The goal of Spring #1 is to made Registration and Profile for “Employer Users”. Sure “Employer Users” is just a “role” of some users that give such users ability to manage Companies and made Job Posts (instead of Job Candidates users, such users cannot manage resumes for example etc).

Some use cases that we need to implement in this sprint:

1. As a Anonymous User I want to be able to see “Employer User Registration Page” so I could Register and enter my basic personal information including selecting of Company which I represent if it exists
2. As a Registered User I want to be able to see  “Employer User Public Profile Page” for any Employer User so that I could review his personal information and if this user own Companies also his Companies list with company name and logo.
3. As a Employer User I want to see “Edit Profile Page” so that I could edit my personal information.

Some screenshots that I draw in Microsoft Expression Blend 3 as SketchFlow Prototype:

… work in progress under this post …

OK, now it is time to go deeply into business domain of Evejob – Social Job Board and made small Agile project management.

What we know about Job Boards in general:

• Company (managed by Employer User) seek for Job Candidates that can fit to some available positions by review / search Job Candidates profiles and / or resumes.
• Job Candidates Users / Anonymous Users seek (search) opened Job Positions published by Companies (Employers Users) – i.e. review Companies profiles / Job Posts and contact Companies / apply to available positions.

This is “base, common, required” functionality that looks like MUST be present (with some adjustments)  in any Job board so both Companies and Job Candidates found board useful!

Despite the fact that I have very important extension to such “base” functionality which will made Evejob project Unique and more “Social”, I still understand that base functionality must be done before… In any case, I will need to use such business domain entities, like “Company”, “Job Candidate”, “Job Post” etc.  So instead of spend my time now describing what made “Evejob” really unique let’s just start “base” implementation and move forward…

But how to start?! This is most problematic question… Do I need to made “big design upfront” or? Do I need to describe all use cases (made 100s  screenshots etc) or I need to start coding right now etc? In general answer as always: “it depends!”.  But in my case, I can simply start from small and using iterative approach continue development… But anyway, at least small plan will help me to be on track and help readers to understand what will be in next iterations.

So here is the plan that I take from project backlog for Release #1 (at least like I see it right now… I did not want to put here full project backlog for some trivial reasons…):

Release #1. Base Job Board

• Sprint #1. Employer Users: Registration, Profile
• Sprint #2. Employer Users: Manage Companies
• Sprint #3. Employer Users: Manage Job Posts
• Sprint #4. Employer Users: Dashboard
• Sprint #5: Job Candidates: Registration, Profile
• Sprint #6: Job Candidates: Resume Management
• Sprint #7: Job Candidates: Dashboard

You can ask: why this specific order??? Why I am going to build for example Employer stuff before Job Candidates? Answer – from business point of view! Our goal to build software that can be used even after just few iterations, so what sense if for example I will made first Job Candidates resume management and made release of this? Who can use this? Nobody – it will be just catalog of Job Candidates resumes… Nobody will want to register, nobody will add own resume if he will understand that nobody will search for it as search still does not implemented on site!

But look at order that I select: if we implement first Companies catalog, then we can made release, even put application to hosting servers and  start fill it with local or even worldwide companies –  start to promote site to such companies, let them send us description information, add this information to our database… etc… Maybe even made some “special” pages for huge companies like Google or Microsoft And while we will made next X iterations, we will simultaneously improve our companies catalog, extend our public relations  and promote our business! Here we follow principle: “Release Early” (feel free to overview also other important principles that I follow in my projects). Also it is very important that doing such “early” release we will start getting feedback and start to dial with real production environment! It is specially important in cases, where you plan to host your application in “special” environments - Azure, Google App Engine are some examples of such environments – you simply don’t have full control, so as early you start, as much “problems” you will face and fix in initial steps!

I put Sprint #1 – Sprint #7 into “Release #1″ because I think (at least now) that we can call “Evejob” project “version 1″ only after Spring #1 – Sprint #7 will be done and not before as all this functionality required for any job board application! As I tell before – it does not mean that I will put site into production only after complete all 7 sprints – I will be Agile and at least for now I see that it make sense to put site into production right after sprint #2…

For those who want to know little more, I will put here overview for next few releases:

Release #2. Following

This what will made site unique – “Follow” principle, something like Twitter but for Job Boards Want to know more – just stay with me

Release #3. Search

This release will be dedicated to different simple and advanced search features.

In next posts I will go deeply into each sprint, so stay tuned!