Project Management Documentation

The Problems:1) Many developers must share information.2) New developers must get up to speed quickly.3) Documentation can be VERY time consuming.4) Good documentation is a key asset.

The Mission:1) A student engineer should be able to make edits after 1 day on

the job.2) Less than 15% of time should be spent on documentation.3) Good documentation should increase value of Build-It-Yourself

products in the eyes of customers, partners and investors.

www.Build-It-Yourself.com

Project Management Documentation

Project Plan for I-Scream, open source development tools(1950 estimated hours)

www.Build-It-Yourself.com

Discover27%

Design23%Develop

15%

Deploy35%

Project Management Wiki

Discover1. Problem and Goals2. Target Audience3. Research4. Set Up InfrastructureDesign1. Functional Specs2. Technical Specs3. Project PlanDevelop1. Front End2. Back EndDeploy1. Test Procedure2. Test3. Train4. Sell

www.Build-It-Yourself.com

Sub-categories may change depending on the development project.

Project Management Sites

Invention Universe (HTML)http://www.build-it-yourself.com/dev/invention-universe/index-iu.html

Invention Universe (Wiki)http://www.build-it-yourself.com/dev/invention-universe/index-iu.htmlUID: johnPWD: BIY

Build-It-Blocks (HTML) 2000 Hourshttp://www.build-it-yourself.com/dev/blocks/index.html

www.Build-It-Yourself.com

Wiki vs. HTML Pro’s and Con’s

1. A Wiki is super easy to create, edit and maintain. An HTML page is time consuming to edit and requires an FTP upload.

2. Search engines cannot find a Wiki page if it’s password protected. It is tricky to set up good password protection for HTML pages.

3. Several people can edit a Wiki page simultaneously. Only one person can edit an HTML page. If multiple people must edit, then you need to do a complicated staging server source code version protection process.

4. It is difficult to make a Wiki page look good. HTML has much easier design control.

5. A Wiki community of editors often will maintain more accurate and updated information than a single HTML editor would. (Witness Encyclopedia Britanica vs. Wikipedia.)

How to build a Wiki project page

A simple tutorial of managing your BIY project

Let’s make an example!

How do we make a project page for a “remote control robot” project?

For information about the remote control robot project, please visit http://build-it-yourself.com/biy-projects/proj-fruit-critters/index-critters.html

There are more than one way to create a new wiki page: 1. (Recommended) Type the url of page you want to create in the address line. For a BIY project, you will type in “http://207.244.118.11/wiki/index.php/Projects/project-name”

Create a blank page

The “edit this page” click will take you to an “edit” page.

If there is no page under this address, wiki will take you to blank page.

2. Search for the project name, if there is no page under this name, you will be directed to a page with a “to create” option.

Create a blank page

The “create this page” click will take you to an “edit” page.

*3. When editing another page, you can create an “internal link” to a nonexistent wiki page, with your project name.

Create a blank page

The “project name” click will take you to an “edit” page.

Save the page you are editing, and click the link you made.

We will talk about how to create links in your wiki page again later.

This is what an “edit” page looks like.

Create a blank page

You can type in plain text in a wiki edit page.

Set up topic structures

Click “save page” and this is how it looks like.

Remember to always save your work!

To make a list of topics, here are some syntax we will use. “=……=“: Titles; “==……==“: Subtitles;

Set up topic structures

A complete list of titles could look like this:

Press “save page” and this is how they looks like.

Set up topic structures

Now it’s time to fill in the blanks with information and graphics.

Add content to all the topics

And this is how it looks like after you save it.

Add content to all the topics

More on wiki syntax

For a full list of syntax in editing a wiki page, check these two pages:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wiki_markup

Thank you very much for reading this tutorial with us. For question or suggestion, please contact John, john@build-it-yourself.com , Brent, bstn32508@gmail.com, or Yuan, yuandong84@yahoo.com.