It’s been a minute! We’ve just started a new heartbeat, and now we have a giant team working on the Teach site. Our stand-up today looked like The Brady Bunch.

We’re now entering a stage where we have three strands of work running in parallel:

1. Engineers are setting up the technical framework for the new site, and are beginning to build out the pages that have been designed
2. Designers are polishing up the work they’ve done so far (accommodating some last minute requests from me!), and starting on a few new pages and workflows
3. Members of the Learning Networks team are finalizing copy and content for the various pages

If every strand can keep moving, we’ll be in good shape for the release at the end of the next heartbeat. Ideally, we’ll get into a rhythm where copy is finalized in the heartbeat *before* the design work, which is done in the heartbeat *before* development, but right now things are overlapping a bit.

Iterative Dev {It’s been so long since I’ve done an anagram! Here we go: Tea Revived It}

I’ve been thinking about how to build out this site in a way that reflects the evolving nature of the Learning Networks team work, and specifically the Clubs program. The answer is (always) to be agile.

It’s often difficult to agree on what should be included in a v1. I think the term “MVP” is one of the most abused terms in software. It is sometimes used to mean “do as little work as possible,” but the definition I like best is, “do as much as is needed to prove or disprove a hypothesis.”

This definition provides a great framework for determining what to include in a v1. If you can agree on a hypothesis, then every decision can be made by answering the question, “Do we need this to prove the hypothesis?”

For the Teach site, the hypothesis we’re testing is: “People will use the site to find teaching activities and add their Clubs to the map.”

So the v1 will seek to prove that. The priority items are a couple static pages that point to our high-quality curriculum modules, a Clubs page with an “Add Your Club” workflow, and some additional static content to flesh out the site.

Beyond Version One {Anagram: Sobered Onion Envy}

While  v1 is being created, we also need to start gearing up for the next iteration, which will be focused on building out more advanced tooling for the curriculum (so that we can add to those pages without developer involvement, and incorporate feedback and remix ideas from the community). This is essentially adding a fourth strand to the list above—a kind of “requirements gathering and brainstorming” strand.

(Side note: I like that the “build, measure, learn” cycle we’ll use to iterate on the site echoes the process we’re using to develop the curriculum with our community. Agile methods all around!)

Of course, even while using iterative development practices, we still need to keep the big picture in mind. To see the current thinking about future iterations, you can always check out the roadmap. I’m updating it regularly as our needs change, or as they become clearer to me.

http://hannahgrams.com/2015/03/04/its-been-a-minute-an-update-on-the-teach-site-some-thoughts-on-iterative-development/