Chat Meetings/Log 200806018

[17:06] <jordimas> We are going to start now
[17:06] <jordimas> Hello everyone
[17:07] <jordimas> Pjuvara, will actually start the conversation
[17:07] <pjuvara> OK
[17:07] <pjuvara> Hi everyone
[17:08] <pjuvara> Today's main topic is a review of the release candidate projects for 2.50.
[17:08] <pjuvara> We are very close to publishing 2.40 beta and as soon as that is done we will be ready to switch gear and start working on 2.50.
[17:08] <pjuvara> Because of that, we have done quite a bit of thinking about the product road map and priorities.
[17:08] <pjuvara> I have collected input from a variety of sources:
[17:08] <pjuvara> 1) Strategic direction of the product: where do we want the product to be in a few years
[17:08] <pjuvara> 2) Competitive analysis: what are other ERP doing
[17:08] <pjuvara> 3) Feature requests
[17:08] <pjuvara> and come up with a full list of features, some small and some very large, that we could think of adding to the product.
[17:09] <pjuvara> That list is collected in the form of a Google Spreadsheet which is available at:
[17:09] <pjuvara> http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pPWZAST9Jg5FQBzfEy0kTQw
[17:09] <pjuvara> This spreadsheet not only lists all the features but it also adds a priority to them, which is a factor of:
[17:09] <pjuvara> 1) Urgency (how soon we would like to have this feature)
[17:09] <pjuvara> 2) Workload (we cannot have all the large projects in a single release, so they need to be spread over time)
[17:09] <pjuvara> 3) Dependencies (some projects need other projects to be done first)
[17:09] <pjuvara> On June 2nd, I published this list to the Community in the Openbravo forums asking for feedback.
[17:09] <pjuvara> The feedback has been perhaps less than what I was hoping for (only 6 replies - thanks to those of you who responded)
[17:09] <pjuvara> but nonetheless very interesting and it has helped a lot in further refining our priorities.
[17:10] <pjuvara> I have not yet updated the original spreadsheet since the original publication since many of the replies referred to the projects by their priority number and I didn't want to change that to avoid confusion.
[17:11] <pjuvara> That said, please rest assured that your feedback has been received and considered.
[17:11] <pjuvara> I would now like to take the opportunity of this community chat to solicit further feedback, to answer questions or debate points.
[17:11] <pjuvara> I would like this conversation to be interactive so feel free to jump in at any time.
[17:12] <fblauer> which column is the urgency?
[17:12] <pjuvara> Oops.
[17:13] <pjuvara> It is the one titled "jordi". I'm not sure how did that happened.
[17:13] <pjuvara> It is supposed to be "Priority".
[17:13] <pjuvara> Sorry about that.
[17:13] <pjuvara> :)
[17:13] <jordimas> Well, even if It can look otherwise, I do not setup the priorities :)
[17:14] <AndrewBallantine> How far down the unedited list can you get for 2.50 with existing resources?
[17:14] <fblauer> no problem. I havn't had a chance to go thru the list yet, but I think this is a great process
[17:14] <pjuvara> Andrew: that is a good question and a lot of it depends on how much community contributions we can get.
[17:15] <AndrewBallantine> Well let's be pessimistic and assume none.
[17:15] <pjuvara> We think that Openbravo can sponsor about 40 man months of efforts for 2.50 (the freeze is planned at the end of October)
[17:15] <pjuvara> That will take us to priority 22 (Leads and Opportunity Management).
[17:16] <AndrewBallantine> What is the unit of the Estimated effort column, please.
[17:16] <pjuvara> In addition to that we already have some volunteers (actually many) that have signed up for contributions so we can add a few more projects, although we do not have full control of which ones.
[17:16] <pjuvara> The estimate is in months.
[17:16] <pjuvara> Months of effort, not elapsed.
[17:18] <pjuvara> The reason why we do not have full control of the community contributions is that in many cases these are features that people are building for their own implementations and are willing to work with us to make sure they are included in the core product
[17:19] <pjuvara> In general we welcome this type of contributions and we are doing all that we can to receive them.
[17:19] <pjuvara> In terms of projects that we intend to sponsor ourselves, we believe that modularity is a clear #1 priority.
[17:20] <pjuvara> As somebody said in his reply to my original forum post, not everything is good for everybody and we need to also foster contributions that do not make it into the core product (do not get distributed to everybody) but are still reusable.
[17:20] <pjuvara> We think that modularity is key to that.
