We have a number of enhancements to the Essential Project currently going through the Essential Community Process, so we thought it would be worth a quick re-visit of the process and the enhancements we are working on.
We are keen that enhancements to Essential are in line with what is required by the community, and that these include enhancements both requested and contributed by the community.
The Essential Project Team will provide governance of the Essential Project Tools and co-ordinate requests for enhancements, taking other similar requests into account before designing and delivering them.
Likewise, contributions of completed components, e.g. a new analysis report or meta model extension, can be shared by contributors through the Essential Project website. When a meta model extension is received, the Team will produce the update pack to make it simple for other community members to introduce the extension to their Essential installation.
We feel that requests for additional capabilities (modelling, reporting or software extensions) should be developed with the community to make sure that as many different perspectives on the same requirement are considered. The ECP has been designed to bring a sense of order to how the contribution process works.
What is the ECP?
The Essential Community Process (or ECP) is about capturing requirements and reviewing the proposed solution with as wide a group as possible. Although in many cases (especially in the early stages of the Project) the Essential Project Team will be the ones developing the solution, the process does not assume this – it could be any member of the community.
The process can be iterative and will operate as follows:
• Request
• Discuss and gather further requirements from community
• Design proposed solution
• Circulate to the community for defined period of time
• Implement
• Test within the community
• Review tests and approve
• Release update
Clearly there’s a balance to strike between taking a controlled approach and the time it takes to produce the answer to the request, and we will ensure that the time taken is proportionate to the scope and complexity of the requirement being met (in some cases, perhaps only days).
We have already completed an extension to allow capture of software licenses (ECP – 1) using this process, which is available as a candidate release for download via the Share option in Community.
We have another two extensions currently in progress:-
• ECP – 2 – to provide a capability for capturing and modelling Organisational Policies and Compliance
and
• ECP 3 – which is split into two parts – ECP 3.1 and ECP 3.2 and introduces the capability to capture references to external documentation for any element in the repository.
If you have any thoughts on requirements that you have in these areas, or any other suggestions for enhancements, please let us know by taking part in the Essential Project Enhancements and Extensions forum.