A Solution Intent is the repository for storing, managing, and communicating the knowledge of current and intended solution behavior. In short, the Solution Intent should describe what we wish to build.
Please take a look at our Video Presentation created for the O'Reilly Architectural Kata.
Diversity Cyber Council is a 501c3 Non-Profit Organization (NPO) that serves under-represented demographics in the tech industry by facilitating education, training, and staffing opportunities to establish a sustainable and diverse talent pipeline to the workforce. Our vision is to enhance inclusion and representation in the tech industry through training, mentoring, networking, and visibility programs.
Our goal is to establish a sustainable and diverse talent pipeline that extends career equity to underrepresented demographics by providing access to competent training programs that lead to direct employment opportunities.
The Spotlight App Project is a sustained effort to amass a coalition of nonprofits in order to address specific needs within the communities we serve by leveraging a centralized platform as the base of operations to collaborate and make a collective impact.
The Diversity Cyber Council system is designed around illuminating possibilities. Candidates can see what's possible by browsing or searching offerings. Providers can see what other providers offer. Administrators have a wealth of reports available, providing them insight into what providers and offerings are getting the most use and what areas are underserved. Additionally, the system will show recommended offerings to candidates based on their location or past searches and engagement. Non-profits will receive insight into what offerings are hot and spotlight users. Administrators can see which offerings are often taken together, assisting them in creating roadmaps. All of which contributes to illuminating possibilities, not just for candidates but for non-profits as well.
- The decentralization and lack of support between nonprofits create gaps of service and overall impact.
- The lack of visibility of nonprofit groups and offerings creates a barrier of access to the people we aim to serve.
Nonprofit Networking Hub & Diverse Candidate Career Case Management Tool
The Spotlight Platform is a service-based workflow and event driven solution designed to be deployable either on a cloud vendor or locally; the team recommends using a cloud vendor such as Amazon to reduce initial costs while speeding time to delivery. The solution supports multiple access methods, whether via voice or text, or through a mobile or desktop browser. The system utilizes a workflow engine to manage the onboarding processes which is supported by micro services as well as a graph database.
- A solution that allows Non-Profits to register and provide offerings to candidates
- A solution that allows candidates to register, find and use non-profit offerings
- A solution that provides reports and metrics to administrators
- A solution that encourages candidate engagement via roadmaps and suggested offerings
- A solution that encourages Non-Profit engagement by highlighting popular offerings and spotlighting providers
The following functionality is not in scope for this effort:
- Directly registering candidates for non-profit offerings (candidate will be directed to non-profit for this)
- Providing a communications platform to allow system users to message each other
- Directly hosting active content - only static, text and PDF based content is supported
The Spotlight system is designed to support three types of users: Candidates, Non-Profit Providers, and Administrators. Administrators and Non-Profit users will access the system via web pages, either mobile or desktop. Candidates can access the system via web pages as well. Additionally, candidates without access to a browser can use a regular phone to call the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. It will allow them to retrieve lists of providers or offerings and to get contact information. The system has the ability to contact any user by email, or candidates via SMS.
The system is designed at a high level to be built on cloud services. This reduces initial cost and reduces maintenance effort while increasing the ability to handle peak demand. Behind the scenes microserices (called a Back End for Front End) and a workflow engine handle most of the work while a graph database handles persistent storage. Click on the following link to view the Solution Design
The following data points will be used to track the success of the system:
- Non-Profit adoption rate
- Non-Profit number of offerings made available
- Candidate adoption rate
- Candidate number of offerings taken advantage of
- Number of candidate searches that lead to offering use
- Number of candidates using the IVR system
- Lack of adoption by Non-profit providers.
- External 3rd party NPOs will need functional website and/or customer service phone line
Data analytics will be used to enhance the system value for administrators, candidates, and Non-Profits. This includes highlighting popular programs, providers, and users. See the Solution Design for more details.
While this Solution Intent is designed to show what we intend to build, the Solution Design will show the details on how we will build it. Click on the following link to view the Solution Design
Community Leader will be an NPO, assigned by an Admin... in agreement with the NPO Mentorship will be an offering from an NPO
The following documents outline the architectural decisions made on this project:
ADR0001 - IVR Support
ADR0002 - Infrastructure
ADR0003 - Platform Analytics
ADR0004 - System Workflow
ADR0005 - Persistent Data Store
ADR0006 - Architectural Approach
ADR0007 - Mailings
ADR0008 - Design Tool
ADR0009 - Use Message Queuing
ADR0010 - Separate Persistent Storage vs Analytics Storage
ADR0011 - Marketing Automation
- Acceptance Criteria
- Establish a way to incentivize engagement such as sharing of resources, collaboration, networking, facilitating introductions, and partnerships
- Categorize/tag nonprofit support services to match candidate needs identified in the onboarding assessment
- Easy to use interface for end-user
- Candidate progress tracking
- Engagement tracking
- Automatic matching of Non-Profit offerings to Candidate requests
- Platform allows offerings to contain rich text, links, and downloadable readable content such as PDFs (no other download types)
- Offerings must support:
- Organization name
- Organization Description
- Website
- Unique Identifier (assigned by admin)
- Other identification information
- Operational reports (for use by Admins)
- Analytical reports (for use by Admins)
- Usability
- The system must support users with no access to a smart phone or computer
- Source: Analysis of non-profit benefit recipient demographics *
- All web pages must meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 2.1
- Source: Company standards_
- The system must support users with no access to a smart phone or computer
- Security
- All external communications between the system and clients must be encrypted Source: Company standards
- Only strong passwords will be allowed Source: Company standards
- Scalability
- System must match capacity with demand elastically Source: Company standards
The following chart details the architectural characteristics matched against the architectural styles under consideration:
