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Miscellaneous Discussions

Project Strategies

Sharan talked about the different strategies that projects generally have in place that she wanted to investigate for the project.

Planning and Project Roadmap

• Currently there doesnt seem to be a roadmap or high level project plan in place
• Work is being done on a task by task basis that is triggered by a reported issue or maintenance request (e.g. Tomcat upgrade etc)
• An overall plan will help with communications to the community, give the project future direction and also give focus to work efforts
• The planning could be broken down into the key areas (e.g. applications, maintenance/housekeeping, release planning, security, etc)
  
  

Communication:

• Curently the mailing lists, website and wiki are the main communication tools. Jacopo as PMC chair prepares project reports to the ASF on a regular basis.
• We want to encourage more business users into the community so need to tailor the website and wiki.
• We have found that meeting in person at events such as Apachecon have been really good in building community as well as communication links. What other

Risk Management - Not sure there is anything currently in place.

• Risk Management strategies are used to identify, assess and react to any risks that impact the project. Risks can cover a range of areas including doing or not doing something. I think we need a strategy in place to deal with things that will impact the project. We need to identify them, assess them (because not all of them may cause a problems - some could be positive!), and then decide on how to react to them (this could something as simple as defining when to include it in a release or deciding that for the moment implementing something will cause more problems that it will solve).
• Currently OFBiz has a range of external dependencies that need to be maintained. Do we have someone allocated to keep a 'watching brief' for any retiring of a release that we are using, finding out about any new releases that we may have to implement at a future date
• Does anyone assess the impact of not implementing a specific change or process for the project?
• What is the project attitude to risk? (Does the project want to keep everything low risk because we need to be able to manage and conform to the Apache release process?)

Issue Management - currently managed by JIRA

Task Management - currently managed by JIRA (Need to loo

Planning and Project Roadmap

Currently there

External Dependencies

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• Tidy up OFBiz technical framework or "kernel" link
• Define and implement a process to manage the cleaned code eg to a sandbox location so could be used by users who want to pick it up and use
• Tidy up / clean up OFBiz business framework (e.g. ensure business processes have a use case to describe the process and that can be used for validation)
• OFBiz in application documentation - have been using docbook but two other proposals mentioned
  • Idea 1: Use SVNPUB: This is committer controlled but may be able to switch to setup a business user expert with write access. This means that the "mini subject matter experts" could easier maintain their specific areas.
  • Idea 2: Wikipedia style documentation where a page linked within the OFBiz application page (e.g. using the '?') will link to the wiki. This is more open and non committer controlled. Means more people can contribute
• External dependencies refactoring
• Build a Roadmap / High level plan that will be used to show details of releases and how they are supported, details of work in development, updates planned. Need to look at tools available eg. JIRA has options to do planning and roadmap, also look for Roadmap and planning info on the Wiki as may be able to collate
• Ensure business success stories are documented (as this is valuable info for potential users). Ask users  to add their stories and also get them to list the applications used / implemented. Existing policy is that there should be no direct links from OFBiz website main pages so need to use the wiki. Investigate whether integraters are willing to share their client links and stories.
• Marketing OFBiz - prepare an end user demo that can be based on roles (e.g accountant, HR manager, Order Clerk, Warehouse Manager etc). Link to user stories that can have a script or supporting documentation (e.g currently on main page there are no instructions about how to login to the demo just in case you are thrown out. Also default user if flexadmin which doesnt have all the permissions for all applications).
• Common Core Marketing Material - Put together some standard OFBiz marketing information that all integrators / users have access to. Integrators can then adapt it to suit their needs if required. Information could be white papers around supported industries etc. Need to define what tool could be used to prepare the material as it needs to be accessible to a common audience. This is important as everyone will need to be able to edit it!
• Maintenance - eg. Tomcat etc. Need to keep a watching brief on external products that are directly used by OFBiz
• Establish a group of  "mini subject matter experts" both business and technical (i.e. dont have to be both but can be). Identify contributors and knowledge. Can refer to these people regarding their specific area
• Work on a strategy to encourage more business users
• Look at the testing strategy - unit testing in isolation is not enough. We need to ensure there is an full end to end test flow
• OFBiz branding and trademarks - need to review the process and contact sites that may be infringing this
  
  

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