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Posted to dev@ofbiz.apache.org by Ron Wheeler <rw...@artifact-software.com> on 2014/08/09 05:47:43 UTC
Re: Onboarding strategy for Newcomers
On 08/08/2014 5:54 PM, Pierre Smits wrote:
> Ron,
>
> You do have a point with respect of OFBiz adoption by new (and/or
> prospective) users, and you outline it very well. And you already started
> addressing in (an)other mail thread(s). And it found fruitful ground
> there. Please keep up the good work, as good documentation leads to a
> bigger user base. And a bigger user base leads to a bigger contributor
> base and thus a bright future of this project.
>
> This thread, however, is about - as you already surmised -whether or not
> easing the onboarding of new contributors is necessary in this community
> and what needs to be done for that.
The focus of the paper is a bit different from the problem of
attracting new users of the project's results.
However if there were 1000 IT organizations supporting their
organization's core business processes through OfBiz, there would be no
problem with the number of people wanting to be part of the PMC and
willing to expend resources (people and money) to improve and extend OfBiz.
At the moment, my impression is that the project does not have the
documentation that is required to attract 1000 medium or large
organizations to adopt it on their own (not as a part of a solution
proposed by a system integrator).
This is not hard to fix but it will take a team effort.
Ron
> As Jacques already said, the sections in chapter 3 of the linked study (
> http://t.co/bc0gn2SQOZ) outline the problems newcomers (contributors)
> experience when joining a project.
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Pierre Smits
>
> *ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>*
> Services & Solutions for Cloud-
> Based Manufacturing, Professional
> Services and Retail & Trade
> http://www.orrtiz.com
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 5:49 PM, Ron Wheeler <rw...@artifact-software.com>
> wrote:
>
>> The documentation issues discussed in the paper are certainly a barrier
>> that can be addressed in OfBiz.
>> The paper is a little bit focused on building the PMS and internal OSS
>> project community rather than worrying about adoption by users.
>>
>>
>> As a potential user, I am going at the documentation problem from a bit of
>> a different POV.
>>
>> If we look at the adoption process, we can identify several stages that an
>> organization goes through during the implementation.
>>
>> In reading this, bear in mind that I have never done an implementation and
>> am still at stage 1 of the OfBiz implementation process.
>> However I have been through this process a number of times over the last
>> 40 years with roles ranging from the most junior programmer on the team to
>> Technical Support manger to lead architect to the consultant preparing the
>> RFP and the recommendation to management.
>> I expect that I have missed many things but I wanted to at least start a
>> discussion about this potential way to look at the documentation.
>> I have tried to be a definite as possible about what I think is required
>> so that people could take issue with my suggestions in a concrete way.
>> Please feel free to add, delete or modify this.
>>
>> I would also ask that people who have contributed documentation take a few
>> seconds to consider the various stages where you think the information
>> contained therein is most helpful.
>>
>>
>> 1) Selection.
>> At this stage the new organization is looking at various alternatives from
>> Quickbooks to SAP.
>> Key stakeholders - Accountants, business managers, IT, CFO, Marketing if
>> the organization is looking at reselling or providing services based on
>> OfBiz.
>> Important information:
>> - Feature descriptions and customization possibilities
>> - Organization profiles
>> - User interface and user documentation/ on-line help
>> - Operational options - SaaS through a reliable supplier, BTF
>> - TCO for SaaS and BTF
>> - Standards
>> - Support and technical documentation
>> - Feasibility - will it run in the IT infrastructure, can IT support it
>> - Stability and operational reliability
>>
>> Demo should be available that looks attractive and easy to use.
>> Video demos of common user functions could be a positive factor
>>
>> The goal is to get through this stage as the winner!
>> If this part fails, the rest is pointless.
>>
>> 2) Demo
>> At this stage the organization needs to see if the thing actually works as
>> advertised.
