September 2014: OFBiz Documentation Survey Results

Introduction

This survey was created to get feedback about Apache OFBiz,and how the existing documentation resources support its installation and use. The information gathered will be used to help update and re-organise the documentation in way that will make it easier for a wide range of people to use.

• It was conducted over the period 22nd September 2014 to 6th October 2014. Details of the survey was posted on the mailing list, Twitter and also Linked In groups.
• A total of 76 responses were recorded and the details are recorded below.

Survey Catchment

Additional statistics were captured about the respondents country.

• The majority of respondents were from Asia, followed by Europe and America.
• The most common country from respondents was India, followed by the US and France.

The country breakdown was as follows:

Response Frequency

The survey was open for a total of 2 weeks (22nd September  - 6th October 2014).

• The majority of responses were recorded during the first two days
• Based on this I would suggest that future surveys be limited to a week

Survey Questions

Question 1: Please tell us about how do you use Apache OFBiz. Do you

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out what the community profile was like.
• This was a multi-answer question meaning that respondents could select more than one option.
• It was surprising for me to find that the majority of respondents are OFBiz integrators or offer OFBiz consulting services as considering how long OFBiz has been around I would have expected a larger end user community.
• Of the 9 respondents that were "evaluating OFBiz for their company's use" 6 of them were not integrators or consultants. This suggests that these 6 are in fact real end users.I suspect the end user community is a lot larger than this but perhaps they dont actively interface with the OFBiz community but rather with their OFBiz integrator or consultant. It would be interesting to survey this group further to gain more insights into their profiles.
• Also the fact that there are so many OFBiz integrators and consultants in the market means that they must think that there is adequate OFBiz business to support them.

Conclusion :

• Currently the OFBiz project and mailing lists attract more integrators and consultants than end users

Question 2: Which version of OFBiz do you use?

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out what version of OFBiz was being used by the community and therefore give some insights on plans for supported releases
• This question allowed respondents to select only one option
• At the time of the survey 12.04 was the current stable release and these figures show that 37% respondents were using 12.04 or earlier
• It would be interesting to understand why respondents are using these earlier releases - do they have problems with the upgrade path to 13.07 or is it that OFBiz is still performing what they need it to do?
• The high number (63%) of people using 13.07 and the trunk (NOTE: At the time of the survey unstable versions) could be closely related to the fact that the community profile is integrator and consultant rather than end user. The means that these versions are likely used for development and customer specific implementation.

Conclusion :

• There tends to be a big focus on patches for the trunk and latest branches but we also need to think about what support is available for earlier releases and have a clear plan as well as communication about when a version reaches its end of life.
• Are the upgrade paths clear?

Question 3: How did you install or implement Apache OFBiz?

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out how OFBiz was installed.
• This question allowed respondents to select only one option
• I would have expected that the majority of non technical end users would have used an integrator or that someone else would have installed it for them but there were no responses in either of these categories. This means that we did not get any responses from anyone that is a customer of an integrator.
• In Question 1 80% responded that they installed or implemented OFBiz for other people yet in this question only 40% say that they are integrators. This means that the remaining 20% should fall into the end user category.

Conclusion :

• We didnt any get responses from anyone who is the customer of an integrator and this is a real information gap as these would be real end users.
• No one used an integrator to install OFBiz which means that somehow they all found enough information to do it

Question 4: Evaluate the following statements:

Responses as a percentage:

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out how difficult it was for the community to find specific OFBiz documentation.
• This question was multi-answer and allowed respondents to respond to each of the individual answer choice statements. (NOTE: This also means that respondents could skip answering a question)
• The majority of respondents (65%) thought that it was easy to find documentation about how to download and install OFBiz but 25% disagreed meaning there is a potential documentation gap that needs to be filled
• The responses for finding documentation about setting up and configuring OFBiz were a lot closer - 36% disagreed that it was easy while 41% thought it was. This high disagreement figure suggest another documentation gap
• I was surprised to see that 45% disagreed that finding documentation about developing or customising OFBiz was easy. As a development framework I would have thought this information was readily available using the current technical guides. This may indicate that the guides need to be looked at again to ensure that they are up to date and relevent
• The biggest negative response (61%) came from whether they thought that finding documentation about what OFBiz does out of the box was easy. This is a significant result and definitely highlights a huge documentation gap

Conclusions :

• Some documentation gaps have been uncovered, the biggest being documentation about what OFBiz does out of the box.
• In general the community feel that there is documentation available but there is room for improvement.
• Some of these opinions could be caused by the organisation of the data or how it is accessed rather than the documenation itself

Question 5: How long have you been using Apache OFBiz?

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out how long respondents have been using OFBiz and identify new users
• 40% have been using OFBiz for 2 years or less which means they are relatively new users.
• There are more new users (40%) than mature OFBiz users (39% - Over 5 years)
• Having the mature users still involved with the community gives knowledge transfer and continuity

Conclusions :

• New users are still being attracted to OFBiz
• There is a good mature knowledge base of people that have used OFBiz for a long time that are still involved with the community

Question 6: How many Apache OFBiz users do you have?

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out the number of OFBiz users in the respondents installation
• The range of responses indicates that OFBiz is used in smaller sized companies.
• This survey option stopped at 10 or more but it would be interesting to find out what the largest user base for OFBiz was.

Conclusions :

• The community OFBiz implementations tend to have a small user base. NOTE: I think this is because the majority of respondents are integrators and consultants who are generally small companies

Question 7: How often do you use or search for information in the Apache OFBiz Wiki?

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find how often respondents used the OFBiz Wiki

• It is good to see that 97% of respondents use the Wiki and that 61% use it on a regular basis

Conclusions :

• Work is ongoing to update and reorganise information on the Wiki so these figures confirm that it is still worthwhile and will benefit the community

Question 8: How often do you search the Mailing Lists for information about how Apache OFBiz works?

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out how actively used the mailing lists are used as a source of information

• This was an interesting result because it shows that respondents are currently using a combination of source (Wiki and mailing list) to find out information
• 78% use the mailing lists on a regular basis

Conclusions :

• The mailing list is being used as alternate source of information to the Wiki.

Question 9: Evaluate the following statements

as a percentage

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out which documenation area was seen as the highest priority
• This question was multi-answer and allowed respondents to respond to each of the individual answer choice statements. (NOTE: This also means that respondents could skip answering a question)
• 61% of respondents thought that the Technical Documentation was the highest priority
• 67% of respondents thought that the End User Documentation was the highest priority
• The highest response (81%) was that both Technical and End User Documentation are important

Conclusions :

• I now think that this question should have been a single answer only (rather than a multi-answer) because a respondent could agree with all three and it doesnt give a clean result breakdown that I was looking for
• In general respondents thought that work needs to be done on both Technical and End User documentation

Question 10: Describe your involvement with the Apache OFBiz project and community

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out whether respondents feel part of a community, are currently involved or want to be involved
• Responses from officially involved respondents (21%) imply they are contributors, committers or PMC 
• The most exciting figure I see is the 28% of respondents wanting to be more involved with the project. It would be good to somehow identify these people and get them actively involved.
• Another healthy figure is that 48% of respondents read, ask or respond using the community mailing lists
• There were 3% of respondents that didnt feel that they were part of an existing community. This is unfortunate and may highlight a potential gap in how the community is commuicated to.

Conclusions :

• The biggest result here is the number of people wanting to become more involved with the community

Final Comments

Thank you to everyone who completed the survey that enabled me to provide these results and details.I hope that these are useful now and into the future as we continue to look and survey or community base.

Please feel to leave any comments or observations.