Information Development Project Plan

= Picasa Pro 4.1: Project Plan =

Project Overview
The purpose of this project is to fix four known issues (bugs) and incorporate four new features in a minor release of Picasa Pro (v.4.1).

Program Description
Picasa is an image organizer and image viewer used for editing digital photos as well as tagging and sorting photos into folders. Picasa is also an integrated photo-sharing website that can be used to send photos to friends and family and tag other users in photos. Owned by Google, Picasa integrates seamlessly with other Google services to maximize sharing opportunities and streamline usability.

Project Vision and Goals
This project aims to enhance an existing product, Picasa Pro 4.1 by adding new functionality. The project was undertaken in response to user demand for additional image manipulation tools and organizational capabilities. In the past there was a reluctance to invest additional resources in development of Picasa because it is not a direct revenue-generating Google product; however, recent internal studies have revealed that Picasa is an important component in Google’s complete suite of products; it generates goodwill and trust in our target client base.

This project focuses on the top four features discussed and/or requested by users in Picasa community forums, as well as four known issues (bugs) in the previous release.

Project Goals include:
 * Satisfy existing clients by delivering the functionality that they desire
 * Expand Picasa’s client base (attract new users) by offering new tools.
 * Demonstrating responsiveness to client needs by getting the new version of Picasa Pro to market within a 14 week time frame.

Project Scope
This project focuses on four known issues and four new features as follows:

Known issues: New features: A project team of 19 has been assembled: With the exception of the four documentation specialists and one editor in Ottawa, ON, all project staff are located in the California office.
 * Selected export file size and actual exported file size don't match
 * Save and Save As... operations are not preserving file extensions correctly
 * Auto-complete for search and tagging is broken
 * Maps API integration needs to be updated to version 3
 * Mirror image special effect
 * Social Tagging (tag people in Google+ circles and notify them via G+)
 * Fun Frames
 * Organization of folders more than one level deep
 * Eight dedicated developers
 * One project manager
 * One release manager
 * Two Quality Assurance (QA) specialists and a QA team lead
 * One documentation manager
 * Four documentation specialists
 * One technical editor

The beta version containing the bug fixes and new tools will be rolled out to twelve beta testing sites (64 licenses) on November 3, 2014.The target release date is December 16, 2014. Important milestones are outlined in the table below.

Description of DITA Process
The project's DITA process was developed in a meeting setting. Team members agreed on the scope of the content and the organization of tags and categories, sorting articles for ease of browsing the wiki as well as using a Table of Contents to link all topics together. The headings were to be bold as well as the subheadings. The font is the standard Wikia font. The design of the content was left to two individual authors. Alisa unified the bugs and features content modelled after Crystal's initial skeleton and Helen created the Table of Contents that linked each page to one navigation tool.

Information Development (ID) Plan
The documentation team is responsible for developing supporting documentation for this tool.

ID Project Vision
Development of the four new features is driven by demand from existing users for greater functionality. These users have working knowledge of Picasa Pro and, in many cases, are already familiar with similar tools in competing products. The new tools offer advanced functionality to advanced users; therefore, the documentation should be simple and to the point with links or pointers to further reading for novice users.

ID Project Scope
The key documentation tasks include: The documentation team consists of four senior documentation specialists: Alisa Ali, David Bass, Helen Christodoulou, and Crystal Robertson.
 * Assessment of existing documentation for necessary revisions/updates and subsequent updating with a boilerplate description (PDF, % change = 3%)
 * Creation of four new Help topics (HTML, % change= 0)
 * Creation of Picasa Pro 4.01: New features quick-start tutorial (HTML, % change = 0)
 * Release notes

Dependencies:

 * A prototype of the new features will be available in sufficient time to complete draft documents
 * Developers will have sufficient time to meet with doc team members to discuss new tools and bug fixes
 * Developers have sufficient time to review drafts during functional and beta testing phases
 * Beta testing results in only minor last minute changes.

Risks:

 * Inaccurate or late documentation resulting from prototype being unavailable when needed (MEDIUM)
 * Missed milestones due to communications disruptions (internet, video-conferencing) at critical stages of information exchange (LOW)
 * Inaccurate or late documentation due to unavailability of SMEs (MEDIUM)
 * Late documentation as a result of team member illnesses / absences (LOW)

Contingency Plan:
If milestones are missed, the timeline for updating existing docs can be altered, with a modified deadline post-release. These documents are published in electronic format and are downloadable from support.google.com; they can be updated at any time. These documents are anticipated to be less useful to the target user than the Help files and tutorial, and are therefore less of a priority. Writers assigned to these updates can then focus their efforts on ensuring timely completion of the Help topics and tutorial.

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