>> SaaS:
>> Supplier demo site with the organizations logo showing functions available
>> in the SaaS version - Not an Apache problem but perhaps of concern to some
>> who are offering OfBiz as SaaS
>> BTF:
>> Stakeholders: IT Operations, Business Managers, System Analysts
>>
>> Important information
>> - Installation documentation
>> - User documentation
>> - Feature Checklist
>> - Video end-user Training
>> - Architecture Overview
>> - Customization Overview
>> - Implementation plan/checklist
>>
>> 3) Implementation Planning
>> In this stage, the development team may hire a consultant or sign a TSA to
>> support the internal team or they may go it alone if they have the right
>> staff.
>> The major task is to develop a requirements doc, a plan and a budget to
>> get the system operational.
>> At the end of this step
>> - the CFO should be able to give a Go/NoGo for the budget
>> - the Business managers should be able to sign of on the functional
>> requirements
>> - IT Operations should be able to sign off on the Performance, Security
>> and DR capabilities
>>
>> Stakeholders: IT operations, System Analysts, Business managers, CFO
>>
>> Important Information
>> - System initialization and data migration
>> - Customization doc - Database, Framework, Tool list, Best Practices
>> - Use cases
>> - Customization templates - plans, budget estimating tools
>> - System Administration tools and environment docs
>>
>> The books that are recommended and available should be considered as being
>> owned and read by the team at this point.
>> The organization is starting to expend significant resources and
>> purchasing books is the least of the expense.
>> This may help reduce the amount of documentation required to be provided
>> by Apache.
>> New books could also be created to cover areas not well covered by
>> existing books.
>>
>> Outdated books should be clearly identified as such with strong
>> recommendations about purchasing them or not and some guidance about which
>> sections are particularly misleading.
>> If this is too much work, the book should just be removed from the list of
>> "Books about OfBiz" and if there is any information that is critical and
>> not covered elsewhere, it should be identified as documentation to be
>> created.
>>
>>
>> 4) Development
>> At this stage, the implementation team has received the go ahead to
>> implement and has a plan for all customization required.
>> The development team is having fun with code and the IT operations group
>> is preparing to purchase any equipment required and is setting up QA sites
>> for integration testing
>> Stakeholders : Development team including consultants if required, IT
>> operations
>>
>> Important Information
>> - Customization doc - Database, Framework, Tool list, Best Practices
>> - Properly commented code
>> - System Administration tools and environment
>>
>> 5) Implementation
>> At this stage the system is put into operation and data is migrated
>> Stakeholders : IT Operations, Training, OfBiz Support team
>>
>> Important Information
>> - End-user training material - videos, on-line courses, course templates
>> that can be branded and customized
>> - System Administration tools - Security, DR procedures, Update procedures
>> - Data migration tools and Best Practices
>>
>>
>> I hope that this helps.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 07/08/2014 7:25 AM, Pierre Smits wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Newcomers experience problems when they start to participate. This has
>>> been
>>> the subject of following stud: http://t.co/bc0gn2SQOZ
>>>
>>> Do you feel that this project should have an onboarding strategy for
>>> newcomers, and if so what should it entail en where should it be embedded
>>> or incorporated?
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Pierre Smits
>>>
>>> *ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>*
>>>
>>> Services & Solutions for Cloud-
>>> Based Manufacturing, Professional
>>> Services and Retail & Trade
>>> http://www.orrtiz.com
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> Ron Wheeler
>> President
>> Artifact Software Inc
>> email: rwheeler@artifact-software.com
>> skype: ronaldmwheeler
>> phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
>>
>>
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: rwheeler@artifact-software.com
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
Re: Onboarding strategy for Newcomers
Posted by Jacques Le Roux <ja...@les7arts.com>.
Le 09/08/2014 05:47, Ron Wheeler a écrit :
> On 08/08/2014 5:54 PM, Pierre Smits wrote:
>> Ron,
>>
>> You do have a point with respect of OFBiz adoption by new (and/or
>> prospective) users, and you outline it very well. And you already started
>> addressing in (an)other mail thread(s). And it found fruitful ground
>> there. Please keep up the good work, as good documentation leads to a
>> bigger user base. And a bigger user base leads to a bigger contributor
>> base and thus a bright future of this project.
