I'm on vacation so I have more time to say my piece :-)
I'm one of those (business) guys who sits largely on the sidelines, watching and nodding whilst offering an occasional comment.
On the proposals:
The number 1 issue for me (that is I won't USE Chandler at all until it can...) is calendaring and contact functionality. I can live with separate email (I do now because of company policies). But I do DEPEND on having reliable synch (in my case to a Treo) and with ALL fields. I use a supplementary app because the Treo approach means that I can't synch a home address from Outlook to Treo. Hmmmmm.
The REAL WORLD use scenarios are a critical guide. So I need to be able to synch reliably, and I need a way to get may data in. One of the biggest reasons that people resist trying new apps is the 'cost of conversion'. And I don't mean $$. I mean will it take me the entire vacation to move my data and then it will have some problem I can't live with......
Next, I want reliability. Personally, I don't care about features such as free/busy AS LONG as there are bugs on critical every day items. So a solid, dependable app should win every time over new features.
I see all the comments on web hosted calendars and is synch really necessary. In my view, this is one of THE critical components to success and you will not persuade a great many users to use Chandler without it.
Regards
At 12:09 PM 11/30/2005, Sheila Mooney wrote:
As many of you are aware the work on our 0.6 usable calendar is winding down and the planning for the next release is now ramping up. There have already been a number of discussions regarding the right priorities and tenets for 0.7. We would like to open up this discussion to a much broader audience and get people's thoughts and comments on what our priorities should be in 0.7.
In order to provide some context for the discussion I wanted to summarize the proposed tenets on the table for 0.7 and some of the issues/tradeoffs we are wrestling with.
Proposed Tenets:
-> Dogfood Sharing/Calendar #2 - Move the calendar towards feature complete by adding features like free-busy. Respond to bug fixes and/or enhancements that block calendar usability as users discover them.
-> Plausible Dashboard - Basic working table with sort, search and UI polish as well as infrastructure to lay foundation for innovative PIM features around task and project management.
-> Application Infrastructure - Continued work on performance, widgets, undo framework.
-> Developer Platform - Schema upgrade, content model as well as refactoring and documenting APIs that 3rd party developers can use. This includes work refactoring CPIA.
-> Release Packaging - now that some portion of the product is usable, investing more time to enable users to download and run Chandler on all 3 platforms. In particular, distribute via conventional means on Linux distributions.
Questions/Issues:
-> How much calendar work do we do? Do we focus on bugs fixes or tackle new features such as free-busy? How do we bound this tenet around a clear goal so we can prioritize the work?
-> Should we be considering PDA sync or is that out of the question for 0.7?
-> How much email work should we do in 0.7 and what are the consequences of delaying this further? There is some email work planning to support of the dashboard tenet what happens if we have to make some tough choices and don't do this?
-> What do we really mean by plausible dashboard? If we do the basic table work, what other aspects of the dashboard and task management features do we need to add in order for us iterate and get some valuable user feedback on some of these designs?
-> Should we focus on trying to have a shorter release than 0.6 by doing less? Maybe we have 2 short releases instead of one?
-> What is appropriate to tackle in the infrastructure tenet and what could be deferred? Undo? ACLs?
I realize some of these tenets are very high-level and it's hard for people to comment on the dashboard when we are still trying to determine what that is for 0.7. The goal of this exercise is less about debating the details and more about getting some feedback from those close to the project about what features or areas of the app, they feel we should be working on (ie: building out innovative features like the dashboard or getting to a usable email client).
It's tough to think about 0.7 without some context for the larger product roadmap so I have included a link to our latest "1.0 stickie plan" (view in firefox) which is a possible scenario for getting to a usable product in the 1.0 timeframe. This is a work in progress will be evolving with every dot release but we wanted to give folks a sense of where certain features fall on the roadmap that are NOT part of the 0.7 tenets. This demonstrates how we see certain application areas evolving in the product life-cycle.
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/pub/Projects/ChandlerHome/roadmap.html
Comments on the tenets, issues or new questions for us to ponder are all welcome. Based on all the feedback we receive, the product team will make the final decisions on the 0.7 tenets, taking into account all the various comments. Please send all replies to the design list.
Sheila
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list
http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design
*****************************************************************
The Open Group in Barcelona, Spain, January 2006
IT Architecture Practitioners Conference - January 23-25, 2006
Member Meetings - January 23-27, 2006
Hotel Fira Palace, Barcelona, Spain
http://www.opengroup.org/barcelona2006/
******************************************************************
Graham Bird The Open Group
Vice President, Marketing 44 Montgomery St #960
San Francisco
CA 94104-4704, USA
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opengroup.org
Tel +1 (415) 374 8280 Xt 229 Fax +1 (240) 214-1063
Cell +1 (415) 999 3106 GSM: +44 771 863 9088
UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the US and other countries
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design
