Piloting Your Directory Service 294 A Piloting Road Map The steps you will follow in establishing your pilot vary depending on your environment and the design of your service. The steps outlined in the following sections are typical and cover the most common scenarios. Don't worry if you find you need to deviate from these steps, or if you don't have the time or money to cover everything we suggest. Just make sure you cover all the bases that are important to you in your environment. Defining Your Goals What do you want to get out of your pilot? You will have different goals depending on the type of service you have and the environment you're in. How you define your goals leads you to focus your pilot on different aspects of the service. For example, consider the following goals: · To produce a directory service for direct use by many demanding users.In this case, you might focus your pilot on the user experience. This means spending extra time designing user inter- faces, involving human factors expertise, piloting with a large and diverse user community, and conducting focus groups. You should measure your success based on how much users like your service, how efficiently it answers their queries, and how completely it serves their needs. · To produce a directory service for use by application developers.In this case, your emphasis should be on the interfaces by which application developers access the directory. Your pilot users in this case would be developers. You should measure your success based on how easy the system is to use, how quickly new applications can be developed, and how much functionality the system provides. More information on LDAP-enabled applications can be found in Chapter 20, "Developing New Applications," and Chapter 21, "Directory-Enabling Existing Applications." · To produce a directory service containing sensitive data that serves the authentication and se- curity needs of applications.If this is your goal, you should focus your pilot on security. This means going through a security analysis to ensure that the security measures protecting your directory are both adequate and easy to use. You should measure your success based on the security (both perceived and actual) that users of the system are afforded, the ease with which applications can use the security services provided by the directory, and the degree to which the security needs of all applications are covered. Chapter 11, "Privacy and Security Design," discusses this topic in detail. Other potential areas of focus exist, of course. The goals in the preceding list typically have an even tighter focus. For example, an application directory might be targeted specifically at extranet appli- cations. In practice, you probably want to focus on all of these areas to some degree, but it's im- portant to realize that you cannot fully pilot every aspect of your service. If you could, you wouldn't have a pilot--you'd have a full-fledged directory service! The same goes for pre-pilot testing: You can't test everything, so focus your tests on the most important aspects of the service. Defining and prioritizing the goals you have in piloting your directory service helps you focus your efforts and make your pilot more effective. Defining Your Scope The goals you want to achieve by piloting naturally define the scope of your pilot. This scope has several dimensions: How much will users be involved in your pilot? Will your group of users be small and focused or large and diverse? What aspects of your service will you pilot? Will you try to pilot a few aspects thoroughly, or will you cover all aspects in less depth?