Products and Framework
The only way we can work together is to work towards a common vision for what product to work on. Because the Rainbow team consists of private individuals with their own lives and agendas, changes are made from all directions to satisfy their own needs rather than the success of the software. I asked Manu a while ago what he wanted of Rainbow, and he said that he wanted it to be successful. Here's my plan for success for Rainbow.
I have studied quite a bit of CMS and Portal systems. I know how they work in and out, top to bottom, left and right. Each industry in the internet at this point requires some sort of CMS system for their website and a Portal system for their intranet sites. The list is very long if you want to start listing the types of public websites out there: Communities, Blogs, Club Sites, Personal Home Pages. Intranet Portals have different uses in each organization as it's purpose is to help business get done better by making sure the right information is delivered to the right people in one place.
At this point, I know that I can make better software than the crap that's out there. Having said that, the competition is only a tool for me to learn from.
"the enemy is a very good teacher" - Dalai Lama
From the competition, we can learn what to do and what not to do. If the competition does too many things as in too many features, we should focus and take out one feature at a time. If the competition has good designers, we should get good designers.
One thing that is most crucial in the business world is focus. There's a passage in the Art of War about how to succeed in a battle where the enemy clearly outnumbers your own side. Nine times out of Ten, the larger army prevails as the victor. However, there is that one chance that the smaller army wins and it is when the larger team is forced to come through a narrow pass in the valley and the smaller team consists of the best snipers available.
Right now, I feel Rainbow is weak in a lot of areas, but these areas can't all be improved upon at once. Which areas should we work on first? What menus and navigation systems should we put in the software? Which modules need to be overhauled? Which Themes need to be created? How can we even begin to answer such questions or start working on them unless we decide on what the end result will be?
CMS. Rainbow can succeed as a content management system right NOW. CMS is an easier market to conquer than Portals. Of COURSE, we still have the capabilities of doing Portals because that's an inherent feature. However, we have to show the customer what our FOCUS is. More small business people would rather have a good looking functioning website than a cool intranet portal. Larger companies care about portals and other software.
Why focus on CMS? It's easier to sell to people. It's easier to penetrate companies. Once we're in, and they are using our software for 6 months, they'll feel comfortable with our software. when we do release our awesome portal offering, they won't hesitate.
Here's what I want to offer to the world as a product.
This product should be easy to download and easy to install. WordPress has the BEST installer for a blog system out there. CommunityServer has a good one too. If we can't make our installer this good, we should give up. This product should be easy to use and easy to show people how to use. Less steps means better software. This product should be addictive. People who use it should want to use it again and again and tell people about it.
Rainbow Lite:Rainbow Lite is a product that I have in my mind as the software that most people download to start their site. I wouldn't really consider it in the same arena as "Personal Website Starter Kit" , but more along the lines of WordPress or MovableType.
Rainbow Standard:Rainbow Standard is a product that businesses would download and start using for their front end sites. The major difference between the Lite and the Standard would be that the Standard product has more types of content modules and more administrative functionality relating to groups/roles, etc..
Creating a product plan will take some time because we will have to sit down and figure out our exact User personas and marketing personas. Each product is basically a distribution which runs on top of the framework.
Next steps for the software production team is to start migrating Rainbow's framework functionality to 2.0. As long as Rainbow can do what it does right NOW in 2.0, we will be ready to start making a real product out of it. We can do the same things in 2.0 that we could do in 1.1, it just so happens that we have to write a lot less code.
Rainbow Framework. The Rainbow Framwork currently lets us do a lot of things and having the ability to use ASP.NET extends its functionality much more. In my opinion,
the current state of the framework is not the best that it could be, but it will suffice to make products with. Features need not be added just because they are "cool". If we do that, our software will end up having a "script kiddie" look and feel like DNN.
We can discuss what we need to do with the framework and how it needs to support the products.
I am going to start working on the Product plans for Lite and Standard based on Personas. Once I have these, I'll approach the Framework and what it needs to have for us to make the products.