CNM Cloud Beginnings

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CNM Cloud Project beginnings is the first phase of CNM Cloud Project, which was completed by the beginning of 2018. CNM Cloud Project embryo is the next phase.


Initial user stories

Initial user stories were created by Loredana C. and are published at CNM Digital by Loredana C.

Software used in early stages

The applications that were used in early stages included Opplet.net, Redmine, Apache Subversion (SVN), Moodle, MediaWiki, and WordPress. The first private cloud was built on an OpenStack instance. However, the applications were not moved to the cloud because of its immaturity. Only Opplet.net and Redmine are still operational after the crash that occurred in 2016.

History of the beginnings

The beginnings of the Project could be characterized by three factors:
  1. Many experiments including software ventures and examinations of both technology and various organizational structures designed to support that technology;
  2. Unbalanced and often disruptive availability of resources. Although the Team enjoyed assistance of a number of volunteers, donor's money, software subscriptions, and venues, the Team's inability to pay for technology sustainability ultimately led to several adverse events including the major technology crash in 2016 and further necessity to destroy the first cloud.
  3. Poor recording, documenting, and storage facilities. For instance, just few training materials were saved and just a couple of videos were taken at hundreds of training sessions. As a result, volunteer time could be utilized way more efficiently.
Nonetheless, a few significant concepts, lessons learned, and lines of code were developed during this initiating phase of the Project.

Early tech skills training

In 2012, Gary Ihar organized first hands-on technology training sessions of Career Network Ministry in Tysons Corner Microsoft store. Its descendant sessions used more venues. With few exceptions, the training sessions were conducted on a volunteer basis. In 2012-2016, the following training topics were covered by the following trainers:
Software topics Trainers and presenters
Usage
Administration
Development

Early public cloud usage

In June of 2013, the Team obtained 250 packages of subscriptions, each worth more than $500, most notably, for Microsoft Azure and Office 365 Enterprise, and dedicated remote support as a generous grant. Initially, Gillermo Lopez and, later, Roger Akins led a project to distribute those subscriptions among patrons of Career Network Ministry. The project was closed after one year when the donor decided to end the donation.

Early learning systems

Initial works that later contributed to the Project were started as early as in 2007. The initial development group consisted of Gary Ihar as the code developer and product owner and Romanof as the PHP developer. Until 2014, solutions were presented by various combinations of MediaWiki and Moodle. A special solution to integrate those, called Opplet.net, was initiated and coded by Gary Ihar in 2014. Revisions by Zlomovsky completed its first sprint in 2015. The first version of Opplet.net used SimpleSAMLphp as its authentication tool.

Early enterprise-wide systems

In 2015-2016, the concept of CNM Digital emerged. Loredana C. developed initial requirements for a complex system to serve patrons of Career Network Ministry (CNM). Later, the requirements were posted at CNM Digital by Loredana C. To implement those, Alexandrovich joined the Team as the system architect and Natalia did so as the solution architect. Instances of Liferay and SuiteCRM were added and the platform was moved from DigitalOcean to Hetzner and newly based on Proxmox. Several instances of Odoo were also installed, but never integrated to the platform because Odoo didn't support SimpleSAMLphp. Romanof also installed an instance of Redmine separately from the platform. In addition, Romanof completed the second sprint of Opplet.net while moving its initial code from plain PHP to the Yii framework.

Great crash of 2016

In 2016, the platform collapsed and all developments, but Opplet.net and Redmine, were lost. At the moment of the crash, Opplet.net and Redmine were still stored at DigitalOcean.

Early private cloud

In 2016-2017, a couple of endeavors to launch a private cloud were undertaken. Initially, Alexander was the primary technology vendor, Eunice contributed to its requirements, and Wushnevska worked on Odoo and Redmine instances. Instances of Odoo were installed temporarily apart from the cloud, at careernetworkministry.org, theeconomicgroup.org, and worldopp.org. Alexander succeeded to build the first private cloud using OpenStack. However, no instance was integrated on this cloud, particularly, because of lack of documentation. Wushnevska tried to address the documenting task, but her retirement from the Project postponed her developments.
In order to develop the cloud documentation, Gary Ihar once hired a system engineer, Anand from India, but the work on the cloud architecture couldn't be completed without documented requirements for CNM apps, which were not available at that time. Later, the first cloud was destroyed in order to cut expenses. Separate Odoo instances are still alive.

Shortcomings in management

So, the first cloud endeavors were not sustainable. Generally speaking, project administration had had been a serious challenge since the Project's inception, mostly or significantly, because of unbalanced resources. The development group needed some combination of business analysts, system engineers, and project managers at least to design concepts to be developed and to create requirements for those concepts, but couldn't find qualified candidates who would have matched the existing budget.

Early management training

Since late 2012, project management training became one of core services that the Team offered. About a half of the training sessions was conducted on a volunteer basis. In 2012-2017, the following training topics were covered by the following trainers:
Topics Trainers and presenters
Project management
  • General concepts: Dr. Jack Tsou, Daniel M. Gonzales, Mercedes Butler, Charlotte McKenzie, Chuck Taylor, Jay Parrish, Dr. John Colleman III, Dr. Ali Abedi (PMBOK Guide)
  • Certification: Ibrahim Alamin (PMP)
  • Supporting concepts: Bill Fournier (systems engineering), Emmanuel Amanyeiwe (business intelligence)
More than one hundred of its participants had gotten their PMP certifications constitute the overall success of the training. However, with regard to the Project, the training hasn't accomplished its mission to bring business analysts, system engineers, and project managers on the board.

Early recruitment of learners

In the Washington DC metro area, the Team recruited through emails sent to patrons of the Career Network Ministry and Tech Events for Managers and Entrepreneurs meetup group. Although the Team succeeded to recruit hundreds of learners, the overwhelming majority of them participated spontaneously. It was hard to find committed participants who would stay with the Team for long time since the beginning of the Project. Further, the trend was even more negative as the unemployment rate lowered in the United States.

Early worldwide outreach

In 2016, the Team attempted to reach out to international learners. Later, this idea matured into the WorldOpp programme; its development is now known as WorldOpp Project.
In 2017-2018, several endeavors to recruit vocational learners were attempted through some job-bidding websites worldwide. However, those websites granted access to only those freelancers who expected to exchange their time to money and were not willing to dedicate enough time to learning. More importantly, the technology behind the programme, most notably, CNM Courseware, wasn't developed fully yet. At that time, it seemed that the interested candidates just couldn't be directed well remotely, without personal involvement.
In winter of 2017-2018, Gary Ihar traveled to Ukraine in order to find partners for WorldOpp Project. Nevertheless, no partners were identified since the programme's idea was still pretty raw. Two other reasons that may have contributed to that result were (a) the low unemployment rate in Ukraine and (b) its residents' tendency to favor the traditional educational system. The programme was clearly not ready to be launched then.

Idea of orientation

Overall, the recruitment process was neither efficient nor effective in the first stages of the Project. On the one hand, the Team onboarding was quite expensive; in late 2013, it peaked more than $600 per candidate. On another hand, the overwhelming majority of candidates were not interested in joining the Team. An idea of WorldOpp Orientation was developed in order to address this dilemma. When it is launched, the interested candidates shall be offered to take a quick orientation course, in which they shall be able to learn about the Team and its activities. Those candidates who pass its final exam shall be considered as ready to get started onboarding.

Deliverables of the beginnings

  1. Software:
  2. Concepts:
  3. Lessons learned:
  4. CNM websites:
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