CNM Technology Board

The CNM Technology Board (hereinafter, the Board) is the part of the CNM Digital Team (hereinafter, the Team) that approves or disapproves its strategy. The CNM IT Office supports the Board.

Organization

Key members

• Gary Ihar -- gary
• Michael Confoy -- michaelc

Meetings

Hybrid bi-weekly

Decisions

Majority; two weeks for a decision

Methodologies

Main wikipage: CNM Agile

We need someone to own tasks. If you own it and can do it all, great. If you will need more than one person on it, that should be noted once we have the tasks in the wiki or via response to this if necessary. For example, MichaelC is looking for someone that would like to do some of the work under his direction for the training task as it can be very useful learning experience as a software evaluation using a bake off is a common practice.

Deciding on ...

... team's endeavors

The Board approves or disapproves the strategy for the development of CNM Digital known as CNM Digital Transformation.

... team's services

The Board defines the portfolio of the services included into CNM Digital and the technology behind the services.

... the technology

The Board defines the CNM Cloud, which is the bundle of technology that supports CNM Digital.

Endeavors

New meeting model

The Board would like to determine mechanism for virtual meetings using some free outsourced or on-premises open-source software.

Backlog

Main wikipage: CNM Digital (requirements)

The Board would like to create backlog document or a set of documents on wiki with these tasks, who is lead on task and link to work on task.

Ken is willing to take that task. For that he should be able to complete initial draft during a 1-hour working session on a Tuesday night. (If necessary, it could be done with much less time as a copy-paste from this email, but he would hope to have better quality than that.)

This backlog document shall contain relevant user stories, so the task is to begin the process of creating project requirements in the form of user stories on one or more wiki pages. Each user story has a user story card which has a notes section with status information. Here is some information about that. The backlog email is a list of short descriptions of tasks or projects with some status information. That is a good place for us to start. Frequently Agile projects or Hybrid-Agile projects have task cards and/or story-cards describing the tasks to be completed. The tasks are often given as user stories in a certain form. (Sometimes these are on actual large index cards or post-it notes, but often they are on electronic task cards in a system like JIRA or a wiki or some other project management software system.)

So requirements are often actually "Agile Stories" describing the desired outcome at very high level in the form of completing the blanks in this sentence: "As a [blank <type-of-user>] I want [blank <some-goal-or-objective>] so that [blank <benefit-or-value>]". Example from government website: "As an Editor, I want a way to review content before it is published so that I can assure it is optimized with correct grammar and tone." [Retrieved from public website https://tech.gsa.gov/guides/user_story_example/ ]. All this is simpler when you see it than when you try to understand it from a descriptive paragraph.

Team's server(s)

Main wikipage: CNM Next Server

The Friends Of CNM runs the CNM Cloud Project designed to develop CNM Cloud. Currently, the CNM Fellow Server handles CNM Digital. The Friends Of CNM makes a learning and testing variant of the CNM Fellow Server, called the CNM Next Server, available to the Team. Its system administrator is responsible for implementing the Board's decisions including permissions.

Upon the Board's decision, the Friends Of CNM is also committed to deploying another server for the Team's special projects such as deployment of Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware, etc.

New wiki software

The Board agrees that:

• MediaWiki has a few drawbacks, including a non-intuitive editor and not being mobile-friendly.
• Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware has a few features that can be useful for the Team purposes.

Thus, the Board shall:

1. Research documents on competitive packages. The results of this research shall be posted at the wiki engine document.
2. Identify criteria to select a better-suited software package.
3. Select 2-5 software packages to be evaluated more closely.
4. Deploy the selected packages and evaluate them in order to make a decision to either migrate or combine the current MediaWiki instance with another software package or anything else.

Registration

Main wikipage: CNM Registration Project

The CNM Registration Project aims to create a user-friendly process for registration of new volunteers. Particular problems to be solved are:

• Real accounts to database so user updates can happen with database
• Define how usability testing happens
• Registration of new volunteers on wiki

Recruiting

The Board would like to document its recruiting process from sourcing and up to onboarding, as well as best practices and/or recommendations for future. Particularly, the CNM Digital Orientation and instructions for beginner program coordinators (officially known as CNM IT Project Coordinators) as part of on-boarding process shall be created.

Mentoring

The Board would like to create the Team's mentor-protégé program for those recruits who have succeeded in their CNM IT Project Coordinator roles. MichaelC can mentor some learner in cyber-security, while Gary Ihar can mentor some learner in project administration.

Technical links/sources as part of mentoring process: NIST Security Links:

• https://csrc.nist.gov/
• https://www.nist.gov/cyberframework
• https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/CSWP/NIST.CSWP.04162018.pdf
• https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2017/04/03/baldrige-cybersecurity-excellence-builder-v1.0.pdf
• https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Publications/sp/800-171/rev-2/draft/documents/sp800-171r2-draft-ipd.pdf
• https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Publications/sp/800-171b/draft/documents/sp800-171B-draft-ipd.pdf
• https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-171A.pdf
• https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-163r1.pdf

Q&As

I love to hear about the Board. Please tell me more.

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