On Fri, 18 Aug 2006 03:17:52 -0400 "Tom Hoffman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hello all, > > August has found SchoolTool in somewhat of a state of crisis. We are > (again) behind schedule, and while there are many small issues that > have caused delays, the overarching issue is that we planned and > budgeted for X hours of work from our various contractors, and we've > ended up with Y actual hours of work, where Y is about .5X. Beyond > that, I've got essentially no developers available now to get ready > for the start of the school year. > > I'm not going to go into the gory details of how and why this > occurred, but there are a few implications: > > * We are simply not in a position to follow through with comprehensive > testing at our partner schools at the beginning of the school year. > This is frustrating and embarrassing for us, and a disappointment for > everyone concerned. I did select schools that have existing systems > that they can continue to use in the fall, so it should be at most an > inconvenience and not a crisis. > > * We have to conclude that the way we've organized this project isn't > working. Specifically, I'm not aware of another open source project, > especially one of SchoolTool's complexity, which has tried to use > teams of part-time paid contractors to write the code. We've been > able to write lots of good code, good components, but *finishing* > SchoolTool as a unified, coherent application has eluded us, and it > feels like without changes I could be writing exactly the same > apologetic email every six months. > > So... Mark and Steve Alexander and I had a talk on Tuesday to plan out > some changes. These bits are still in the planning stages. > > * We are going to hire a single full-time developer to handle the bulk > of SchoolTool development (instead of several part-time teams). I > would like this developer to also act more in the traditional role of > an open source project maintainer. I want to step away from trying to > be the mediator (or the "decider" as Bush would say) on technical > decisions. We may create a technical advisory board to help make > larger architectural decisions in the future. > > * The full-time developer will work on site at a local school and will > create a complete version of SchoolTool for that school through the > next year. We need to eliminate the distance between our developers > and schools by getting them in direct physical contact. > > * During the year we will use several development sprints to broaden > and generalize the application, and to create versions for the current > partner schools (if they will still have us). > > I am also considering re-occupying my old office at my former high > school and spending much of my time implementing and customizing > SchoolTool there. I've been trapped in a state where I can generally > write code that works, but it is far to ugly and insane and generally > below the standards of SchoolTool development. I think it is time for > me to just pounding stuff out on my own development branch, whether it > ends up making it into SchoolTool proper or just acts as a prototype > for subsequent coding by real developers. > > That's the working plan... still under development. > > I want to stress that we have built a solid foundation for SchoolTool, > and attendance, calendaring and demographics are in pretty good shape. > We're not having huge technical problems. We just need to organize > the work differently and push this baby over the hump. I've been following this project for some years now. I might suggest you hire not one, but two full time programmers - individuals who're competent implementing an XP approach. Just an idea... -- Best regards, Ken Gunderson "The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." (Thomas Jefferson) _______________________________________________ Schooltool mailing list [email protected] http://lists.schooltool.org/mailman/listinfo/schooltool