>>
>> This thread, however, is about - as you already surmised -whether or not
>> easing the onboarding of new contributors is necessary in this community
>> and what needs to be done for that.
> The focus of the paper is a bit different from the problem of attracting new users of the project's results.
Yes , it's more oriented on build a community, which can help attracting new users ;)
> However if there were 1000 IT organizations supporting their organization's core business processes through OfBiz, there would be no problem with
> the number of people wanting to be part of the PMC and willing to expend resources (people and money) to improve and extend OfBiz.
>
> At the moment, my impression is that the project does not have the documentation that is required to attract 1000 medium or large organizations to
> adopt it on their own (not as a part of a solution proposed by a system integrator).
You are certainly right. The problem is also that there are a lot (maybe not 1000, but certainly hundreds) sometimes big organisations which are using
OFBiz but don't want that this is known...
There are some exceptions but even then it's not promoted. Did you know Atlassian Jira uses the OFBiz Entity Engine and it was their 1st product on
which they created their business?
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/atlassians-upside-down-business-strategy-could-it-work-for-you/
Another problem (and this the is the traditional "Chicken or the egg") is some organisations use OFBiz to build a prototype and then willing to cut
costs (rare is expensive) migrate it to a more traditional approach with Java minions (eg Spring+Hibernate). It could be that performance is also a
reason why they migrate...
>
> This is not hard to fix but it will take a team effort.
I'm quite happy to have you with us for that!
Jacques
>
> Ron
>> As Jacques already said, the sections in chapter 3 of the linked study (
>> http://t.co/bc0gn2SQOZ) outline the problems newcomers (contributors)
>> experience when joining a project.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>>
>>
>> Pierre Smits
>>
>> *ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>*
>> Services & Solutions for Cloud-
>> Based Manufacturing, Professional
>> Services and Retail & Trade
>> http://www.orrtiz.com
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 5:49 PM, Ron Wheeler <rw...@artifact-software.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> The documentation issues discussed in the paper are certainly a barrier
>>> that can be addressed in OfBiz.
>>> The paper is a little bit focused on building the PMS and internal OSS
>>> project community rather than worrying about adoption by users.
>>>
>>>
>>> As a potential user, I am going at the documentation problem from a bit of
>>> a different POV.
>>>
>>> If we look at the adoption process, we can identify several stages that an
>>> organization goes through during the implementation.
>>>
>>> In reading this, bear in mind that I have never done an implementation and
>>> am still at stage 1 of the OfBiz implementation process.
>>> However I have been through this process a number of times over the last
>>> 40 years with roles ranging from the most junior programmer on the team to
>>> Technical Support manger to lead architect to the consultant preparing the
>>> RFP and the recommendation to management.
>>> I expect that I have missed many things but I wanted to at least start a
>>> discussion about this potential way to look at the documentation.
>>> I have tried to be a definite as possible about what I think is required
>>> so that people could take issue with my suggestions in a concrete way.
>>> Please feel free to add, delete or modify this.
>>>
>>> I would also ask that people who have contributed documentation take a few
>>> seconds to consider the various stages where you think the information
>>> contained therein is most helpful.
>>>
>>>
>>> 1) Selection.
>>> At this stage the new organization is looking at various alternatives from
>>> Quickbooks to SAP.
>>> Key stakeholders - Accountants, business managers, IT, CFO, Marketing if
>>> the organization is looking at reselling or providing services based on
>>> OfBiz.
>>> Important information:
>>> - Feature descriptions and customization possibilities
>>> - Organization profiles
>>> - User interface and user documentation/ on-line help
>>> - Operational options - SaaS through a reliable supplier, BTF
>>> - TCO for SaaS and BTF
>>> - Standards
>>> - Support and technical documentation
>>> - Feasibility - will it run in the IT infrastructure, can IT support it
>>> - Stability and operational reliability
>>>
>>> Demo should be available that looks attractive and easy to use.
>>> Video demos of common user functions could be a positive factor
>>>
>>> The goal is to get through this stage as the winner!
