Posts by Peter Nuding:

A faster Forge for all

August 20th, 2010 Yesterday morning we took the Openbravo Forge down for a moment - to make it faster for all of you.
While everything works as usual you will now find snappier loading times across the site.

Are you happy with the overall responsiveness? Notice any areas that are giving you headaches?
Share your feedback in this discussion thread and tell us what type of connection you're using!


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Taking the beta out of the Openbravo Forge

January 8th, 2010 In two months it will be a year since our initial launch of the Openbravo Forge.
We are rapidly growing towards 9000 users and it won't be long before we cross the 300 projects mark either.
These are great numbers because they confirm what we were hoping for: the Openbravo Forge is now a serious tool for both our community and partners.


We have fixed a lot of issues and improved usability in many areas. Now it's time to drop the "beta" label from the site logo.
But of course we are far from being done.


This year we will continue our journey and make the Openbravo Forge even easier to use. We will add exciting possibilities that allow you to better publish your projects around Openbravo ERP and POS and it will also become even easier to find the solutions you are looking for.
On this journey we also need your help:
Remember to use our Help pages, FAQ and the Forge Help forum whenever you run into trouble using the site.
Surely you also have great ideas on how you would like to see the site and our help documentation improve. So I can't wait to get your comments!


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Shifting Openbravo to Scrum

November 3rd, 2009 It's now been more than a year since I was asked to help deploy Scrum all throughout Openbravo's development teams.
A lot has happened in this year. We've made a lot of steps and found a lot of things to improve.

So what did we do, why did we do it and how does this all work anyway?

First let's see what we wanted to improve in the first place:

• we wanted easier guidance of teams with little overhead
• we needed to improve transparency for developers (what's coming up, how are we doing)
• we wanted to improve transparency for customers (what's next and where are we in the list of priorities)
• and the same for management (what are the priorities, how much work do we have ahead)
• we wanted to give developers more focus, autonomy and satisfaction
• we wanted to better integrate remote developers

What we did:
We began by gradually identifying teams, usually grouped by the part of the product people worked on. Then one by one we changed them from their previous ways of work to Scrum.
For that we figured out who should be in charge of this functional area and made these people the Product Owners for the teams. Of course we also needed a Scrummaster to make sure the new way of work doesn't fade into old habits rapidly. At first I did that but after some time I could hand it off to volunteers from the teams.

Scrummasters, Product owners, teams... hang on, what's this all about?
If you're new to Scrum, there's a lot of interesting reading for you. Stop by the ScrumAlliance website to find out more.
But even if you know it all, we have some goodies for you!
In the Openbravo Wiki you will find access to a lot of articles about how we are using Scrum. After all, every Scrum implementation is a bit different.

Where we are today:
It's been a busy year. It would have been a lot more stressful if the teams had not taken on so much control of their work and worked in this much more structured and transparent way. But they have and the results show.
Every week they keep hitting a lot of difficulties and find many things to improve. But if you are familiar with Lean or Scrum concepts you know that's good thing. And we've come a long way despite the lot of work we had.

If you're curious to see what we're working on and what's on the backlog of each team - our books are open.
There's also a Wiki article where you will find the collaboration spreadsheets of the Scrum teams we currently have at Openbravo. Complete with their backlogs, past and current sprints, etc.

And I would like to get your feedback: if you have comments to the teams, see things that don't make sense in the articles or if you have doubts about how we work, leave your comment!


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Make your ideas heard – improving and discussing on the Wiki

October 13th, 2009

We have all been there - http://wiki.openbravo.com is home to most of our documentation and a host of useful and interesting articles not just about Openbravo as a product but also about the way we work. So naturally many of our steps lead us there.




Yet, how many times did you see something and thought "hey, I could add this thing I know here" - just followed by "ah, well, maybe another time". Surely that happened when you thought about the time and research you were going to invest to edit it - and do it well.

It's good to know there are more ways to make yourself heard - and some are surprisingly simple.




Discuss




Have you ever tried "discussing" an article? It's just the right tool for those cases when you have ideas, feedback or doubts.

Log in and up in the navigation bar above every article you'll find a "Discuss page" link.

Here you can voice whatever is on your mind. If others have already started discussing, a ballon shows next to this link.

Have a look and share your views! It works just the same way as editing articles - everyone's invited.




Watch




You've written an article about something or have contributed to one? Or there's an article about something that matters to you?

Watch it to be kept up to date about changes to the article as well as ongoing discussions, conveniently by email.

Log in and you'll find the "Watch page" link in the navigation bar on top.




Listen & Respond




Once you've received notifications, you can continue discussing with the others and come up with improvements to the article itself, the process it describe, or Openbravo's products.

If there are various contributions and you want to know who changed what, just click "Page history" to see the details.




Begin now by watching articles and get involved!



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Openbravo Forge updated

August 4th, 2009 It's been a great time and a steep learning curve since we launched the Openbravo Forge in March this year.
By now we have well over 100 projects around Openbravo ERP and Openbravo POS, driven by almost 7000 registered developers.

We've been looking closely at how the new platform is being accepted and we have listened to your feedback to identify the roughest edges. Now the homepage of the Openbravo Forge has been updated to address what we found.

The overhaul brings a number of improvements that will make life easier and more productive for all of us:

• Searching for projects is now a lot easier
• Categories are navigated just a click away on the left
• Breadcrumbs at the top left make it easy to know where you are, and jump back
• Openbravo ERP & POS core project forums and downloads can be accessed directly from the main page
• Registration of a project is now easy to reach on the left bar
• The activities like "Design", "Develop" etc. now carry clear descriptions
• The concept of core projects and categories is better reflected
• A new section for editorial content puts the latest useful information right where you enter

You will also notice slight changes to the top and left bars found on every page. The project selector has moved from the top to the left bar, where you also find quick access to all projects you participate in. Browsing through ERP & POS project categories is now also a quick move on the left bar, just like adding your own project.

We also proudly show our growth now - at the top right you will always see how many projects and developers are currently registered.

It's never been easier to set up your Openbravo ERP and POS projects - have a look if you have not tried it, yet!



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