As you all know, the long term goal of the OFBiz project is to build a
complete, features set rich, universal and configurable "enterprise
automation software" (ERP, CRM, CMMS, MRP etc.).
OFBiz is one of the few applications of this type developed by a
community, rather than one corporation.
Even if the final long term goal is clear and well-defined ("building a
universal enterprise automation software"), the short and medium term
tasks to accomplish it are not.
This is of course a consequence of the nature of the project: it is a
community driven project that tends to lead a life of its own and this
is great and amazing.
However it is probably time to try together to canalize the power of the
OFBiz community in order to reach our final goal more quickly and
efficiently.
In my opinion, the definition of a short/medium term plan
(wishlist/feature plan) could help encourage contributions and
efficiently convey the community resources.
It is not an attempt at top-down management, but rather a means to
enhance collaboration and communication in the OFBiz community.
Proposed steps (draft):
1) areas of interest: definition of the areas of interest for the
community: "what do you think the community members have to implement to
make OFBiz the best enterprise automation software in the World?"; the
tasks should not be huge tasks because they should be doable by
volunteers in the community
2) resources: who is willing to contribute to which task and the
approximate amount of hours per week
3) for the tasks with enough resources and attention: define the
details, subtasks (in Jira?), roles, estimated completion dates; at
least one committer should probably be part of each task, so that the
work will be committed more rapidly
To give you an idea of a way to implement #1 and #2, I've set up a draft
of a page with a wishlist that I've recently collected (from
private/public messages):
http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/JAw
of course this is only a first step, the list will change and grow
during the discussion.
Please, post your comments and ideas here (and as comments to the above
page), I really think this could be a great opportunity for the
community to grow and for new developers to become committers!
Jacopo
