The Idea
eZ Roadmap is the place where :
- Anyone can come-up with a feature idea,
- Anyone can rate a feature by +1-ing it onto her own roadmap,
- We can discuss the features,
- You can openly tell you are in for participating to the elaboration of a feature.
eZ Roadmap is completing the toolkit we, as an Open-source Community, need to properly innovate and push eZ Publish ahead, at a high pace. The two other main tools are :
- The Issue tracker : http://issues.ez.no/ezpublish , for bug-reporting,
- The code repository : http://github.com/ezsystems/ezpublish, for collaborating at the code level. A very useful tutorial on this can be found here.
FAQ
What are the pre-requisites to participating to eZ Roadmap ?
Almost none. The contents of eZ Roadmap is publicly available, you can search it, read it as a non logged-in user.
If you want to :
- Add a new feature idea,
- +1/Add an existing feature to your custom roadmap,
- Participate to a feature,
you will need to sign-in. If you do not have an eZ Community account yet, wire-in here : http://share.ez.no/user/register
How can i submit a new feature idea ?
First, sign-in with you eZ Community account. If you do not have one yet, register here : http://share.ez.no/user/register. Then navigate to http://share.ez.no/roadmap and click the "Request" button. An edition form unfolds, you can safely go wild now.
A few hints :
- Make the feature title explicit and descriptive,
- The description is where you have enough room to convince other eZ Community members that your idea is awesome. You can adopt the "User story" type of feature description, commonly used in agile project management,
- Pick tags that instantly give an idea of what the feature is about,
- If your idea is related to existing issues or request for enhancements in the issue tracker, list their IDs (comma-separated) in the "Related to Issues" field.
What is the difference with the "Request for Enhancement" in the issue tracker ?
You probably were used to filing "Requests for enhancement" in eZ Publish's issue tracker, along with bug reports. A "Request for enhancement" often is a small-scope idea on an existing eZ Publish feature.
A feature, filed in eZ Roadmap, is sensed as a larger-scope, longer-term idea, involving more specification work than a simple "Request for enhancement". But the difference is thin. In doubt, you may want to prefer eZ Roadmap. The moderators will guide you here, do not worry.
What happens once i have submitted a feature ?
After clicking the "OK" button in the Feature edition form, your proposal will go through moderation. Essentially, moderation will merge duplicates and bounce spam. The moderation time may vary, and you will be notified through email when your feature is published.
Once approved, your idea is part of the Community backlog of features, and everyone can start +1-ing it to their own Roadmap (thus increasing the score of it), or even click the "Participate" button on it, making clear they want to help. On top, a forum thread is piggy-backed to it, so that discussions can start around the idea. That is the beginning of the specifications/design/implementation phase in your idea's life.
How is moderation working ?
The Product Management team at eZ will be part of it, as well as the eZ Publish Community Project Board, working jointly to make sure as much innovation as possible is channeled in to eZ Publish eventually.
Every time a feature is submitted, it is scanned, dissected & scrutinized by the worldwide green-tech-enabled eZ Cloud computing infrastructure, busting spam with a 100% hit ratio. Moderation also helps merging similar ideas into one, reducing duplicates, thus reducing dilution of ideas.
Once the feature is approved, it is published in the Community Roadmap, and participation can start. It might also make its way into the Official Roadmap, if our Product Management team is willing to commit to it officially.
When can we start coding ?
Once the feature is approved, participation can start. Participation means several things like :
- Aggregating the team of volunteers to build the feature,
- Brainstorming (over the forum thread associated to the feature, for instance),
- Specifications/requirements writing,
- Prototyping,
- Actually developing the feature and committing it to the eZ Publish repository.
How can we collaborate with other people ?
First of all, the idea is to get people who are keen on participating to signify it by clicking the "Participate" button on the feature. The effect is that this feature is pushed into their custom roadmap (My Roadmap), and that they are listed as participants in the feature. In short : make the team visible.
Then, the means of collaboration are up to the team. However, we provide some which should be pretty useful :
- A forum thread attached to the feature, allowing discussions,
- Github, through your fork(s) of eZ Publish, making it easy to collaborate at the code level, and then retrofit this back into the main eZ Publish repository.
Why would i bother creating "My Roadmap" ?
Freedom of speech and expression ? Yes, definitely.
"My Roadmap" is here for you to build THE list of all ultimate features YOU want to see in eZ Publish. We will make sure it soon appears on your profile, so you can lead other community members your way, and eventually on-board them to build the features you want.
The second point of creating your roadmap is that every feature +1-ed into your roadmap will be weighted higher. The higher the score, the higher the ranking in the Community roadmap, the higher the attention received. Logical. You can as well order the features within your roadmap, according to your interest. This order is also reflected in the feature's overall score.
How is feature score calculated ?
We first went for an advanced version of the formulae.
We then rolled-back to this : the score is the sum of priorities assigned to the feature on members' custom roadmaps, divided by the total amount ot features, multiplied by 100.
Concretely : to increase a feature's score (and make sure it gets more attention) :
- Place it (+1 or "Participate" buttons) in your roadmap,
- Push it up within your roadmap.
What does "Official Roadmap" mean ?
The main roadmap page displays the Community roadmap. It is where we as a Community are building eZ Publish Community Project's feature database, ordering it, and delivering on it based on our needs.
On the top-right corner, the "Official Roadmap" tab will lead you to the list of features to which eZ's Product Management is officially committing. This means that eZ Engineers will put particular efforts on these features, and join the Community in making them real.
How can i report issues on the Roadmap tool itself ?
You can do so by filing a report on the Community portal issue tracker. When editing the issue, in the right-column, pick the Component named "roadmap" under "share.ez.no". Be descriptive, give the steps to reproduce, and do not hesitate to attache a screenshot or any other useful information that should speed-up the fix.
How can i stay tuned on the latest features posted ?
To closely follow the latest features posted, have a look at the dedicated RSS feed there, called eZ Roadmap : http://share.ez.no/get-involved/exchange#RSS