IBIS-Ph CoP Strategic Planning: New Directions and Clearer Goals for An Open Source Software Community

The IBIS-PH CoP is a Community of Practice for users of open source software known as the Indicator-Based Information System for Public Health (IBIS-PH), a Web-based application  that provides for indicator tracking and custom data queries for public health datasets. The IBIS-PH software was developed in the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) with both state and federal dollars. The IBIS-PH software design was driven in part by a desire for the software code to be adopted by other state health departments.

The CoP was initiated in 2007 to share the IBIS-PH software and facilitate communication among users of the system. The CoP uses the following tools to support collaboration: a Web forum (http://www.ibisph.org/forums/), a bug tracking and wiki Website (http://www.ibisph.org), online software documentation (http://ibis.health.utah.gov/docs/) and a Web-enabled file repository (http://www.ibisph.org/trac/browser). In 2009, CoP members expressed a desire to take stock of community goals and activities and be more strategic in our approach going forward. The strategic planning process was open and collaborative. The community began by reassessing the IBIS-PH CoP mission and reviewing the PHIN CoP governance principles. A S.W.O.T. analysis was conducted using the IBIS-PH CoP Web forum. The community then developed CoP goals and S.M.A.R.T. objectives and used the “roadmap” feature of the bug tracking Website (http://www.ibisph.org/trac/roadmap) to document our goals and objectives. The roadmap feature will also be used going forward to track and document our progress.

In this presentation, the authors will describe the strategic planning process and results. The various planning and communication strategies will be critiqued on their effectiveness in both engaging community members and producing results.