Is the todo-list published anywhere?

Question

I wondered if it was possible to see a list of what is planned. Possibly even with a priority list? Ie: on the todo-list but longer term, vs on todo-list and actively being worked on.

Answer 1

Our plans are not publically available. The reason is a combination of these:

• We can write in a form that we understand and probably not others.
• We might write things that wouldn't be secure to have public. Instead of having to think about what we write, we prefer to have it internal.
• We aren't interested in getting discussions about our priorities.

But, some of the things for the Live map has been mentioned in the sidebar's info-button. It has been updated during the day and will most likely get another update this week.

Comments

And there was I thinking it was because it takes time and effort to write it up which could be better spent implementing lovely new features. :-)

It seems a pretty sensible policy to me and I'm imagine priorities change based on what pain you are currently feeling or what you are in the mood to do...

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Yes, time is also relevant of course. But almost everything is still written down, so the time difference is more included in the two first points.

And yes, priorities do change quite often. Some things are important at a certain time. For example we released the Live map to ride on the Road Trip '15, wich our special filters. I imagine it was a good entry level for many new users.

Then there is a lot of time spent on support, understanding the issues and bug fixing.

Also not everything is relevant. This week I corrected an error with the book keeping. I have known about it for a while, but didn't know why it happened. But this week I finally fixed the error, and then I had to develop a program to create the vouchers for those that didn't have any.

In the beginning of the year there were new VAT rules within EU, regarding electronic sales. I probably spent over a week on adjusting to that. Understanding it. Calling Skatteverket (Swedish tax people). Discussing with other business owners and the one doing the book keeping.

Then there are all the maintenance. Upgrading of servers and their software. Most of these things don't fit to have public, and they are quite often the reason to why it seems like nothing is happening for a month.

I would like to get new things out there almost daily and write at least 3 news letters every month. But right now, that doesn't seem possible.

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And then there is the fact that we sometimes skip doing things just because we don't know how we want to solve it. A few weeks later we just solve it without thinking.

Since you (mole125) are a developer as well, you probably know what I am talking about.

And priorities change quite often. Depending on what we hear/read and believe for the moment. Kinda like you (mole125) imagined.

... seems like I can go on forever answering this.

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Thanks makes perfect sense. I'm a developer myself with some 30 years programming experience including recently working on a project involving use of the SharpMap library on Codeplex.

Maintaining a public todo list is indeed a double edged sword, although it can be achieved in many ways. One possible similar option that assists development but takes little developer effort is an issues list where suggestions and issues are proposed then accepted or rejected by development team. Any accepted issue can be up voted by users (possibly only premium members) thus generating a non binding list of priorities. This can aid the development team as it becomes clear what users would like to see. Naturally though during development some ideas from way down the list get implemented because that's is straightforward at the time or was related to another area that was worked on any way.

None of that would take away from a private internal todo list it would just be an extra means by which users could express support for particular features. In many ways the structure of the forum almost supports this already.