Ed, your probably right. I think its a good thing to get the users/MFIs together in any medium possible to flesh out what is critical from a product point of view.
regards, Keith. On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 3:30 PM, Ed Cable <edca...@gmail.com> wrote: > Keith, > > I think thread may have gotten a bit too technical in discussion and some > users didn't realize original intent of thread. > > Do you want to start up another individual thread on mifos-users regarding > functional improvements users would like to see? I'm certain built-in or > integrated accounting, automatic fees, support for photos or file > attachments, business rules between loan and savings accounts would be some > of the requests. > > I think we're overdue for a community-wide user meeting then can narrow down > some of the functional improvements community would like to see as we start > a process for identifying, proposing, and then prioritizing community driven > processes. > > Ed > > On Jul 1, 2011 5:13 AM, "Keith Woodlock" <keithwoodl...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Binny, >> >>> Are we concentrating too much on technical improvements while not paying >>> adequate attention to new/improved features? >> >> Yes, this is the whole point of this email chain. I was asking for >> input/feedback from the users about what to put into mifos after Maya >> G. So far only george has offered some insight into what might be >> useful going forward. From a technical point of view we know what we >> need to do but theres no point in taking on that investment unless >> customers out there want further features/improvements etc >> >> regards, >> Keith. >> >> On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 5:50 AM, Binny Gopinath <binny.gopin...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >>> >>> Are we concentrating too much on technical improvements while not paying >>> adequate attention to new/improved features? >>> >>> Technical improvements without any visible improvement to end-users - may >>> cause users to consider moving away from Mifos. I would like releases to >>> be >>> a mix of new/improved functional features + a bunch of technical >>> improvements. I have had the chance to get a glimpse into some of our >>> competition and very soon our feature set is going to be insufficient, >>> which >>> is heartbreaking .. >>> >>> On technical improvements: >>> - would be good to include testing/handling of larger volumes - I have >>> had a >>> couple of enquiries from large MFI's - one of them has 4+ million members >>> - on i18n, would be good to allow overriding of specific >>> internationalized >>> labels look up from config folders - so that they do not get overwritten >>> by >>> any upgrades. And also handle date formats consistently, especially in >>> reports. >>> >>> Thanks >>> Binny >>> >>> >>> On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 10:33 AM, Van Mittal-Henkle >>> <va...@grameenfoundation.org> wrote: >>>> >>>> George, >>>> >>>> I'm catching up on some of these threads after being out for a few days >>>> >>>> > - there's a mobile revolution underway in sub-Saharan Africa; building >>>> > both the APIs/hooks for connecting into a variety of mobile systems >>>> > (from mobile money to mobile interfaces for clients and MFI staff to >>>> > exchange of info with other systems that are running mobile apps) and >>>> > also potentially getting a few sample/reference mobile apps running on >>>> > Mifos (need to vet specific pain points so we don't build something >>>> > just for the sake of building it) >>>> >>>> If Mifos provided Restful or WSDL based APIs it would open up lots of >>>> possibilities for building on Mifos for things like this. Having stable >>>> APIs for people to build on is one of the things we have been working >>>> towards for some time. A lot of KeithW's efforts in particular have >>>> been around getting internals to a state where we could start layering >>>> an API on them. As mentioned, getting specific customers with specific >>>> use cases to drive this is key. >>>> >>>> > also for you and the other engineers who have worked on MIfos: in a >>>> > community model if there's less oversight, is there under-the-covers >>>> > work that should be prioritized which will help keep Mifos stable and >>>> > scalable as it goes forward in the community? >>>> >>>> Here's where some big questions come up. >>>> >>>> One hypothesis is that there are two classes of Mifos users-- Class 1: >>>> larger MFIs who have a need for various extensions and customizations of >>>> Mifos and who can take on some expense to do that and even host their >>>> own infrastructure and Class 2: smaller MFIs who could likely manage >>>> with fewer features and less extensibility and who would benefit most >>>> from low cost hosted access to Mifos. >>>> >>>> How to most effectively meet the needs of both users is tricky. >>>> >>>> We've been challenged by the current code base being difficult and >>>> expensive to extend and maintain. We have made progress in improving >>>> the code and certain areas of it are much easier to deal with now. >>>> However, there is still a large amount of code left that needs >>>> improvement. >>>> >>>> The most cost effective way to deliver a solution that can be >>>> effectively hosted at very low cost (supporting multi-tenancy for >>>> example) at this point looks like a rewrite that would pull in reusable >>>> parts of Mifos but redo the basics from the ground up to get things like >>>> multi-tenancy, transaction management, auditing, clean i18n, layered >>>> architecture, separation of concerns and manageable tests in place. To >>>> keep the cost of doing a rewrite low, it would help for the target >>>> release to have fewer features and options than Mifos currently does. >>>> >>>> On the other hand, supporting larger existing and new MFIs and those >>>> requiring the larger feature set currently supported by Mifos would >>>> benefit from the current code base being extended and refined. The >>>> difficulty here is that the cost to continue maintaining the current >>>> code is high as is the cost to refactor and improve it. >>>> >>>> Keith and I are in agreement on the things that he already laid out >>>> here: >>>> http://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/display/MIFOS/Technical+Roadmap+%28Post+ >>>> Maya+G+and+onwards%29 >>>> >>>> This is a good list of how the current code base could be moved forward. >>>> >>>> >>>> Replacing the current Struts/JSP based UI code with Spring/Freemarker is >>>> the biggest single enabler for lowering the cost of maintaining and >>>> extending Mifos. It leads to: >>>> * API creation across the application (by achieving complete separation >>>> of business logic from presentation code) >>>> * simplified transaction management >>>> * simplified i18n >>>> * improvement of layered architecture >>>> * reduction and simplification of test code >>>> >>>> --Van >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously >>> valuable. >>> Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security >>> threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes >>> sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. >>> http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-c2 >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Mifos-users mailing list >>> Mifos-users@lists.sourceforge.net >>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mifos-users >>> >>> >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable. >> Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security >> threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes >> sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. >> http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-c2 >> _______________________________________________ >> Mifos-users mailing list >> Mifos-users@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mifos-users > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable. > Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security > threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes > sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-c2 > _______________________________________________ > Mifos-users mailing list > Mifos-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mifos-users > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable. Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-c2 _______________________________________________ Mifos-users mailing list Mifos-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mifos-users
