Issues with Jobs and Purchase Orders.

[Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd)]

On 30 May 2017 at 12:26, Mike or Penny Novack <
stepbystepfarm at dialup4less.com> wrote:

> On 5/29/2017 10:45 PM, Bruce Danielson wrote:
>
>> I agree Dave, and getting that done in 100 hours I think is optimistic.
>> Realistically I think it is probably well beyond the scope of “free”
>> software.
>>
>>
>> If the developers ever considered offering a “Pro” version of GnuCash, on
>> a pay per license basis, that might work.  NCH gets $70 a copy for theirs,
>> and I think at its core, GnuCash is a better product,  But I’m not really
>> familiar with Gnu’s philosophy.
>>
>> Bruce
>>
> Commenting in the middle (for both above and below)
>
> a) "Free Software" licensing means can't do THAT. What would be "legal"
> would be OTHER software that produced feeds (files of transactions, etc.)
> that could be imported into GnuCash. Not only for this. Think of other
> business needs like an inventory system, point of sales system, etc. BTW,
> that's often how large systems are designed, Thus where I used to work, a
> number of other systems sent feeds to the "general ledger" system << which
> was the accounting part >>
>


>
> b) On time and cost. I don't know about Silicon Valley, but around here
> where I used to work, maybe $100/hour. But the time is a gross
> underestimate.


The time estimate I got from a senior developer. It was not a number I
picked out of the air.


> Even if correct for the CODING time has left out many other parts of a
> successful "project". Start with meetings of a USER GROUP (+ business
> analyst) which will decide on exactly what this new subsystem will do. Then
> a systems analyst specs the new system and a testing plan for it. Only then
> it is coded. Then it is tested (user group for that too). Where I worked
> they used to estimate the coding part as usually 40% or under of the total
> time << remember, a 2 hour meeting with 5 users and an analyst is 12 people
> hours >>
>

My experience of developing open-source software, includes projects I have
started from scratch, and huge projects like SageMath

http://www.sagemath.org/

which was started by Professor William Stein at the University of
Washington, but has 100 or so developers. These don't tend to need great
big long meetings, that tend to eat up lots of time in companies. I think a
lot of time is wasted in companies in meetings, which is why places have
"stand up meetings"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-up_meeting

to cut down on the unnecessary time these eat up.

I suspect thread on features for purchase orders, and another on features
for quotes/proforma invoices, would be able to reach some sort of consensus
about what are the most desirable features.

There are a number of people wanting such a feature - quotations has 57
votes here

https://gnucash.uservoice.com/forums/101223-feature-request/suggestions/2477299-implement-quotations-which-can-be-converted-to-inv

with a comment by Geert Janssens
<https://gnucash.uservoice.com/users/16791995-geert-janssens> that "I have
merged these two ideas into one because in code they are essentially the
same thing. Implementing quotes for customers is about the same code as
implementing purchase orders for vendors."



> I would NOT be willing to get involved volunteering my time unless there
> were a committed user group willing to do their parts. Too often we see
> complaints after "does not do what I expected or what I need". Sorry, but
> the new program IS correct, it does what it does, where were YOU when it
> was time to specify what it was SUPPOSED to do?  What it had to do to
> satisfy your needs?
>
> Michael D Novack, FLMI      retired senior systems/business analyst for
> one of the world's largest insurance companies
>

Do you have the time, skills and enthusiasm to implement quotes/purchase
orders/ proforma invoices, IF a group could be set up that could set some a
specification, and offer to do testing? From the number of people
requesting such features, it would seem likely that such a group could be
set up, and come up with a set of specifications. Perhaps with comments on
a Wiki and/or email discussions.

But it needs someone willing to code it. Personally I don't see 100 hours
as a lot of time in the development of an open-source project. People tend
to work on things like this when they have a bit of spare time. It is not
like 3 weeks of work where someone does nothing else, but more likely one
hour/day over the course of several months. One day one a person might
spend several hours working on something, and another week they do nothing.
At least that's my experience of open-source software.

Dave