CNM Cloud Project

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CNM Cloud Project (hereinafter, the Project) is an endeavor to provide the Career Network Ministry with CNM Cloud in order to deliver services of CNM Digital. Friends Of CNM Cloud Administrator is responsible and members of Careerprise Team (hereinafter, the Team) shall be accountable for this Project. The Project is a part of Friends Of CNM Program.


Project-wide requirements

Business requirements

Main wikipage: CNM Digital

Solution requirements

Main wikipage: CNM Cloud requirements
CNM Cloud requirements is the best wikipage to overview general solution requirements; however, different parts of the Cloud have their specific requirements that are or shall be published at their wikipages. A big portion of solution requirements is also published in Russian -- https://wiki.ksacerts.com/ru/Брацко_Облако

Phases

First phase -- beginnings

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

Executive summary of the Project's 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.
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 Careerprise 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:

Second phase (current) -- embryo

Main wikipage: CNM Cloud Project second phase
Executive summary of the embryo phase. Several concepts, lessons learned, and pieces of software that was developed in the First phase have been utilized in the successor phase. The Team calls the new phase Embryo because the embryo of the new cloud is going to be developed during this phase. The key developments could be summarized as follows. The Team:
  1. Identified:
  2. Designed and is implementing a new recruitment process based on the core package of developed technology;
  3. Dramatically increased funding for both technology development and recruitment.

Third phase (future) -- organization

CNM Ventureware based on an Odoo instance shall be the primary deliverable of the third phase. Other deliverables may include Eventtune, CNM Calendar, CNM Videoshareware, CNM Mailware, CNM Talkware. New sprints of Opplet.net are also expected.

Fourth phase (future) -- security

Private clouds such as Dev Cloud, Production Cloud, and Control Cloud shall be primary deliverables of the fourth phase of the Project.

Fifth phase (future) -- federation

At the fifth phase of the Project, the initial requirements, CNM Digital by Loredana C, shall be revised and tested on the completion. This phase is also reserved for any developments, especially federations, that haven't been accomplished in the previous phases.

Current state

Developers

Three members of the development group who are currently working on the Project are as follows:
  1. Romanof. As the PHP sub-project manager and developer, Romanof developed all working parts of the existing technology. Romanof also documented in Fixett a deal of the work done;
  2. Gary Ihar. As the product owner, Gary is drafting documentation in CNM Wiki on every software included in the second phase;
  3. Natalia. As a vendor liaison, Natalia is working on CNM Wikiware documentation.

Completion rates

The DADP is the development cycle that includes 4 components: (1) discover, (2) analyze, (3) design, and (4) plan. No component is fully developed to the date. The following table presents estimates on every component of every software to be launched:
CNM software Service Sprint Description DADP component
Discover Analyze Design Plan
Platform Infrastructure (temporarily, outsourced) Second Requirements and designs are drafted in Russian in Fixett; DigitalOcean is temporarily used for implementations 90% 90% 90% 90%
Middleware Opplet.net Fourth Requirements and designs are drafted in Russian in Fixett; Opplet.net handles user management for CNM Cloud 75% 75% 75% 75%
Apps
Productware Fixett Second Requirements and designs are drafted in Russian in Fixett; the current implementation is located at a classified URL 50% 50% 50% 50%
Courseware Campus Second Requirements and designs are drafted in Russian in Fixett and English in CNM Wiki; the current implementation is located at https://campus.ksacerts.com 25% 25% 25% 25%
Wikiware Wiki Second Requirements and designs are drafted in Russian in Fixett and English in CNM Wiki; the current implementations are located at https://wiki.ksacerts.com and, in Russian, at https://wiki.ksacerts.com/ru 90% 90% 90% 90%
Publicware CNM website Second Requirements and designs are drafted in English in CNM Wiki; some implementations launched in the first sprint include worldopp.org and careernetworkministry.org 25% 10% 10% 0%

Challenges

Lack of procurement documentation is still the primary obstacle for the Project to move forward faster. There are a plenty of developers ready to implement technical requirements, but those requirements are needed to be documented. If some backup has been de-facto implemented, the state of cyber-security is either inappropriate or unknown.

Vacancies

Neither education nor experience is needed for the vacancies listed below. Full-time (at least, 40 hours a week) availability and willingness to learn on the job (and any learning includes so-called "errors" and "mistakes") are absolute musts. Since English language is the primary medium at Friends Of CNM, some level of English capacity is needed as well.
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