Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Involving Collection Staff in the DINA Software Development – An Agile Approach
Swedish Museum of Natural History, Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1688-7112
Swedish Museum of Natural History, Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9898-1916
Swedish Museum of Natural History, Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics.
2018 (English)In: Biodiversity Information Science and Standards, Vol. 2Article in journal, Meeting abstract (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

In order to ensure long-term commitment to the DINA project (DIgital information system for NAtural history data, https://dina-project.net), it is essential to continuously deliver features of high value to the user community. This is also what agile software development methods try to achieve by emphasizing early delivery, rapid response to changes and close collaboration with users (see for example the Manifesto for Agile Software Development at http://agilemanifesto.org). We will give a brief overview on how current development of the DINA collection management system core is guided by agile principles. The mammal collection at the Swedish Museum of Natural History will be used as an example. Developing a cross-disciplinary collection management system is a complex task that poses many challenges: Which features should we focus on? What kinds of data should the system ultimately support? How can the system be flexible but still easy to use? Since we cannot do everything at once, we work towards a minimum viable product (MVP) that contains just enough features at a time to bring value for selected target users. In the mammal collection case, the MVP is the simplest product that is able to replace the functions of the current system used for managing the collection. As we begin to work with other collections, new MVPs are defined and used to guide further development. Thus, the set of features available will increase with each MVP, benefiting both new and current users. Another big challenge is migration of legacy data, which is labor intensive and involves standardizing data that are not compatible with the new system. To address these issues, we aim to build a flexible data model that allows less structured data to coexist with more complex, highly structured data. Migration should thus not require extensive data standardization, transformation and cleaning. The plan is to instead offer tools for transforming and cleaning the data after they have been imported. With the data in place, it will be easier for the user to provide feedback and suggest new features.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Pensoft Publishers , 2018. Vol. 2
National Category
Information Systems
Research subject
Diversity of life
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:nrm:diva-3150DOI: 10.3897/biss.2.25580OAI: oai:DiVA.org:nrm-3150DiVA, id: diva2:1271805
Available from: 2018-12-18 Created: 2018-12-18 Last updated: 2018-12-18Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full texthttps://doi.org/10.3897/biss.2.25580

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Englund, MarkusHeikkinen, MikkoSundström, Lisa
By organisation
Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics
Information Systems

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 126 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf