Hi community!
I thought it would be nice to capture the current mood of the project and recap some of the conversations Boris and I have been having with you.
The intention is to share learnings and unlock further conversation about how to move forward.
It recaps what SCORE is, how we are approaching project management, and next steps for working groups.
What is SCORE?
SCORE is building a community of engaged people in cities composed of developers, open data experts and domain specialists in water, mobility, and environment to collaborate in an open, agile and transnational way to develop open source & open data solutions for cities.
In SCORE, the city partners will identify common challenges, ideate potential solutions, and try build these solutions together - reusing and supporting each other’s work. The cities will be supported by three universities and a living lab science park, and put end-users, city operators and citizens at the heart of development. SCORE is an opportunity for cities to to learn how to collaborate on complex projects openly and at scale, hopefully scaling beyond the initial partnership.
In doing so, SCORE leverages the combined money and time cities invest in designing and developing their digital infrastructure, building up internal knowledge and know-how, but also getting passionate people who care about their cities - flood managers, traffic specialists, local developers and you - involved in solving local problems.
Project management in SCORE
Iterating and learning: start with small projects
Big ‘waterfall’ projects make a lot of sense when you plan them, but not necessarily when you are doing them. They risk energy being focused on ticking predefined boxes rather than pursuing good opportunities/solving hurdles along the way.
In SCORE, we want to start quickly to try things out and see where we can get. This will help us uncover the complexity of realising our ambition, rather than pretending everything will succeed, helping us to actually work on moving forward. We can do this by starting with smaller projects, ‘easy’ replications, and by focusing on common building blocks and generic pieces of software, rather than full scale solutions.
This is particularly relevant for cities, where no solution will ever be exactly transferable between two cities. Solutions can/will share a certain % of generic code, but will always be adapted to local particularities when implemented (ie different interface, data inputs, technical integration).
Iterating between challenges and solutions
We don’t want to work technology-driven and end up with software no one uses or needs. For this reason, SCORE takes a challenge-driven approach. Nonetheless, it’s easier to commit resources and people to concrete projects.
The need for concreteness means there needs to be an iterative conversation within and between the cities to – for example – define the broad challenge area, think about the potential solution, check whether it meets the individual needs of the cities involved and whether it would work on their respective technology stacks.
For this process to be effective it needs to scale beyond the human-intensive in-person conversations at workshops.
The necessary conversation is a complex one which takes time, involves a diverse set of people (domain managers, data experts, developers,…), and some internal digging to find the right information and support. Moreover, it can be very time consuming to explain the full history and ambition to each person that might be relevant, or joins the project later on.
For this conversation we’re using SCORE.community, a space for ‘asynchronous’ communication where everyone can follow and contribute to conversations at their own pace, follow the conversations that are relevant to them without being excluded from others, and where the logical order of conversation remains legible for those who join later.
SCORE is an ambitious and complex project, so it requires a complex information architecture. We are continually working continuously to make SCORE.community as user-friendly as possible.
We are also working with Digipolis Gent to explore a visualisation tool for challenges and solutions. The intention here is to get the valuable data out of excel sheets and into something more user friendly. With this in place city partners could add in additional challenges they would like to work on and/or solutions others could replicate, without the information becoming difficult to navigate.
Project planning
SCORE should not create an extra ‘layer’ of work imposed from above that is only vaguely connected to your daily priorities (or those you had 2 years ago), it should build on and enhance the projects you are already doing or would do anyway. SCORE nudges you to do these projects in a more open and transnational manner so that you can learn from others, collaborate and replicate each other’s work.
That being said, we understand each city also has their internal workflows, decision making processes and priorities. This calls for project planning that is flexible to accomodate for individual differences, and develops organically as the project develops.
This is why our approach is to focus on motivation (helping you identify how to maximise the impact of SCORE by linking it to daily operations) and guidance (responding to your needs and question during the collaboration process).
We are working closely with the work package leaders to (re)scope and connect deliverables to ensure they are timely and relevant, supporting the work you are doing. We have also outlined an initial generic workflow (to be continually improved) for each working group to draw from to define a model that works for them. In doing so, we hope to leverage the the many experience project managers involved (you!) to ensure each working group achieves its full potential.
What can you do now
In your working groups, complete the ‘Research’ phase
- Product/problem owners: Continue working internally to involve and invite the right people to the discussion (inviting them to the community where opportune)
- Confirm commitment: Secure internal buy-in for the working groups you would like to participate in
- Research: Continue updating others in your working group about potential opportunities/hurdles you have encountered or initiatives you are taking
- Solution definition: Start formulating a clearer idea of what you want to develop together and how. Don’t worry, deliverables are on their way to help! (D3,4 to capture your discussions about potential solutions, D3.6 and D3.7 to help formulate solutions, D4.1 to provide a comparative overview of technical stacks, and early drafts of D5.1 and D6.1 on engaging citizens and exploring open v proprietary business models)
Note, we have also created guides to help you manage your email notification system and add interesting events.
Boris has also made some time available to help you with any doubts you may have about the community. Book a slot here!
More news to follow in the next telco. Any questions? You know where to find us!