>>> If this part fails, the rest is pointless.
>>>
>>> 2) Demo
>>> At this stage the organization needs to see if the thing actually works as
>>> advertised.
>>> SaaS:
>>> Supplier demo site with the organizations logo showing functions available
>>> in the SaaS version - Not an Apache problem but perhaps of concern to some
>>> who are offering OfBiz as SaaS
>>> BTF:
>>> Stakeholders: IT Operations, Business Managers, System Analysts
>>>
>>> Important information
>>> - Installation documentation
>>> - User documentation
>>> - Feature Checklist
>>> - Video end-user Training
>>> - Architecture Overview
>>> - Customization Overview
>>> - Implementation plan/checklist
>>>
>>> 3) Implementation Planning
>>> In this stage, the development team may hire a consultant or sign a TSA to
>>> support the internal team or they may go it alone if they have the right
>>> staff.
>>> The major task is to develop a requirements doc, a plan and a budget to
>>> get the system operational.
>>> At the end of this step
>>> - the CFO should be able to give a Go/NoGo for the budget
>>> - the Business managers should be able to sign of on the functional
>>> requirements
>>> - IT Operations should be able to sign off on the Performance, Security
>>> and DR capabilities
>>>
>>> Stakeholders: IT operations, System Analysts, Business managers, CFO
>>>
>>> Important Information
>>> - System initialization and data migration
>>> - Customization doc - Database, Framework, Tool list, Best Practices
>>> - Use cases
>>> - Customization templates - plans, budget estimating tools
>>> - System Administration tools and environment docs
>>>
>>> The books that are recommended and available should be considered as being
>>> owned and read by the team at this point.
>>> The organization is starting to expend significant resources and
>>> purchasing books is the least of the expense.
>>> This may help reduce the amount of documentation required to be provided
>>> by Apache.
>>> New books could also be created to cover areas not well covered by
>>> existing books.
>>>
>>> Outdated books should be clearly identified as such with strong
>>> recommendations about purchasing them or not and some guidance about which
>>> sections are particularly misleading.
>>> If this is too much work, the book should just be removed from the list of
>>> "Books about OfBiz" and if there is any information that is critical and
>>> not covered elsewhere, it should be identified as documentation to be
>>> created.
>>>
>>>
>>> 4) Development
>>> At this stage, the implementation team has received the go ahead to
>>> implement and has a plan for all customization required.
>>> The development team is having fun with code and the IT operations group
>>> is preparing to purchase any equipment required and is setting up QA sites
>>> for integration testing
>>> Stakeholders : Development team including consultants if required, IT
>>> operations
>>>
>>> Important Information
>>> - Customization doc - Database, Framework, Tool list, Best Practices
>>> - Properly commented code
>>> - System Administration tools and environment
>>>
>>> 5) Implementation
>>> At this stage the system is put into operation and data is migrated
>>> Stakeholders : IT Operations, Training, OfBiz Support team
>>>
>>> Important Information
>>> - End-user training material - videos, on-line courses, course templates
>>> that can be branded and customized
>>> - System Administration tools - Security, DR procedures, Update procedures
>>> - Data migration tools and Best Practices
>>>
>>>
>>> I hope that this helps.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 07/08/2014 7:25 AM, Pierre Smits wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> Newcomers experience problems when they start to participate. This has
>>>> been
>>>> the subject of following stud: http://t.co/bc0gn2SQOZ
>>>>
>>>> Do you feel that this project should have an onboarding strategy for
>>>> newcomers, and if so what should it entail en where should it be embedded
>>>> or incorporated?
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> Pierre Smits
>>>>
>>>> *ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>*
>>>>
>>>> Services & Solutions for Cloud-
>>>> Based Manufacturing, Professional
>>>> Services and Retail & Trade
>>>> http://www.orrtiz.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>> --
>>> Ron Wheeler
>>> President
>>> Artifact Software Inc
>>> email: rwheeler@artifact-software.com
>>> skype: ronaldmwheeler
>>> phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
>>>
>>>
>
>