Functional Team Work Process

Owned by Megan Forbes
Last updated: Dec 18, 2019
2 min read

The functional team guides the development of the CollectionSpace functional requirements, including procedures (e.g. acquisition, loans) and administrative interactions (e.g. search, user management), and overall system usability.

Process Overview

  • Information gathering: sources include published museum standards (e.g. SPECTRUM ), domain-specific guidelines (e.g. the Visual Resources Association, CHIN recommendations), use cases submitted by colleagues and implementing institutions, activity analysis of existing implementers, notes gathered at the two community design workshops held in March and May of 2008, and a competitive product survey.
  • Requirements page on wiki, including: definition, list of requirements (some of which may not ever be developed), links to existing standards and guidelines, and relevant schema, use cases.
  • Workflow analysis, User story development: Review steps in the use cases, combine and edit to create a coherent workflow. Break down into user stories.
  • Tech review: Work with engineers to group user stories into v1, v2, etc. of the functionality.
  • Prototypes/Wireframes: Via paper, wireframe application (e.g. Mockflow), draw the interactions. Request feedback from those who provided use cases, and those who didn't (via talk list). Iterate.
  • Tech review 2: Work with engineers to add Jiras for user stories to sprints.
  • Develop QA plan for each v of functionality.
  • Test and release.

Sample requirements page: Acquisition Requirements

The requirements page is refined as items are considered for inclusion within a release to break down the entirety of the functionality into smaller pieces. 

Throughout the process, functional team members work with and respond to feedback from the design and development teams in order to refine and clarify the requirements.

Use Cases

Use cases describe real-world issues faced by collections-holding institutions that assist with the development of CollectionSpace functionality and interfaces. Use cases may take the form of a list of requirements, or a prose description of a scenario or process.

Schema / Data Dictionaries

Schemas describe the contents and structure of the records that represent various entities in the CollectionSpace system. Schemas are composed of individual information units ("fields" or "data elements"), which are usually organized into groups of related information units, known as information groups.

Each information unit contains a number of attributes, including its definition, default data type, whether it is part of a set of fields, and whether it is repeatable (on its own, as part of a set, or both).

Sample schema: Acquisition Schema