

  • Epics

    • User stories

  • Non-functional requirements

  • Continuously delivering increments

OS2Valghalla 3.0 :: Initial Project Plan

  • Three phases

    • Analysis & research phase

    • Development phase

    • Test phase

Way of working

  • Jira

    • Backlog

    • The Jira platform

      • User Stories

        • User stories resides under "Issues" in Jira and each belong to an Epic.

        • Each user story has a description and can have attachments and be linked to other "issues".

        •  Subtasks can also be created to further break down the user story.

        • Each user story has acceptance criteria, which needs to be detailed so it is clear exactly what is needed to fulfill the criteria.

        • Each task will be assigned to a person.

      • Kanban board

        • Works with spring lanes. It is important to move the tasks, depending on the current progress of the task.

  • Confluence

    • Every relevant document will be put into confluence.

      • Meeting notes

        • Meetings notes will be uploaded here. Preferably there will be a new meeting note taker each meeting.

    • It is also a place for us (the team) to collect every decision we make. This way we can document our decisions.

  • Sprint

    • We are going to be working in sprints.

  • Planning poker

    • Will be a crucial part of our sprint planning.

  • Demo

    • The devs should create the demos, as the people who've done the work should also be the ones to present the work.

 Questions

  • Feel free to ask questions at any time during the project.

 Action items

Some of the Jira platform is in Danish, this needs to be changed to English. @Mogens Kjeldsen (Unlicensed) will take a look at this.