[17:20] <AndrewBallantine> Well I am delighted to see 3 of my items #1-,#11,#12 above the cut-off line
[17:21] <AndrewBallantine> Modularity is certainly very key.
[17:21] <pjuvara> Yes. #11 and #12 are specificallly a response to your usability initiative.
[17:22] <pjuvara> Another point that has been made very strongly in the feedback I received is that a revision of the data access layer is very important.
[17:22] <pjuvara> Originally that was priority 60 and therefore out of scope for 2.50.
[17:23] <pjuvara> But we are looking for ways to bring it in, at least partially.
[17:23] <AndrewBallantine> Is there any chance that the US localisation might be done in the USA? i.e. save you 3 months
[17:24] <pjuvara> Unfortunately we do not have volunteers for the US localization and we think that is a strategic localization for the expansion of the community.
[17:24] <pjuvara> We are therefore inclined to build it ourselves in the same way that we build the Spanish localization.
[17:24] <AndrewBallantine> Production account would be NTH (Nice To Have), but I would have thought there are more important things to do.
[17:24] <pjuvara> Now, this is a fairly open point since we have not yet defined what it means to build a localization in full details.
[17:25] <pjuvara> Can you please elaborate further?
[17:26] <pjuvara> What other features do you think are more urgent?
[17:26] <AndrewBallantine> There are several items further down the list which tidy up the basic product such as #56,57,58,60
[17:27] <AndrewBallantine> These are more important to the average user, IMHO
[17:28] <pjuvara> Good feedback. Let me explain my rationale for the current prioritization.
[17:28] <pjuvara> I am trying to schedule for each release an appropriate mix of platform improvements, usability enhancements and new functionality.
[17:29] <cheli> now ob support ff an ie, there are a lot of browser in mobil devices where ob does not work
[17:29] <pjuvara> So the choices are: 58 (warehouse picking) vs, 22 (leads and opportunity management)
[17:30] <cheli> #5, #6
[17:30] <pjuvara> 56,57 over 11 and 12.
[17:30] <pjuvara> Just a second, cheli
[17:30] <cheli> sorry
[17:30] <AndrewBallantine> 58 rather than 22
[17:30] <pjuvara> I can understand 58 over 22 (complete an existing feature over building new one)
[17:31] <pjuvara> But for 56 and 57 (while I certainly acknowledge them as very good things to have) I do not think the problem is so pervasive to justify an immediate action.
[17:31] <pjuvara> Wouldn't you agree?
[17:32] <pjuvara> Getting to cheli's point.
[17:32] <pjuvara> Yes #5 and #6 are indeed very import and definitely in scope for 2.50.
[17:33] <AndrewBallantine> Yes I would agree that 56 is less important though I am amased at the required effort to fix it
[17:34] <pjuvara> Andrew: you are likely to be right. The estimates in the spreadsheet are just initial estimates for rough cut planning purposes and are not very accurate.
[17:34] <AndrewBallantine> 57 only occurs on certain screens so does not affect the average user
[17:35] <pjuvara> With regards to #5 and #6, we come to those features from a slightly different angle than cheli's. For us the main driver was simplification, reducing the size of the pages and speeding up the browser rendering.
[17:36] <pjuvara> That said, with those we are also likely to get additional browser support, including browsers for mobile devices.
[17:36] <cheli> that's very important, now ob generates too traffic
[17:36] <cheli> alsa the theme is very heavy
[17:36] <pjuvara> Agreed.
[17:37] <pjuvara> Yes, the theme is very heavy but the browser should be able to cache it effectively as long as we code the pages correctly and consistently.
[17:37] <AndrewBallantine> We have a use for a mobile telephone wifi'ed to OB in the warehouse which would need this support.
[17:38] <pjuvara> Now, be careful with that. It is likely that a practical usage over a phone would also require a redesign of the pages to fit the form factor of a phone (smaller screen) and that is not in scope.
[17:41] <pjuvara> Any other questions?
[17:41] <AndrewBallantine> Yes, I appreciate that there would have to be special pages, but mobile phone technology is much much cheaper that custom warehouse mobile units.
[17:41] <jordimas> When the skins can be setup by users probably makes sense to have a lighter skins for mobile users with smaller resolutions
[17:42] <cheli> not only the screen is a problem, also the fact that mobile devices operating systems uses opera and safari ( in windows mobile you can also use ie) and ob doesn't work in that browsers
[17:43] <pjuvara> Good point by Andrew on the cost of mobile units. Something that we need to consider for warehouse picking.
[17:43] <pjuvara> Cheli: do you see support for those browser as an important requirement?
