TB Project Plan

[Mark]

Where can we see a medium to high level project plan of whats planned plus ideas and suggestions to a medium to high level of whats going on with thirtybees?

(Not github)- I mean a project plan with dates and deliverables to a medium to high level.

[datakick]

It's tracked in our Jira, not really publicly available.

[toplakd]

I really looking forward to see what TB-6 will bring 💪

[datakick]

Just now, toplakd said:

I really looking forward to see what TB-6 will bring 💪

Yeah, you guessed right, it contains integrating your two PR + some additional enhancements 🙂

[Mark]

@datakick I get why its important to not make all plans publically available, but site owners are trying to manage their businesses and part of that is what TB plans are.

Im sure I'm not the only one planning things that are a bit dependant on TB capabilities and functions.

Also its good to see where people's ideas and feature requests are at in the pipeline. (Bugs not so much thats more of a github level thing).

Most companies provide some visibility over project planning to at least some of their interested users.

Businesses being told nothing about what's coming up tend to lose interest over the uncertainty... as they can do if they have no input and can see where the ideas and feature requests slot in (or not) into the overall program.

 

Maybe consider giving slightly wider access to the project plan. its not secret squirrel where decisions can made behind closed doors by just you (surely?). 

Is it a democracy or Datakick's autocracy?

Edited March 31, 2021 by Mark

[datakick]

3 hours ago, Mark said:

@datakick I get why its important to not make all plans publically available, but site owners are trying to manage their businesses and part of that is what TB plans are.

Im sure I'm not the only one planning things that are a bit dependant on TB capabilities and functions.

I agree with this, and I will write a post about our high level plans. 

3 hours ago, Mark said:

Also its good to see where people's ideas and feature requests are at in the pipeline.

How do you suggest we do that? Please advice some easy to implement solution, or even help set it up. We would be quite grateful. 

I would personally love to have some publicly available feature request management tool.

Currently, enhancement requests are submitted all over the place. In form of github issues, here on forum, on feature request page (https://thirtybees.com/feature-request/), via emails, on slack channel. I have yet to receive sms with feature request, thought 🙂

We try to collect them and copy (interesting one) to our Jira for further refinement, analysis. A lot of the ides are discarded right at the beginning because they are not 'core' material. Merchants often suggest things like 'we want a button' or 'infinite scroll', and these can't be implemented in core, obviously. 

So yeah, some centralized way to collect ER would be great help.

3 hours ago, Mark said:

Maybe consider giving slightly wider access to the project plan. its not secret squirrel where decisions can made behind closed doors by just you (surely?). 

Is it a democracy or Datakick's autocracy?

It's a business

[Mark]

@datakick
Ok I will try to be of some use here and try to take up minimal time of yours doing so, investigating and perhaps implementing with maybe others who are also involved in the decision and project management process.

That's if you would like me try and do so.

Key part of this would be sorting out the process for reporting ideas, bugs and feature requests to go through one process by multiple types of users (website users, staff, owners, tb, tb community each with their own permissions, process ) and in place.

Another key part would be knowing how's it's already done and then collating all the existing info into a new process.

Perhaps let me... or whoever else you want to do this... to know any other requirements as to how you want this done.

 

[Briljander]

I agree that it would be good to just post some news once in a while.

I can see that there is activity in Github but there are probably also a lot done that can't be seen there. We are curious what going on and also what can be expected. Transparency is the way to go. 

Unfortunately I don't have any good ideas of what you can use for tool to centralize everything.

I am happy with a news post about progress, both good and bad news and also about what will happen next. What you need help with and and so on.

Edit:

I have to admit that I totally missed the other forum thread about sprints. That was awesome! Thanks @datakick!

 

 

Edited March 31, 2021 by Briljander

[rubben1985]

21 hours ago, Briljander said:

Edit:

I have to admit that I totally missed the other forum thread about sprints. That was awesome! Thanks @datakick!

