Notes from the Meeting:

OFBiz Workshop Session at Apachecon EU 2014

Attendees:

Jacopo Capellato, Olivier Heintz, Catherine Heintz, Pierre Smits, Nicolas Malin, Anahita Goljahani Gil Portenseigne, Youssef Khaye, Sharan Foga

Location:

Corinthia Hotel, Budapest

Time: 14.00 - 17.00 (Pierre Smits left at 16.00)

Workshop Objectives

• To understand what OFBiz means to everyone
• To gain a common view of OFBiz and the way ahead for the future
• To discuss any OFBiz related topics

Background

The meeting started with Sharan giving a quick overview of some key areas that she thought needed to be discussed. These were

• Project Vision: Do we all have the same vision and understanding of OFBiz and where it is going ? / Which direction do they want to project to go in? / What do they see as important?
• Project Strategies: What strategies are currently in place? (e.g Communication, Risk, Issue Management etc)
• Planning: Is there a Roadmap or High Level Plan?
• Main Areas of Focus: What is the overall planare the main areas the project is working on
• Organisation: How is the project being managed, controlled and organised

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 . 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.

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 take care of any patches she submitted.

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".

1. Based on his experience he thought that trying to make OFBiz an "out of the box" solution that could work for everyone will be too hard and that in future we should focus on using these tools to build good business solutions
2. He also saw it as important that the applications that are there need to include contextual help and integrated testing tools across the complete global process.
3. He thinks that we need to bring more business users into the project and that there are not many active business users on the current mailing lists. OFBiz is a business product so we should have a mix of business and technical users across the community.

Discussion : Original Project Vision:

Jacopo mentioned that the original vision of the OFBiz was:

to have an Application Development Framework with a Data Model and some core skeleton applications with CRUD (create, read, update and delete) services that would be customised per implementation.

Over the years because of contributions from the community these 'skeleton' applications have become more and more complete. A User Interface was added and currently we think that we have the situation where OFBiz as an integrated ERP can only be used "out of the box" for specific cases.

As a project we need to look at what where we want the project to go in the future. Do we tidy up the applications to make them more business friendly? Do we standardise the applications to create a core set that can be customised for each industy or sector? Whatever we decide does this mean that we need to review the project vision and see if it needs to be updated.

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) 
• We would need to investigate the Roadmap and.or Agile functionality that exists as perhaps it could be used to help manage the project

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

• 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).
• Not sure that there is any risk management strategy currently in place
• 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

• All project issues are managed in JIRA
• Users need to create a profile and can report an issue or submit a patch
• Committers assign themselves to an issue and then follow it through to resolution (normally this is either fixing the issues themselves or applying a submitted patch)
• Reports and statistics are available

Task Management

• Future tasks or requests for improvements are also managed through JIRA

Marketing

• No real marketing strategy in place
• Need to aim to attract more business users
• Look at tools available, may need to link this to communication strategy and also branding management

External Dependencies

There was a brief discussion about external dependencies (i.e. on other projects or functionality) and how they have been implemented in OFBiz. The aim is to have a flexible framework that works with the Apache release process. Any external product needs to be maintained and when a release is made the project PMC are responsible for signing the release which ensures that any external dependencies willl be correctly integrated and maintained for the release.

We currently have cases where some external products should not have been implemented to form part of release but can be made available if users want to integrate them into an OFBiz release.

Technical vs. Business Knowledge

A key point was raised that some of the people classed as technical (i.e developers or integrators) in the project also have very solid business experience too. We need to capture information about who knows about which applications and business processes so that we can encourage them to become part of our team of 'mini subject matter experts'.

Consolidated Ideas and Draft Proposals

These consolidated ideas / proposals are to be raised for on the mailing lists for community discussion and feedback. They will only be implemented if the community consensus is received.

1. Proposal: Tidy up OFBiz Technical Framework or "kernel"

   1. e.g identify what needs to be tidied up and assign the work out to be done
      
      

2. Proposal: Define and implement a process to manage the code that has been cleaned out

   1. eg to a sandbox location so could be used by users who want to pick it up and use
      
      

3. Proposal: Tidy or Clean up OFBiz Business Framework

   1.  (e.g. ensure business processes have a use case to describe the process and that can be used for validation)
      
      

4. Proposal: Implement OFBiz in Application Documentation

   1. We have been using docbook but two other proposals mentioned
   2. 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.
   3. 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
      
      

5. Proposal: External Dependencies Refactoring

   1. specific workstream on refactoring external dependencies
      
      

6. Proposal: Build a Project Roadmap / High level plan

   1. This will be used to show details of releases and how they are supported, details of work in development, updates planned.
   2. We 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
      
      

7. Proposal: Ensure Business Success stories are documented

   1. This is valuable information for potential users. We could ask users  to add their stories and also get them to list the applications used / implemented.
   2. 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.
      
      

8. Proposal: Marketing the OFBiz Demo to Business End Users

   1. Prepare an end user demo that can be based on roles (e.g accountant, HR manager, Order Clerk, Warehouse Manager etc).
   2. 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.
   3. Also default user if flexadmin which doesnt have all the permissions for all applications).
      
      

9. Proposal: Build a set of Common Core OFBiz Marketing Material

   1. Put together some standard OFBiz marketing information that all integrators / users have access to.
   2. Integrators can then adapt it to suit their needs if required. Information could be white papers around supported industries etc.
   3. Will 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!
      
      

10. Proposal: Housekeeping and Ongoing Maintenance

    1.  eg. Tomcat etc. Need to keep a watching brief on external products that are directly used by OFBiz and prepare a plan of when to integrate them
       
       

11. Proposal: Establish a group of  "mini subject matter experts" covering business and technical

    1. i.e. dont have to be both but can be
    2. . Identify contributors and knowledge. Can refer to these people regarding their specific area
       
       

12. Proposal: Work on a strategy to encourage more business users

13. Proposal: Look at developing a full testing strategy

    1. Unit testing in isolation is not enough. We need to ensure there is an full end to end test flow
       
       

14. Proposal: Actively Manage OFBiz branding and trademarks

    1. Need to review the process and contact sites that may be infringing on the OFBiz brand
       
       

Actions

• Please Review Apachecon Meeting Notes Jacopo Cappellato, Olivier Heintz, ~pierre.smits@gmail.com, ~gil.pts, Malin Nicolas, Anahita Goljahani, Khaye youssef