Webian Project Inception

A quick update on some foundations being laid for the Webian project.

The project scope has been set. Broadly this covers managing photos, music and videos but with some potential future directions and specific exclusions as well. Some very high level requirements have been developed for the first release with a focus on photo management.

The focus for the first release will be on making a really good job of photo management using a slick HTML5 interface. That includes uploading photos, organising them into albums, tagging them, subscribing to photo feeds, browsing and searching.

A simple initial architecture design describes an HTML5 interface served from a Django-based Python web application. The next step is to build some technical prototypes to explore some key technologies and UI prototypes to validate the key high level use cases. This will mark the end of the “inception phase” of the project and next will be the “elaboration phase” when the architecture design will be tested with a working architecture prototype.

Talking of phases, the project plan approximates the Agile Unified Process but with a particularly user-centered flavour. The AUP is kind of an Agile version of the heavyweight Rational Unified Process used in enterprise software development. The AUP is described as being “serial in the large, iterative in the small” and aims to take a lightweight, iterative approach to software development, but with the recognition of distinct phases of the project. I’ve chosen to experiment with this methodology to try and get the best out of both user-centered design and agile development. If it doesn’t work, I’ll switch to something else!

If you want to get involved in the Webian project then sign up to the mailing list and introduce yourself!

2 thoughts on “Webian Project Inception”

  1. Great!
    I see under ‘scope’ not the possibility to stream the video’s and audio files.
    Is that something you want from Webian?

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