Hi there,
I said it to quite a few of you and now I'm announcing it: I started to
dogfood Chandler seriously since Friday September 23rd!
So far, I'm fairly happy with it though I ran through a couple of
crashers that I carefully walk around in my daily usage. But despite the
bugs, the great news is: Chandler is rapidly becoming usable, there's
nothing I was doing with iCal I found myself not being able to do in
Chandler, I can save my data (in .ics) and read them back with no loss.
This last aspect is of course paramount when dogfooding and I'm glad to
report I haven't lost anything since Friday (knocking on wood...).
So, what does it mean to "dogfood" Chandler?
- Stop using iCal and run Chandler exclusively: I know it's hard to get
rid of old habits but, if it's hard for us, just think about how it will
feel for others outside OSAF.
- Take notes of every behavior or issue you find when running Chandler:
mild annoyances, UI defect that bug you, anything that make you want to
leave Chandler and start iCal again... Those are things that are not
necessarily bugs and that you may want to discuss with someone on the
team (idea: should we have a "dogfood" mailing list to discuss such
issues? Is there an existing mailing list that would be appropriate for
that kind of discussion?)
- Report bugs in Bugzilla religiously: don't just send an e-mail out and
hope someone else will track the problem...
I've been logging quite a few bugs since Friday but don't feel bad about
it: this is exactly where we should be right now.
I encourage everybody in the Dev group to start dogfooding. This is
important we get some mileage among ourselves and feel confortable with
the application before we roll it out to non-dev type within the
organization (i.e. Esther to handle our Office calendar) and, later, to
the World.
I know: after years of development it feels strange that some people may
actually use our stuff but this day is actually really really close
now... and it's a pretty exciting place to be... :)
Cheers,
- Philippe
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