 

 

That can happen becuase it can be mixed with other posts. Maybe its own section? I would suggest that updates like this (kind of changelog at the end) could be together with updates changelog and future developments/roadmap, could be a fixed section in the website. Anyone that wants to check if this are moving, and what to expect, could go there.

[datakick]

On 3/31/2021 at 8:02 PM, Mark said:

@datakick
Ok I will try to be of some use here and try to take up minimal time of yours doing so, investigating and perhaps implementing with maybe others who are also involved in the decision and project management process.

That's if you would like me try and do so.

Key part of this would be sorting out the process for reporting ideas, bugs and feature requests to go through one process by multiple types of users (website users, staff, owners, tb, tb community each with their own permissions, process ) and in place.

There are multiple groups of actors that have different needs

Merchants:

• target users of thirty bees
• major source of business-related enhancement requests
• most of their requests are, however, not ideal for development in core. Usually, module is the best way to implement such request
• module can be implemented either by core team, or by third party developers (ideal scenario)
• merchants are usually not developers, so there need to be some moderation

Theme and module developers, partners/agencies:

• they require different set of features in the core, supporting features and extension points that allows them to develop their solutions
• thirtybees users (merchants) don't not really care about these features, though
• these are tech people, so the communication with tb dev could be more easier

Owners

• business needs specific to thirty bees owners
• I don't think we should discuss these in public

On 3/31/2021 at 8:02 PM, Mark said:

Another key part would be knowing how's it's already done and then collating all the existing info into a new process.

Perhaps let me... or whoever else you want to do this... to know any other requirements as to how you want this done.

There is already a system for users to submit their feature request, but it's not very user friendly, or structured enough https://thirtybees.com/feature-request

Tub this is only for feature collection. The actual planning go through jira.

I think good system would be something like this:

• merchants or any other user could submit a request
• there would be discussion area so we could communicate in order to groom the idea, and make it clearn
• once the idea is well understood, staff member would either
  • approve it
    • provide rough time estimation
    • describe delivery method - either by core, module, or combination of above
    • include target version:
      • backlog - not scheduled for development yet
      • included into some release
  • or reject it as not feasible for the system
• people could vote on approved ideas (that are in backlog) to provide feedback on what is important for them
• tb staff would use this information for roadmap planning

This could be implemented (to some extend) on github issues, although that's probably not very user friendly. Better would be some standalone solution accessible from web/forum.

We could also make this available for third party developers -- they could use these informations to decide what module to implement.

[netamismb]

On 3/31/2021 at 8:54 AM, datakick said:

How do you suggest we do that? Please advice some easy to implement solution, or even help set it up. We would be quite grateful. 

I would personally love to have some publicly available feature request management tool.

Currently, enhancement requests are submitted all over the place. In form of github issues, here on forum, on feature request page (https://thirtybees.com/feature-request/), via emails, on slack channel. I have yet to receive sms with feature request, thought 🙂

We try to collect them and copy (interesting one) to our Jira for further refinement, analysis. A lot of the ides are discarded right at the beginning because they are not 'core' material. Merchants often suggest things like 'we want a button' or 'infinite scroll', and these can't be implemented in core, obviously. 

So yeah, some centralized way to collect ER would be great help.

I would suggest 2 management tool:

- use Projects in gitthub - pro - lots of automation, having all bugs, features in same place, an example https://github.com/users/projectmb/projects/2

- https://quire.io/ - is free, have many features incloded Kanban board, lists, timeline and a user can choose the view he like, github integration, gmail integration and so on.

I would happy to help with project management if needed. 

[Mark]

On 4/2/2021 at 10:07 PM, datakick said:

There are multiple groups of actors that have different needs

• merchants or any other user could submit a request

Sorry... Ive only just logged in here now.

OK so, this is an important first thing "any other user" .... Does this mean the public, users or clients of our sites, merchants, third party devs, admin etc.

And how will they authenticate as being as such, or do we not get that fancy and we dont authenticate at this point? If we are gonna authenticate we will need something in core that will authenticate them and enable the submission.

Or do we just ask them the question-- do we just ask them upon registering who they are and we just take that as accepted.