Review & Update Personnel + Staffing Plan

[mheadd]

In Section 3.05, the required personnel need to be reviewed and possibly updated.

Similarly, the staffing plan in Section 4.06 needs to be reviewed for possible updates.

[randyhart]

@waldoj @joe and @DanaPenner I think this one is your call. What skills are we looking for, based on the scope of work?

[waldoj]

Under 3.05, we can strike SQL and SQL Server, and limit things to using REST APIs, instead of building them. In addition to responsive design, we'll want to require experience in building progressive web apps, specified something like this:

• Progressive web apps (web app manifests, service workers, offline functionality, push notifications, IndexedDB, localStorage, etc.)

[waldoj]

If we encase ORCA properly, we shouldn't need to require any experience beyond interfacing with REST APIs. Exchanging data with ORCA should be done via REST.

I am concerned about how we encase ORCA's authentication functionality. Done properly, this would use SAML, abstracting authentication so that developers don't need to have any special knowledge about it, and can use standard auth libraries. But if this isn't viable, then we may wind up requiring some special knowledge on developers' part.

[waldoj]

It strikes me as unlikely that we're going to get bids from vendors who have experience building progressive web apps (PWAs). We'll have some with experience with aspects of it—push notifications, localStorage—but I'm pessimistic that vendors with experience in this space are vendors who we can attract. So let's ensure that experience building a complete PWA isn't a requirement, but instead that the level of experience that they have will be important to us.

Fundamentally, PWAs aren't hard. A decent website developer with adequate experience developing responsive sites and writing Javascript to interface with HTML5 methods shouldn't have difficulty. I would not object to such a developer learning as they went.

[randyhart]

This makes a lot of sense to me. If @DanaPenner and @joe agree, I think you should go with making those changes.

[ghost]

I get encapsulating behind a REST API and using that to focus on progressive web app knowledge. What I'm not seeing is the expertise to go into the guts of ORCA and doing the encapsulation and inserting the API?

[waldoj]

That won't be up to the vendor—that's up to DHSS to do. We're abstracting away that complexity, so that we only need a website developer as a vendor, and not a hybrid website developer / Struts 1.1 API builder.

Of course, actually doing that is a risk. With Vraj's final report, we'll know what we'd actually be getting into.

[DanaPenner]

I'm mulling over the following in Section 3.05 for the required personnel. Do we think a Researcher is needed for this effort? Do we need both a User experience designer as well as a Visual designer? •Researcher •User experience designer •Visual designer

[mheadd]

@DanaPenner I think it possible (maybe likely) that those roles might actually be filled by the same person, rather than separate individuals for the different skillsets. I think the in the responses to the DPA RFP, most of the vendors proposed having a single person, or two people fill all of those roles.

[DanaPenner]

@waldoj can you please propose any changes?

[randyhart]

@waldoj ping. if there's a need to change anything, please propose the changes.

[waldoj]

I completely overlooked this—my apologies. It was a quick edit, and is proposed as #38.

[susanjabal]

closed per Waldo's edits indicated above.