As of May 22, we are later than we hoped, which is not unexpected for a project such as this. So now we need to re-juggle our (sometimes competing) priorities:
- Catch up with the CFN 2024 season so that the app gets the iterative feedback from real situations that it needs, then
- Keep up with the 2024 season, which can't stop and wait for the app, again critical for getting real feedback
- Make a demo we can use for more fundraising that showcases enough features that people can understand the potential
- Make the app completely configurable and usable enough for other networks to at least try it out, starting with Fibershed networks
- Catch hREA up with VF, so it doesn't become hopelessly behind as other projects use it, then catch CFN up with hREA (not only a CFN responsibility, but I do think of user groups supporting upgrade of underlying infrastructure as they develop their apps); also other technical debt
CFN schedule (approximate):
- Pickup fiber, June 2-5
- Ship fiber to Baiton for scouring June 10th
- Ship clean fiber to Kraemer for spinning July 22nd
- Spinning completed at Kraemer by Aug 26th
- Yarns shipped to Simply Knitting Sept 1st
- Production at Simply Knitting completed for designers (there will be a queue for this for each brand) by Sept 16
- Start planning next season, Jan 2025
High level features to prioritize (can be broken up too):
- Finish initial planning (recipes, bug fixes, UX upgrades for more computer assistance)
- Recording the production economic events (bug fixes, add resource creation/update, simple reporting of events and resources)
- Recording other economic events (donations/fees, payments to suppliers/others, inventory events and reporting (or break out), upgrade overview page for continuous monitoring and planning ("budget page" - or break out))
- Re-planning and coordinating during the season (supply-forward planning, maybe some demand upgrades, UX/UI, ?)
- Finish network configuration (units, recipes, map, images, roles)
- Accounting and tax reporting, export
- Permissions, agent upgrade, onboarding, role-based-UIs (or break out)
- ?
Thoughts from Lynn 5/22, other comments welcome:
I'm re-adjusting my thinking to needing to have (alpha) production-ready code early in June. Planning is one thing, accounting is another. (Earlier we were prioritizing to get a demo for fundraising, we never made it.) One thought is to comment out the ability to enter events until we build them out properly. (Try to get a video demo first, and keep the old version handy too.) But in general, prioritize what the CFN needs next, next, next, etc., and iterate closely with them, it is important that we can take advantage of users facing actual problems (not bugs, problems in their coordination work that need support in the software). This will mean doing minimally useable features with user-driven refinements, and leaving background refinements until later. (We have been doing that anyhow.)
But we still need to get some funding as quickly as possible. We need people to work actively on that. (Not me.)
I don't see us having a version ready to give to other Fibershed networks this season, unless we have a really understanding and supporting network who is willing to put up with a lot to contribute to the development process. But even then, we would need to prioritize a bit differently, i.e. the network config and recipes would be needed. The recipes would also be nice to be able to demo, they help a lot with understanding the planning, but we can get away without that for CFN this season.
This also means deprioritizing technical debt, unless devs assess that it is quicker to just fix it sooner rather than later, to make their lives easier. (This is often the case.)