Best Practices

Identify Team Members

It is important to identify everyone working on the project.

Define Roles and Responsibilities

Once the team members have been identified, they can be assigned roles on the project.  On OpenMRS projects, team members may fill multiple roles.  

The roles assigned may include:

• Project Stakeholders

• Subject Matter (domain) Experts

• Project Manager

• Business Analyst

• Software Developer

• Software Tester

• Technical Writers

• Quality Assurance Personals 

• Designers

Hold a kickoff meeting

If possible, it is effective to have everyone on one call to discuss the previously defined roles and responsibilities, project vision and to get everyone’s opinion on scope and schedule.

Define Scope/Schedule

It is important to define the following:

• Business need: What problem is being solved?

• Project Objectives:  How is it being solved?

• Scope: What is being delivered?

• Key Milestones:  How to measure progress?

• Schedule: What timeline is expected?

Communication Strategy

The above items should be documented in a plan with the following:

• How/what tools should be used to provide updates?

• What information to be provided in updates

• How often should updates be given?

• How often should meetings be held?

Project Plan

The above items should be documented in a plan with the following:

• Scope

• Targeted Schedule

• Roles/Responsibilities

• Communication Strategy

Posting projects to Talk

Answering these questions while announcing the start of a project will help communicate its needs and goals: 

• What is the project?

• What problems is this project trying to solve?

• Who's doing it?

• What's the timeframe?

• Here's how to get involved!