The feature freeze in Januari really helped to streamline the work we want to get done for the upcoming Beta release, gave us time to create a more streamlined development process and are able to integrate more services on the website.
More streamlined development process
We have completely refactored our development processes. We are now following a little more agile approach using the Dynamic Systems Development Method as the base with the exclusion of time boxing. As PiDome is an Open Source application being written in spare time, time boxing would force us to close development iterations on specific modules if a time period has passed. And we don't want that. The most important reason for using DSDM is the enormous amount of modules in combination with the MoSCoW approach where workload is prioritized on end-user need instead of a need driven by a business model.
Introduced Jira
To help the DSDM we have moved from the default issues list to Jira. Within Jira it makes it more clear for us on how the development progresses, which pieces of software is linked to each issue and/or feature request per module. For this we created a new Bug Report page (available over here: https://pidome.org/support/bug-report.html). This report page will be advanced over time and we will be adding a feature request page. These pages will make it much more simpler for us to track everything down. We want to thank Atlassian for the open source license (for which you can file for here: https://www.atlassian.com/software/views/open-source-license-request/)!
Development progress since Januari
Almost all the items mentiond in Januari have been implemented. Below the current progress:
Webserver
All the webserver items have been implemented and are available in the latest development builds available on the build server. This means http2 and spdy are used for communication and the webserver over https which will also be the new default.
Also another enhancement is the possibility to have different web interfaces defined. Currently there is only one interface "default" and when the full JSON-RPC API has been document it will be possible to allow contributed web interfaces to be chosen.
Web interface update.
The default web interface is overhaul is going a little bit slower then anticipated. The whole interface has been created using all the components from jqwidgets. These components are all being rewritten be more versatile and less complex. The overhaul is like a complete rewrite of the web interface. But, with every build more and more pages are re-implemented providing a more not only ease of use, but also a more robust base. We think it will take still a couple of weeks.
And last, but certainly not least:
UI Talk
The current UI design on the clients is based on rapid prototyping. As it is sufficient and much more usable then any previous designs, some small work is still needed, better graphs, some speed improvements etc. At least until...
Taking the UI and UX to the next level.
I have to admit, the UI can be much better and i'm not an UI designer. So to be able to provide an UI that everyone will love we really need an UI wizard. And what are the odds, we found an awesome guy capable of doing UI and UX design! Of course there are a lot of them, but this guy has already done some really impressive work and we are really thrilled he would like to dedicate possible spare time to the PiDome project. We still havesome talking to do which will happen in two weeks. But man, i'm excited and hope he will be extending the team, fingers crossed!
