Knowledge Repository Communications Plan

Introduction

Background

The primary goal for this Architecture, Development, and Deployment of a Knowledge Repository and Service is to address the needs of this extended community for a scalable, decentralized infrastructure for managing and disseminating operational metadata and information models, and their associated semantic constructs. The vision for the project is to re-imagine the caBIG technology environment as a more open and more readily extensible framework, one that can grow with less dependency on the centralized processes and systems that are manifest in the first generation of caBIG technology. In particular, the role of the central metadata registry, the caDSR, must be redefined as a federation of metadata registries that can be instantiated and plugged into the caBIG grid or an extended community "cloud" by any qualified entity.

The caDSR has a suite of tools and APIs that support workflows for metadata development, browsing and retrieval. In addition, the caDSR has been adapted to support the UML model-driven development paradigm adopted by caBIG. UML-defined information models such as those from the BRIDG project, caArray, caTissue, and others are each registered in the caDSR through conversion of the model elements into ISO11179 metadata constructs. This functionality, and the workflows that it supports, has evolved over an 8-year period and is now quite mature. It satisfies the current requirements for semantic representation in the current caBIG developer and user community, but it is ill-suited to serve the new requirements for decentralization and indefinite scalability in the broader health care community. The goal of this program is therefore to harvest and recycle the best elements of the first generation of caBIG metadata infrastructure, and to then incorporate those elements into a redesigned and modernized technology stack that is engineered from the start to support a federated deployment topology with far less centralized administration.

Stakeholders

Identification of stakeholders is a key first step in developing a communication plan. All stakeholders must be included in some form of communication, whether it be one-way communication or two-way communication.

Stakeholders	Perspective
caBIG Developers	Integrate Knowledge Repository services for discovery, metadata, and other application features.
Information Modelers	Leverage Knowledge Repository to reuse, create, extend, and manipulate their models.

Communication Plan

Project Status

Monthly Status Reports: monthly a comprehensive status of the project will be prepared and presented to the general contractor. It will consist of a project status overview, status of all deliverables and milestones, a detailed description of all project activities for that month, an overview of activities planned for the next month, status and resolutions of outstanding risks, newly identified risks with the mediation plan, and a comprehensive overview of spent hours/dollars and planned hours/dollars. We have found that pairing the preparation of this report with a presentation to the general contractor and (optionally) the NCI program manager(s) provides a key mechanism for communicating status and making adjustments to the project plan.

Product Demonstrations: product demonstrations are a key aspect of our approach to reporting. We will plan one or more end-user oriented demonstrations that will present our progress to date and our plans for the upcoming iterations. These demonstrations will take place with each code release at a minimum, but may occur as frequently as each iteration. These demonstrations will therefore provide one additional mechanism by which the progress of the project will be communicated and the project plan can be adjusted to meet stakeholder needs. The product demonstrations will be coordinated by the Project Manager and performed by the Architect.

Project Summary: a key outcome of this project will be the final project summary. This important artifact will describe the work accomplished, issues encountered and resolutions to them, recommendations for future enhancements, potential implementation strategies, and lessons learned. A draft of this summary will be prepared 30 days before the project is completed in order that it can be presented to and reviewed by the general contractor.

Development Planning

Daily Scrums: following the Scrum Methodology, the Project Manager will oversee daily 15 minute meetings where each attendee will update the team on progress made in the previous day, progress planned for the next day, and any roadblocks.

Scrum Planning: each Sprint, the Project Manager will host a Sprint retrospective meeting, as well as a Sprint Planning meeting.

Communication Matrix

Event	Weekday	Time	Members	Length	Method
Daily Scrum	Daily: Monday through Friday	1 pm	Entire Team (internal) optional for Larry Brem, Dave Hau, Tim Casey	15 minutes	Teleconference Phone: 1.218.844.0850 Access Code: 830915# Centra Event ID: KR
Sprint Retrospective and Planning Meeting	Last day of the month	Tbd	Entire team (internal)	2 hours	Teleconference Phone: 1.218.844.0850 Access Code: 830915# Centra Event ID: KR
End of sprint demo to Larry Brem, Dave Hau, Tim Casey	Last day of the month	Tbd	Entire team with Larry Brem, Dave Hau, Tim Casey	1 hour	Teleconference Phone: 1.218.844.0850 Access Code: 830915# Centra Event ID: KR

Content

Space Tools