TWiki Project Charter

The goal of the TWiki project is to deliver the best possible Web 2.0 Collaboration Platform to the widest possible set of people. In this context a Web 2.0 Collaboration Platform means an open source software stack that fully supports the following functionality:

• wiki
• blogging
• forums
• tagging
• RSS/Atom feeds
• Enterprise Social Networking (ESN)
• Other Web 2.0 features as defined by the council

These features can be comprised of plugins or TWiki applications that provide this functionality to the end user.

In addition, the TWiki project goal is to establish and promote Enterprise Social Networking standards that are directly aligned with corporate collaboration needs.

Members of the project aim to do this in part by:

• Delivering the right set of features - not too many or too few (the goal is to create the most comprehensive Enterprise Collaboration platform that can scale to support 100,000's of enterprise users within a single organization.)
• Defining and creating clear APIs for integrating with 3rd party Web 2.0 collaboration apps.
• Supporting a framework for OpenSocial? integration, that provides canvas style functionality for drag and drop widget standards.
• Establish an industry standard by defining X.500/LDAP type data fields necessary to support Enterprise Social Networking
• Making as few compromises as possible where user experience is concerned. We will not compromise the main line UI to placate an element of the community. Usability is a large area consisting not only of the things one typically considers related to the user experience such as the design of dialog boxes, windows, plugins and applications, but also things such as interaction design (looking at how users try and accomplish a task, noting the paths they take and attempting to optimize those paths) and performance (reaction speed from a piece of software is important so as not to annoy the user - perceived speed is often more important than actual speed).
• Develop and maintain the plugin system to allow for improved functionality in the key areas without affecting the core.
• Allow for techies, early adopters, developers and other specific communities access to the latest releases without affecting end users.
• Retaining a tight command and control hierarchy. Software design is not a committee driven process. Application design must be nimble. Testing should take precedence over discussion.
• Make changes quickly and then get them to people so that we can refine them based on observation of user interactions.
• Deliver cross platform software across common browsers, operating systems and virtualization software.
• Be a vehicle for emerging TWiki platform APIs, which will allow application developers a means to deploy useful software.

Related: TWikiRoadMap, TWikiGovernance

-- PeterThoeny - 27 Oct 2008