[17:44] <pjuvara> It wouldn't be too difficult for us to do (I think) if we were to focus on it but we never received (to my knowledge) a request in that sense.
[17:44] <eneves> I see support for those browser as an important requirement
[17:44] <eneves> At least Safari
[17:46] <pjuvara> Eneves: thanks for the input. Can you please justify the reason? (and I do not mean this in any partisan way - I know people are very attached to their browsers :))
[17:48] <pjuvara> Looking at w3 statistics (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp) Safari and Opera have less than 4% of usage share as of April 2008.
[17:48] <eneves> I think about the cost of mobile phone and the grow of iphone
[17:49] <cheli> mobile devices are getting more popular, the entrepreneurs want to look up things from anywhere.
[17:49] <pjuvara> Personally, I feel very bad that Openbravo does not support IE6 which with 29% of share is still the leading browser.
[17:50] <pjuvara> So all of you seem to make a very strong point on mobility.
[17:50] <AndrewBallantine> What might help in this area is if OB could produce One sample page that would work on a mobile device that we could use as a model for further work by the community.
[17:50] <pjuvara> Mobility is something that we didn't consider a priority in the short term but we can revise that based on this input.
[17:51] <pjuvara> Andrew: excellent idea.
[17:51] <AndrewBallantine> I don't see IE6 as an issue at all. If a company commits to open source, they are going to be quite happy using Firefox.
[17:52] <pjuvara> That is how we justify it to ourselves:-D
[17:54] <AndrewBallantine> Why are 20 (PRODUCT ACCOUNTING), 21 (Background Process Accounting) so important?
[17:55] <AndrewBallantine> Ooops that should be Backgroung Process Management
[17:55] <pjuvara> 20 is in my opinion important because we currently support manufacturing operations but we do not generate any accounting for it, which diminshes the value proposition of an integrated ERP.
[17:57] <pjuvara> Background process management will facilitate the operation of the system. Today users have to manually submit many processes and wait for them to complete, even if they are long running processes (if they close the browser window, the process terminates)
[17:57] <cheli> 20 is very important for me too
[17:57] <pjuvara> With this feature they will be able to schedule recurring tasks (i,e, perform accounting every day, run a specific report at the end of every month, etc.) and most importantly not have to wait online for a process to complete.
[17:58] <pjuvara> It is a feature that all other ERPs have and that was not well implemented in Openbravo.
[17:58] <pjuvara> I mean it is not well implemented.
[17:58] <AndrewBallantine> OK I go along with that, just testing;-)
[17:59] <pjuvara> OK. We are reaching the top of the hour.
[17:59] <pjuvara> Are there any other questions?
[18:00] <pjuvara> I think this has been a very interesting conversation and I would like to thank you for your participation. I would also like to remind you that you can still provide feedback off line by answering my original post in the Open Discussion forum.
[18:00] <AndrewBallantine> I mentioned on the request for feedback that I was concerned about the repeated effort needed to set up the report headers
[18:01] <AndrewBallantine> for SO PO Inv etc
[18:01] <pjuvara> Good point that we will consider. I'm not promising anything here but wait for the revised version of the spreadsheet.
[18:01] <pjuvara> Just as a reminder, the original post is available at: [1]
[18:02] <pjuvara> Starting from next week, I will do a more detailed planning based on the feedback received and publish a first list of candidate projects scheduled for 2.50. I hope that you will find that your feedback has been considered.
[18:03] <AndrewBallantine> I look forward to it Paolo.
[18:05] <jordimas> Thanks for your help
[18:05] <huehner> pjuvara: did you receive my email regarding number vs. integer on postgres?
[18:06] <pjuvara> Yes, I did and I look forward to discuss it with you in person when you come and visit us.
[18:07] <fblauer> thanks
[18:07] <huehner> pjuvara: fine, thanks
[18:14] <AndrewBallantine> Well, if there is no more to discuss, I will bit you all "Good Day". Thanks for listening.
[18:16] <iarwain> huehner: when are you coming?
[18:17] <huehner> iarwain: current plan is to start in mid-july. could be postponed by some days from my end.. because of some missing papers
[18:17] <huehner> iarwain: so real soon, now :)
[18:18] <iarwain> huehner: cool
[19:40] <jordimas> iarwain: https://dev.openbravo.com/ and https://dev.openbravo.com/svnstats/ the localization-pos repository is not shown. We show shown them please
[19:55] <iarwain> jordimas: added. thanks.
[19:55] <jordimas> thanks iarwain

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