Play 11 - Define necessary technical features, review platforms, assess against required features, and the risks for technical overuse
Technical play for data stewards: Define necessary technical features for tool selection.
Clearly identify the technical capabilities needed to achieve your project’s objectives. By clearly defining data #usage rules, organizations can safeguard communities and critical ecosystems, build trust with stakeholders and local communities, and ensure high-quality, transparent data #collection that supports environmental justice efforts.
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Conduct a needs assessment: Gather requirements by consulting stakeholders and understanding project goals. In particular, aim to understand:
- What problem does the platform need to solve?
- How will we know if we’ve succeeded?
- What constraints (time, budget, or resources) do we have?
- What can be done successfully without the use of technology? What runs the risk of being over-engineered?
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Categorize features into "must-have," "nice-to-have," or "future needs" to prioritize them.
| Category | Definition | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Must-have |
Features that are necessary for use |
User authentication, Metadata tagging |
| Nice-to-have | Valuable features that improve user experience |
Dashboards, API to connect to other platforms |
| Future needs | Features that are low priority and aspirational | Automation |
- Research and document these requirements in a feature matrix. List selected platforms down the left hand of your matrix and evaluate each platform by scoring them against your features list.
| Platform | Must-have #1 | Must-have #2 | Must-have #3 | Nice-to-have #1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platform 1 | Yes | Limited | Yes | No |
| Platform 2 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
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Engage key stakeholders in reviewing the top choices and document all findings to ensure transparency.
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Select the platform that best meets your project’s needs.
🌱 Each play stems from a takeaway from an case study, workshop, or other learning source.
Takeaway: The technical design of a data system can, and should, reflect the data user’s needs to unlock the value of the data.
The technical aspects of data management can often be the most difficult to tailor to stewards’ needs. Data storage requires a level of digital literacy above the average person’s, digital infrastructure can be expensive, and customized systems or features require even more funding. Open source solutions may be available, but less findable or usable to the average user. Oftentimes, environmental data stewards are left with clunky or unnecessary technical systems that don’t correspond with their data sharing or use needs. Recognizing this difficulty and misalignment, we’ve outlined methods to determine the highest priority needs in a technical model and make decisions accordingly, as well as an opportunity for intermediary organizations to support interoperability of any technical data system.
Source: Community Data Playbook (Full report)