[Openwebgui-general] OpenWebGui: getting started with functional specification

[Joel A. <jo...@au...>]

Chris Messina:

[1]
> ... I think we should start working on a plan and develop real tasks
  and make this happen all open-sourcey, like sooner than later.

[2]
> What kind of results do we hope to get from this? For my own part,
> developing a unified admin UI is just one component of my goals (I'm
> doing that for Drupal already). I also want to develop a rich and easy
> to follow process for open source usability studies & development ...

My goal, and that of everyone in the OpenACS breakout group that did
initial work on this, is to use this very specific item as the seed
for a reusable process.  All of the documents should come from
templates (or templates should be backed out of the documents), the
processes should be documented, etc.

Putting [1] and [2] together from your email, what we need to do next
for OpenWebGui is to complete the functional specification for our
hypothetical generic email blaster.  We have a draft from
flossusability.org, but it should accomodate the initial participating
projects, OpenACS and CivicSpace.  It should also be in a standard
document format and be derived from a template.  So my question to the
bigger list is, is there any kind of consensus on a standard
functional specification document?  I tend to use MS Word (now
OpenOffice) as the medium; I've found Steve McConnell's work to be the
best starting templates (http://www.construx.com/resources/cka/, but
what used to be a good resource has gotten less and less useful as
stuff is withdrawn and/or locked behind passwords and memberships;
e.g., made _less usable_).

What are other people using?  Which website is the best clearinghouse
for document templates?

Joel