OpenLMIS Re-Architecture Webinar - Thursday, February 11 - 8:00 AM PST

Many thanks to all who were able to join the OpenLMIS Re-Architecture Webinar, held Thursday, February 11 via Webex. The presentation centered on the progress made since the 2015 community meeting, the OpenLMIS 2.0 release and the product re-architecture effort.

Presenters 

Tenly Snow (Deactivated) - OpenLMIS Community Manager

Sarah Jackson (Deactivated) - OpenLMIS Program Manager

Kevin Cussen (Deactivated) OpenLMIS Product Owner

Rich Magnuson (Deactivated) - Software Development Manager

Attendees

Presentation Download 

The presentation (as PDF) is available for download on the OpenLMIS HingX Resources Page. 

Presentation Recording 

Please note due to some technical difficulties, the recording began on slide 8 (2.0 Release)

Associated Resources and Links 

The OpenLMIS Re-Architecture Plan. Please note this is a rough draft intended to generate feedback in the community.

OpenLMIS Goals and Milestones noted during the 2015 Community Meeting 

2.0 Release Notes 

2.0 Contribution Guide

Question and Answer 

We received excellent questions from a variety of participants. All questions received are listed below, along with the responses provided by the presenters. Any further questions may be directed to info@openlmis.org, or may be asked during any of the Committee Meetings via the Google Groups forums. 

Q. What the timeline on completing the incremental re-architecture?

A. The timeline for completing the incremental re-architecture project is estimated at 18-30 months given the current resourcing (2-3 software developers). The wide range of this estimate reflects:

a) uncertainty with technical challenges that may be encountered during the re-architecture

b) unknown velocity of re-architecture software development

c) uncertainty of the degree of community support that will be required, reducing dedicated developer capacity on the re-architecture. 

As discussed in the OpenLMIS Re-Architecture Plan, the incremental approach would include a "fast track" to create extension points needed for specific projects during the long duration of the incremental re-architecture project. The number of projects needing fast track support have the potential to significantly impact the project completion time estimate. For example if there are five projects that need major extension points prioritized for their 2016 projects, that will limit the team's ability to make progress on adding basic extensibility to the R&R.

Q. What are some examples of modules that could be developed in the new architecture?

A.  Modules can add entirely new features, such as bar coding, analytics, dispensing, etc.  Point integrations, additional reference objects such as service contracts are also good targets for modules.  

Q. You mentioned that Ideal Stock Amount is a concept that varies by country, and that extension points could be used to implement country-specific ISA calculations.  Would the concept of an ISA live in core, and the country-specific version in a module? How would this work?

A.  Yes, the concept of ISA is likely defined in core, and modified via an extension point.  The use of the extension point would be within a module.  Almost any addition of code for an implementation should be contained in a module.

Q. Who is on the technical committee? How do I participate?

A.  Membership and contact details are on this page.  The easiest way to participate is joining in the tech forum.  Public conference calls are held every two weeks - watch the forum of the meeting notes pages for notification of the next one.

Q. You mentioned that in determining whether features will be toggled off or on in v2.0, the two criteria are domain fit, and generic implementation. Who is deciding whether this criteria is met? Are there supply chain SMEs involved?

The initial determine of what features will be toggled off in v2.0 has been conducted by the OpenLMIS Product Owner (Kevin Cussen). An OpenLMIS 2.0 Feature Toggle Guide document will be released in parallel with the 2.0 software that will list all features, whether they are toggled on or off, and why. As noted, the two reasons a feature may be toggled off is either that the feature doesn't not fit within the domain of OpenLMIS (defined by the community at the 2015 Community Meeting), or because the feature is not implemented in a way that enables reuse by other implementations. 

The Product Committee will review the 2.0 Toggle Guide document, and provide feedback on whether any changes are needed. Anyone is welcome to provide feedback on this document, and challenge the decision on a particular feature to be turned off. Note that it is very simple to toggle features back on, so if this is desired for a future implementation, it can be easily done and instructions will be provided.

Q. How will we decide on the timeline for when the older versions of OpenLMIS will no longer be supported?

This will be a decision of the Governance Committee, but has not been discussed yet. We would expect that at least one year of support for older versions would be provided, and likely more.

Q. The webinar refered to specific versions of OpenLMIS. What version of OpenLMIS/eLMIS is deployed in Tanzania and Zambia?

The version of OpenLMIS deployed in Tanzania and Zambia is considered "1.0". The 1.0 version has been further extended by JSI and this version is called eLMIS. All code created by OpenLMIS community partners (JSI and ThoughtWorks), including eLMIS, was merged together throughout 2015 into a version known as 1.x. Note that the 1.x version itself is not deployed in any country, as it is an amalgamation (superset) of the code deployed in each country. eLMIS code is kept in a project specific github repository.  

During the 1.x period, versioning was not applied to specific releases. Note that going forward, with the new code contribution procedures, there will be a standard versioning convention including point releases.

Q. Will the existing implementations be "orphaned" when the new release becomes available?

No. Each country will have the choice of whether to upgrade to the newer version of OpenLMIS. Migration scripts and technical support will be provided for countries that choose to upgrade. If a country chooses not to upgrade, eventually the older versions will become unsupported. See slides 23 and 24 of the Webinar presentation for additional details.