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- Research and Development. This stage is where new ideas are generated and new technologies are tried. Many "contrib" projects in Sakai are essentially in this phase of the cycle for the purposes of this model. Other contrib projects are certainly much too mature to be considered R&D---they just choose to be independent of the Sakai release. The new model will allow this same sort of "independent" project.
- Incubation. This stage is for projects that intend to end up in a Sakai release. The goal in the incubation stage is to prove the desirability to the community, formalize project requirements, assemble a cross-institutional development team that includes functional expertise, build a project & maintenance plan and reduce development risks.
- Product Development. Incubation should prove that a project is both desirable and feasible. The product development phase is essentially executing on that plan. It ends when the project becomes part of the Sakai release. We expect formal structures to ensure the reliable allocation of resources and that the operational decisions during the project are driven by end-user priorities.
- Maintenance. This phase is for bug fixes and feature enhancements to released product.
- End of Life. Sooner or later things need to be taken out of the product. Or a new version needs to be built.
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The degree of process formality differs with each stage. In Research & Development, for example, a distributed model is best--one that doesn't require approval or decision-making from a central authority. We call this way of working "organic". As ideas emerge from R&D that appear to have merit, it is crucial to increase communication about the project and begin to put together a more formal development team and plan. We call this "coordinated"--the idea is to bring together people who might want to work together to create a significant new capability in the Sakai release. And once such a group of people is identified and their objectives clarified, a more traditional and formal project structure is beneficial. We call this "managed".
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