I’m really confused. I’ve read the IRC chat meetings (not sure why it took 13 days to post them but anyway), and I have to say that I’m really confused.
Right off the bat I hold my hands up to very little development outside of customising Wordpress and writing BBpress plugins in the last 2 years, so this is all from a Project Management / BA perspective.
- Your 3 biggest tags from posts are: Wordpress, Integration, Plugin.
- Every week, you have more posts on Wordpress integrations thatn any other single topic.
- You advertise as one of your key features “wordpress integration”.
- You hold a poll to see what features people want, “wordpress integration” tops it. Infact it wins with 50% of the votes, or 520% more votes than its nearest competitor.
Now, seems to me, that the top priority in terms of new features, documentation and communication should be fairly obvious.
[21:28 GMT] <photomatt> 1. bug fixes
[21:29 GMT] <photomatt> 2. email notification
[21:29 GMT] <photomatt> 3. anon comments from filosofo
And obviously that’s… Email notifications? No… wait… Anonymous Comments?
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From a Project Management standpoint, here’s the problem:
- BBpress0.9 has both of these features as working plugins. But it cant integrate with Wordpress.
- BBpress1.0.2 doesn’t have these features, but can integate with Wordpress. (Can anyone confirm that 1.0.2 integrates with 2.9.1 out of the box? – I can't get it to work)
- So now we’re working on BBpress1.1 which will have these 2 very important features working but may or may not integrate with Wordpress.
If BBpress 1.1 doesn’t integrate with WP2.9.1 (or the latest point release at the time of BBpress1.1’s release) or heaven forbid Wordpress 3.0… then it’s exactly the same position as BBpress0.9 - just two years down the line and with less plugins working. We’ll have features we had 2 years ago and still not be able to integrate BBpress and WP. All we’ll have done is move 2 plugins into the core – and that’s really all we’ll have done in 2 years.
I’m not quite sure if this analogy fits across the world but in PMI terms (and I think Prince2 if you’re a European like myself) this is called “building a House on Sand”. Adding a turret aint going to help when the tide comes in (or a new version of WP is released).
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If I move this away from features a minute (as everyone wants different features and I want to make this an abstract point not a specific one).
When will BBpress1.1 be ready?
I’m not looking for an exact date, we all know that’s impossible for any project like this, but roughly when will it be ready – any good PM knows this.
If there’s no bugs, and email subscription is working, that leaves Anonymous Comments to convert, +testing + release etc. Either way, I’m sure Matt has a rough idea in his head about how long until 1.1, even if it’s a ballpark figure. (Matt, im not expecting you to give us even a rough date as people will only keep you to it, and that’s not the sort of pressure you need right now/at all).
So, when is WordPress 3.0 coming out? What is the likely-hood, given both WP and BBpress’ history, that any existing integration will no longer work with WP3.0? Would it be too pessimistic to think its at least 50/50 that it’ll break?Is it too optomistic to think its 100% likely to work first time?
If we take the best case scenario, that BBpress1.0.2 works seamlessly with WP2.8, WP2.9 & WP3.0 and that BBpress1.1 works seamlessly with WP2.9 & WP3.0 – what’s going to happen to BBpress once we hit 1.1? Matt’s the sole developer, and there’s no way he’s not going to be involved in some format in WP3.0 not to mention all the Wordpress Camps and the usual stuff.
It either means that BBpress gets handed over to someone else (again), or there’s a large amount of time between BBpress 1.1 and BBpress1.2 as WP3.0 has to be developed and released in between them. Given that BBpress1.1 is effectively cosmetic (2 features with used to work now working again), are we seriously looking at over a year between releases with new functionality?
And that’s the best case scenario!
Even if BBpress 1.1 does integrate nicely with 2.9, what if it doesn’t integrate with WP3.0? Are we going to get a patch or a plugin for BBpress 1.1 to make it work with WP3.0 if it doesn’t integrate? Will BBpress integration be Matt’s priority once WP3.0 comes out, given that 1) heck its not a priority now and 2) the plan is to make BBpress a Canonical Plugin from 1.2(-ish) ?
