During our weekly meeting adding a section to the handbook to show what focusing on was proposed. Beyond keeping track for existing contributors, there is a great deal of history we lose and hard to find context for those starting to join this team. This new section would:

• Serve as a place to know what is being worked on across the project for the design team.
• Find out more details about each focus.

How would this look?

There are four components to this:

• A new section in the handbook called ‘Focus’.
• The first page of the handbook is a summary page of all current focuses. This would be a simple table linking to each (we could also surface this further up in make/design).
• The last is an archive link of past focus.
• A page per focus.

For this, to be current, each person(s) leading the projects would be responsible for keeping that page up to date. Another suggestion could also be to have regular (maybe monthly) checks in the design meeting.

What is a focus

This is where over time we will define this together. To start let’s look at some examples which could fall into ‘Focus’:

• A11yAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) color/styling work for 5.3
• Full site editing: as this starts to happen

We need to review as we go here what falls under needing a focus page.

Workflow

Let’s walk through and see what this would look like to add a new focus.

• Create a new page for the focus and link under handbook section ‘focus’.
• In that page have:
  • Title of that focus.
  • A description.
  • Who is currently working on this.
  • Timeline if known.
  • Links to all places the work is going on.
  • Space for updates with dates.
  • Note a #tag to be used on make/design so people can follow all conversations.
• Publish page and put in handbook categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. ‘Focuses’.
• Add a link to that page in the front page in Focuses table.

As work happens the person would perhaps:

• Add a prototype.
• Add a link to usability testing.

Once the focus is finished:

• Remove link from the front page Focuses table.
• Link page in the archive of Focuses page.
• Remove category ‘Focuses’.

The ‘Focuses’ archive will be ordered by year and a collection of links, including the version number of when released (if they were).

Next steps

If this is going to work, like with the TrelloTrello Project management system using the concepts of boards and cards to organize tasks in a sane way. This is what the make.wordpress.com/marketing team uses for example: https://trello.com/b/8UGHVBu8/wp-marketing. changes being suggested, reviewing is important. Setting a month to trial this seems like a good idea, then iteration can take place.

What do you think?

#organising #handbook