Impact Framework Project Updates 2024-05-01

[jmcook1186]

Who

Sponsor: @jawache (GSF)
Product owner: @jmcook1186 (GSF)
Leads: @navveenb (Accenture), @srini1978 (Microsoft)

Updates

• @zanete joined the team as project manager, with @jmcook1186 moving to product owner
• We clarified our near-term roadmap and separated our project board into views for product design and development work - making it easier to track what the team are working on in real time.
• We have designed and refined several new features for IF that are now in development, including:
  • if-diff: a command line tool that can report differences between two manifest files
  • if-env: a command line tool that can recreate the development environment that was used to execute a particular manifest
  • subtract plugin: a generic arithmetic plugin that subtracts values in a manifest's input data
  • exponent plugin: a generic arithmetic plugin that enables values in input data to be raised to a given power
  • csv-lookup plugin: a generic plugin that enables csv data to be queried and pulled into IF from any csv file on the local filesystem or on the internet.
• We have started designing the new plugin registry website and deciding our acceptance criteria for plugins to be listed there.
• We have started re-examining and refining our error handling and logging protocols.
• We have audited and planned out the migration of if-plugins into if/builtins, deprecation of some existing plugins and handover of some plugins to external maintainers.
• We've transitioned from weekly IF calls to a monthly call and are utiliing Project Update GH issues (such as this one) to keep stakeholders updated.

Issues

• Discussions are still ongoing with external maintainers for our if-unofficial-plugins - it's not yet clear whether all the unofficial plugins will have non-IF owners.

Outlook

• We will be reviewing and finalising the designs for the Plugin Registry site as well as formalising plugin acceptance criteria and listing process.
• • Design v1 of the Plugin Registry site #661
• • Define acceptance process for listing plugins on if registry #617
• We will be contacting external plugin owners to transfer maintenance responsibilities for some plugins. (Reach out to orgs to take responsibility for plugins #546)
• We'll continue refining our error handling and logging protocols and documenting best practice
• • Improve IF logging protocols #600
• • Add documentation for error handling best practices #602
• • We'll be continuing the implementation of automated integration testing within the release pipeline (Epic - Automated Manifest Testing #650) and start building the if-env and if-diff features to enable that
• • Build if-env #636
• • Build if-diff core feature #637
• We'll be implementing the above mentioned new plugins
• • Design a generic subtract plugin #672
• • Design a generic exponent plugin #673
• • Build a generic csv-lookup plugin #674
• We'll be moving some of the plugins to if/builtins
• • Move Divide to if/builtins #676
• • Move csv-export to if/builtins #677
• • Move mock-observations to if/builtins #678
• • Move multiply to if/builtins #679
• • Move shell to if/builtins #680
• • Move sum to if/builtins #681
• • Move sci to if/builtins #682
• • Move sci-m to if/builtins with a name sci-embodied #683

[jmcook1186]

Thanks @zanete - adding info in a comment is fine - I've incorporated your suggestions into the issue description. But feel free to edit the description directly if you prefer - either is fine for me.