[21:26 GMT] <photomatt> bbPress will definitely be a WP plugin
[21:26 GMT] <photomatt> but don’t want to change the data structure decision until 1.2-ish
No, if BBpress 1.02 or BBpress1.1 don't integrate with WP2.9 or WP3.0 is Matt or Automattic (cos i'm not wanting to pin this on Matt the person) going to suddenly reverse its decision and make BBpress integration a company priority? Of course not, that makes no sense.
Realistically, its integrate it now, or accept it ain't going to be integrated.
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This post looks rather doom and gloom, and I’m sorry for that, it’s not my intention. Here is my intention: Any Project Manager worth his/her salt would look at the above scenario with scepticism/fear/consider-quitting ;-)
Spending time developing software to hit a target that has 1) moved since first developed (WP2.7 -> WP2.9) and 2) will move again (WP2.9->WP3.0) soon after the software is released is, respectfully, lunacy.
This madness is then going to be compounded by rewriting the software in less than 6 months time? Then what is the upside/point of BBpress1.1?
The return of 2 features? The galvanising of the forum? BBpress has bloated in size since 0.9, moved away from what it was originally coded for, and lost useful functionality in the process. Going further down this path simply to rewrite it (mostly) as a WP plugin after 3.0 is out defies logic.
The only upside is if you can guarantee that BBpress1.1 can integrate with the latest version of WP and the release after that. Otherwise we’re developing software that has a shelf life of 3-4 months at most. Of course that can’t be guaranteed as Wordpress Integration isn’t being worked into BBpress1.1.
If WP3.0 is being worked upon just now, if its in the early Project Management / Scoping stages, why isn’t the idea mooted that BBpress be reworked now as a Canonical Plugin?
The people that use BBpress now, for the most part, aren’t going anywhere. If we’re here now, we’re locked in to its current form – and we’ve already had to accept that keeping our system secure by keeping up to date with WP is not going to happen, we’ve accepted the last 6 months-ish of no updates.
BBpress’s major setback has been the fact that it’s on a different release cycle to WordPress and that integration has never been easy, simple, straightforward and infact that integration documentation has never been written.
By developing BBpress1.1 independent of WP3.0, we confine ourselves to a project that promotes itself with one major selling point that it doesn’t live up to; not to mention waste development time and turn people away from the project.
The BBpress project is/”was 6 weeks ago” at its lowest point, development had stalled for 6 months, the developer had quit, moderators had quit, plugin developers had quit, integration doesn’t work, plugins don’t work, information on the website is hideously wrong/out of date/wrong/misleading/wrong, the documentation website is now a porn links website etc etc etc.
From a PM/BA point of view, that’s the perfect time to start scoping and moulding the software to where you want to take it.
Hold up your hands and say “sorry its gotten like this, we dropped the ball, lets do this in a way we wanted to”. Don’t be tied into the same mistakes by chasing the dragon of “just one more release then we’ll fix integration”.
If you want BBpress to be a WP plugin, now is the time to develop for that. Take the code that works and run with it, don’t let history repeat itself with the idea of adding more and more to paper over the cracks – when WP updates or Plugins don’t work those cracks are very obvious.
<br />
WP:---2.3--------2.5------2.6------2.7------2.8------2.9-------3.0?--------<br />
BB:------------0.9------1.0a-----1.0------------------------1.1?---------1.2?<br />Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana
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Matt,
please please please read your own blogs: Setting Scope
What's our proposal? We take a page from the world of project management and we make a project plan before we jump into the dev cycle.
As an open source project, we accomplish more when we work together than we do following individual agendas, and we need to keep our project focused on commonly-agreed-upon goals instead of following tangents...
Surely, as i stated at the start, the commonly agreed goal is Wordpress Integration:
- Your 3 biggest tags from posts are: Wordpress, Integration, Plugin.
- Every week, you have more posts on Wordpress integrations thatn any other single topic.
- You advertise as one of your key features “wordpress integration”.
- You hold a poll to see what features people want, “wordpress integration” tops it. Infact it wins with 50% of the votes, or 520% more votes than its nearest competitor.
While "instead of following tangents whenever a community member starts to take us on one, regardless of whether it’s to follow a cool idea that everyone loves" is:
- email notification
- Anonymous Posting
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Thank you all for reading, i know its not a short post,
Take care.
