Viewer Upgrade & Embed Project Charter
I. Problem/Value Statement
Problem Statement
Sharing high quality digital images and metadata is a fundamental part of research, teaching, and learning. Unfortunately, for Harvard students, faculty, and staff using the Viewer, the current process has a high technical barrier to entry and requires them to download their own copy of the image, precluding image and metadata interoperability within the university and across the global community. In addition, the present implementation of the Viewer—as well as various instances of the underlying Mirador application throughout the university—is highly fragmented; this hinders the ability to address accessibility, usability, sustainability, and security concerns in a timely manner at a community level.
Business Value
With this project, Library Technology Services (LTS) aims to empower the Harvard University community to more easily explore, compare, and share images for research, teaching and learning, and will enhance that capability by modernizing the underlying technology to be more sustainable, scalable, accessible, security-compliant, and performant.
II. Vision and Approach
Our approach involves two main components: an upgraded Viewer application and a new embed service.
The Viewer application upgrade will not only be an opportunity to modernize application features and enhance the user experience, but to streamline production and maintenance under the hood to facilitate future improvements. We’ll accomplish this by participating in plug-in development with the IIIF open-source community. This development approach will enable us to reduce our technical debt while positioning Harvard as a strong IIIF consortial partner, upholding our commitment to supporting the growth and adoption of IIIF.
We’ll implement a user-friendly, format-agnostic embed service in both homegrown and vended systems and will make it readily available for the Harvard community to use in conventional websites. The embed solution will reduce maintenance overhead by replacing select services with a single service. And, it will enable us to seamlessly deliver future viewers/players.
To provide a foundation for this work, we’ll develop an automated testing and deployment pipeline to improve support and responsiveness for information security, accessibility, performance tuning, scaling, sustainability, and quality assurance.
Our vision aligns with the following Harvard Library multi-year goals and objectives (MYGOs) and HUIT objectives and key results (OKRs):
- Harvard Library: Modernize our digital infrastructure
- Simplify and enhance our online discovery environment
- Enhance online access to digital objects for research and teaching
- Harvard Library: Modernize our digital infrastructure
- HUIT: Achieve operational excellence across our services
- Identify 20 candidate services that are “at risk” or “unsustainable” and produce action and/or remediation plans
- HUIT: Achieve operational excellence across our services
III. In Scope/Out of Scope
In Scope
- Develop an automated testing and deployment pipeline (aka continuous integration and continuous delivery aka CI/CD)
- Viewer upgrade:
- Upgrade Viewer application to the latest available version of Mirador
- Incorporate the new v3 IIIF manifest while ensuring backwards compatibility with v2 IIIF manifests
- Leverage standard Harvard authentication and authorization
- Achieve majority feature parity with the pre-existing Viewer application. Delivered functionality will:
- Reduce customization by using plug-ins and out-of-the-box improvements
- Meet Harvard University’s accessibility requirements
- Comply with copyright/usage restriction requirements
- Conform to end-user device expectations
- Implement analytics to improve future value delivery
- Support interim beta version of upgraded application on production until all MPS manifests have been generated in production and in-scope work on Mirador 3 is released. (This requirement was added June 2023. See Change order VUE-001.)
- Embed service
- Develop an embed solution
- Replace Viewer instances with the embed solution in the following Harvard Library discovery layers:
- HOLLIS
- HOLLIS Images
- CURIOSity
- (This requirement was revised September 2023. See Change order VUE-002.)
Out of Scope
- New features that aren’t included in the latest out-of-the-box version of Mirador
- Viewer support beyond single image and page-turned objects (e.g., time-based media, geospatial data, three-dimensional objects)
- Replacing Viewer instances with the embed solution in discovery layers other than those enumerated above
- Decommissioning/retiring supported services
IV. Deliverables and Work Products
- An intuitive, easy-to-use embed service that’s implemented in several Harvard Library products
- A modernized, enhanced Viewer experience
- Reduced product maintenance overhead with streamlined embed service
- Technical documentation for effective operations support
- Updated documentation to support end users of the Viewer and embed service
- Communication to scaffold education for the user community
Definition of Done
This project will be successful once we are able to 1) release and implement the embed service in enumerated products; 2) deploy an upgraded Viewer that meets in-scope requirements; 3) replace superseded services; and 4) support both rollouts with clear documentation.
