Project Cycle

The Civic Tech DC project cycle is a time-boxed period for a new project team to work toward a meaningful outcome.

Because Civic Tech DC projects are volunteer-driven, projects are not expected to follow a rigid schedule or build a large product as quickly as possible. Instead, the project cycle gives teams enough structure to understand the problem, make meaningful progress, and determine what should happen next.

Projects may move between phases at different speeds depending on the project’s needs. For example, a project may spend several weeks in Discovery, while another may begin building relatively quickly.

The goal is not to move through the phases as quickly as possible, but to make meaningful progress that respects volunteer time while taking the time to make thoughtful decisions. Moving too quickly can create more work later if the team has to backtrack or redo work.

Projects follow three phases, with the initial phase being the most hands-on.

1. Initial Phase: Understand the problem and establish a direction.

Project Setup
Discovery
Define Initial Goals
First Milestone

2. Active Phase: Work toward the project’s goals while regularly reassessing priorities.

Routine Check-Ins
Milestone Planning
User or Partner Feedback
Scope Management

3. Transition Phase: Decide what happens to the project after the current cycle.

Evaluate Progress
Document Outcomes
Share / Launch the Work
Handoff or Maintenance Plan

1. Initial Phase

The Initial Phase establishes the foundation for the project where the team understands the problem, establishes realistic goals, and identifies a first milestone.

Project Setup

Before beginning a project cycle, complete Project Setup. Here is the drive with all of the required documents.

Discovery

The first part of the project cycle is focused on understanding the problem before investing significant volunteer time into building a solution.

See Discovery for the full process.

The goal is to answer:

Do we understand the problem well enough to make a responsible decision about what to do next?

Discovery may include:

Talking with users or community members
Meeting with partners
Researching existing solutions
Reviewing data
Understanding current workflows
Testing assumptions
Identifying constraints
Exploring potential approaches

Define Initial Goals

Once the team has completed enough Discovery to understand the problem, it’s time to define what the project is trying to accomplish.

Goals should be specific enough to guide the team and realistic for a volunteer project.

Avoid defining success entirely in terms of features such as:

Weak: Build a website with five pages and a search function.

Stronger: Create and test a way for residents to more easily find reliable information about X.

First Milestone

The team should identify a first milestone that represents the next meaningful step toward its goals.

Examples:

Complete and test a prototype
Conduct 10 user interviews
Publish a first version of a dataset
Build a minimum viable feature
Complete a research brief
Pilot a service with a small group
Validate a technical approach

The first milestone is not necessarily the final product, but is designed to be the first big accomplishment and move the project from the initial phase to the active phase.

2. Active Phase

Once the team has established its initial goals and first milestone, the project enters the Active Phase. This is the continuous part of the project cycle, and projects may spend multiple months in the Active Phase.

The Active Phase is not a fixed sequence of steps but instead is inspired by sprints.

It is also the responsibility of the project lead to conduct the following:

Check with your partner:

All projects should maintain regular communication with their partner. This can include:

Simple progress updates by email
Inviting them to the project night
Demoing different phases of the project and asking for feedback

Volunteer Coordination

The project should be regularly assessed to see if it has the capacity to accomplish its goals. This includes paying attention to:

Volunteer availability
Skills needed
Whether work is concentrated among one or two people
Whether volunteers understand how to contribute

Continuous and updated documentation

All project documentation should be kept up to date with current goals, decisions, technical infrastructure, skills, and partner information.

The goal is to make it possible for another volunteer to understand the project without having to reconstruct its history from Slack messages.

3. Transition Phase

At an appropriate point, the team should step back and evaluate what it has accomplished and determine what should happen next. A transition does not necessarily mean the project is finished, but rather involves deciding what the future of the project is and what its next, best step is.

Some transitions:

Continue! Great, the team has more work to do and has a clear reason to continue.
Launch / Handoff: The project has reached a useful outcome and can be released or transferred to a partner.
Pause: The project remains valuable, but the project lead needs to leave, there is not enough volunteer capacity, or another condition is needed to continue. Talk to the organizers, and we will either continue promoting the project to find a new lead or put it on our ideas board for someone to pick it up.
Pivot: The team has learned something that requires a substantial change in direction.

For practical steps during a transition, see Maintain or Close a Project.