Beyond Schemas: Planning Your XML Model

Conducting a Small Pilot Project

The purpose of the pilot project is to implement the knowledge gained through your user studies and development of your reuse scheme and information model. This is your time to develop and test all of the research you have done. It's best to set some metrics to measure during your pilot project.

Pilot projects sometimes seem like a daunting task. The intention of a pilot project is to not make sure you run through everything successfully, but to act as more of a test run to see what pieces of your model you missed or described incorrectly. The whole purpose of planning from the beginning of your project is to start with what you know from your users and with the tacit knowledge you have about creating information. As you work through the project, you will find that some of the assumptions you made during your planning are incorrect, and a new iteration of your information model needs to be developed.

It is important to pick a project that is significant so that you have some way to prove your model works, but that also doesn't necessarily need to be held to a tight deadline. You will find that because your information model is not perfect the first time, you will have to allow for flex time to discover the errors and retest them in your pilot project.

Your pilot projects should test different parts of your plan, but not necessarily everything at once. Perhaps, for example, the first part of the pilot project tests your information developers (one or ...