LocationTech/Methodology

Working title

Agile requirements definition for location-specific analytics

Situation

At a practical process level, we see a significant understanding gap between mainstream IT and geospatial users. Analytics developers/users do not understand geospatial technologies. GI technologists do not understand the process-specific issues and requirements for mainstream analytics. We need to find a way for analytics users to identify and implement geospatial capabilities. Recent research by Ordnance Survey GB and others indicates that agile approaches hold promise for achieving this goal.

Agile methods have proven successful for software development, requirements definition and project management. We believe that agile methods hold the greatest promise for creating the necessary design tools for this imitative. We can develop simple methods for defining relevant location frames, identifying appropriate geospatial resources and prototyping applications that include geospatial capabilities.

We must develop this method from the analytic user/developer viewpoint. If we start with familiar geospatial practices, we will just be talking to ourselves.

Objectives

• Develop a concise proposal and performance indicators for executing this initiative.
• Identify 3-4 sets of mainstream analytic users in different geographies, who are interested in participating in the initiative.
• With mainstream analytics users, develop and test agile methods that include geospatial requirements within a given process. This process will address :
  • Agile methodology for conducting requirements definition, prototyping and testing
  • Identifying relevant location frames, including internal and external data
  • Specifying location-specific search and discovery,
  • Specifying deterministic and stochastic analysis methods
  • Providing unified information access
  • Providing visualization and mapping, if needed
• Test and refine the method with various users.

Next steps

• Draft a project proposal and vet it through the normal approval process.
• Identify interested analytic users/developers and geospatial experts.
• Do the work.