V. Stakeholders
Stakeholder | Title | Participation |
---|---|---|
Stu Snydman | Associate University Librarian and Managing Director, Library Technology | Executive Sponsor, Business Owner |
Vanessa Venti | Digital Collections Services Manager, Harvard Library | Stakeholder |
Rashmi Singhal | Director of Arts & Humanities, Research Computing, Academic Technology Services (AcTS) | Stakeholder |
Jon Alper | Director, Technology, The Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning | Stakeholder |
Jeff Steward | Director of Digital Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies, Harvard Art Museums | Stakeholder |
Bill Comstock | Head of Imaging Services for Harvard Library | Stakeholder |
VI. Project Team
Project Role | Team member(s) |
---|---|
Technical Product Owner / LTSLT Owner | Enrique Diaz |
Software engineers | Phil Plencner, Jon White (Cogapp), Katie Amaral, Maura Ferrarini |
QA | Julie Wetherill |
Functional documentation | Julie Wetherill |
UX, A11y | Janet Taylor |
Scrum Master | Sara Rubinow |
Project Manager | Sara Rubinow |
Consulting HOLLIS developer | Corinna Baksik |
VII. Estimated Schedule
Phase | Phase Start | Phase End | Completion Milestone |
---|---|---|---|
Development & Release | Embed service in homegrown systems | ||
Development & Release | Embed service in vended systems | ||
Development & Release | MVP Viewer upgrade live | ||
Development & Release | Full Viewer upgrade live |
VIII. Assumptions, Constraints, Dependencies, and Risks
Project Assumptions
- The Viewer will be compatible with both the new v3 IIIF manifest design currently under development as part of the IIIF Media Presentation Service (MPS) project and with existing v2 IIIF manifests. The v3 IIIF manifest, a part of the IIIF Presentation API 3.0, is anticipated to include reconfigured and additional metadata fields.
- There is no budget allocated to this effort for additional human resources.
- Work on vended systems will not require communication with or time from the vendor.
- Stakeholders will be available to participate in project activities and to complete tasks as requested.
- The Executive Sponsor and other stakeholders are empowered to make the decisions required for the project to be a success.
Project Constraints
- Team availability
- Scope
- Time
- Cost
Project Dependencies
- The new v3 IIIF manifest design, required for development of Viewer architecture and functionality, is not yet available for informing development of the upgraded Viewer application and plug-ins.
Project Risks
Description | Plan | Impact | Owner |
---|---|---|---|
The new v3 IIIF manifest design is core to Viewer functionality. If development of the Viewer were to move forward relying on the extant v2 IIIF manifest design, the upgraded Viewer would break for v3 IIIF manifests. | Prioritize work on the embed service and pause work on the Viewer. Once the team successfully a) implements the embed service in homegrown and vended systems, b) creates end user support documentation, and c) engages in user community education, the IIIF manifest portion of the MPS project should be complete (ETA end of January) and we can proceed with Viewer development work. | This will impact the order of operations for developer work and may result in team resource shuffling. | Enrique / Sara |
Limited team experience working directly in vended system code, Primo. | Use this project as an opportunity to upskill developers and build connections between engineering teams. | Development may require additional time for learning and coordination across teams. | Enrique |
The engineering team will not include a UX developer for most/all of the work kicking off in FY23. | The UX developer has already set a foundation through previous exploration and development that can be leveraged for upcoming work. They will also create documentation to support front-end development in their absence. | Development may require additional time for engineers who don’t normally engage in front-end development. | Enrique |
Timeline is subject to change pending changes in requirements, approach, team availability, and competing priorities | Keep in close communication with Engineering Managers and LTS Portfolio Director. | Reduction in team availability or project deprioritization will interrupt momentum and postpone value delivery. | Sara |
IX. Acceptance
Accepted by Stu Snydman 12/09/22
Prepared by Sara Rubinow
Effective Date: 12/09/22