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Discussion: Pariticipant's Current and Future Project Vision

Nicolas' vision of OFBiz was that it was an ERP but also a Application development framework that was very strong on integration

Pierre's vision of OFBiz was that it was solution framework that was scalable. It provides a set of solutions that are not all complete. This means that we need to improve what we have to bring them up to a common standard. (NOTE: Pierre has added an additonal comment below expanding on this and other topics that were touched on during the discussion)

Jacopo's vision of OFBiz came from 3 distinct areas.

1. The first was as an OFBiz user where he wanted to see a more modern framework that give the benefits such as flexibility, speed and efficiency. It would also make it easier to customise applications.
2. The second was an OFBiz committer where he wanted OFBiz to be simpler to manage and less dependent on external projects
3. The third was as part of the OFBiz PMC where he wanted to ensure that the OFBiz brand wasnt being misued. Also that we needed to define some strategies for general OFBiz users and the community

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1. . One example mentioned was a roadmap to upgrade from one version to another. (NOTE: It was noted that this could be a potential opportunity for someone to build an OFBiz upgrade tool that could be extremely useful to the community). He also wanted it to enable companies to contribute back to the project.

As new OFBiz user Anahita spoke from her experience as a new OFBiz user and said that she found it difficult to learn and get started with OFBiz. There seemed a lack of logic and organisation of information and it took patience and perserverance to get familiar with OFBiz. Once you are familiar with it then the idea behind the product is amazing and the potential is huge. She found the mailing lists really helpful and the community willing to respond to her questions. 

Gil's vision of OFBiz also covered several areas:

1. The first was that it was a technical development framework that has application components. The applications are examples and the goal was not to deliver an 'out of the box' solution. Each implementation needs to be deliver a solution for the customer.
2. The second was that we need to ensure that the framework technology and applications need to be kept up to date (eg. refactoring where necessary, security etc)
3. The third area was improved communication within the project so that people can see what is in progress and what is planned.
4. The fourth area was to see improved documentation on the wiki and within the OFBiz product itself (so the online application help)
5. The final area was to improve OFBiz marketing and also setup a simple end user demo

Olivier's vision was that OFBiz was an ERP and a set of application development tools.

1. In the future he would like to see OFBiz having multiple distributions all based around a common base framework or "kernel".
2. Each distribution would be made up of the common kernel and specific applications (e.g based on industry, sector or country). The common kernel would be the same for all providers and so could be common marketing materials could be used.
3. He also wanted to see if the community could setup or link contributors to a particular OFBiz area (e.g. mini subject matter experts). These people could then give an opinion on processes , potential coding improvements or changes to that specific area.

Catherine's feedback was from an end user perspective. She currently uses OFBiz to capture requirements and process orders and invoices.

1. She believes that very few customers want an OFBiz "out of the box" solution and to make a real business solution more customised or customer specific functionality will need to be added.
2. She thinks the current community is very technically focussed and this needs to be balanced with business people so the project needs to attract business users. She thinks that project communication shouldnt be restricted to just the mailing lists (as having this face to face meeting is really good and we can easily discuss things and respond quickly).

Youssef's vision was that OFBiz was a framework used to build solutions because not many companies could use OFBiz "out of the box". Trying to make OFBiz an out of the box solution that could work for everyone will be too hard.The applications that are there need to include contextual help and integrated testing tools across the complete global process.

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