Zope question: collaborative environments?

[Tom Bryan]

Peter Hansen wrote:
> 
> Tom Bryan wrote:
> > I'm a developer, and I'd like to create a combination discussion board,
> > bug tracking system, and general collaborative environment.  I was
> > thinking of using Zope, but I have never even looked at Zope.  Am I crazy
> > even to consider using Zope when we won't have any dedicated staff to
> > develop stuff for/in Zope and maintain it?  Is Zope easy enough to use,
> > simple enough to maintain, and complete enough as a product that I could
> > get something set up with just a couple of weeks of work and then simply
> > use it?
> 
> Short answer: NO!  Note the !.  Don't go there.  Tell your boss to get a
> clue about the length of time it would take to even *specify
> requirements* for such a system, let alone design, build, test, and
> launch it in a couple of weeks.

I was hoping that there were already some useful Zope plugins already 
written for a basic discussion board.  Perhaps also a bug/issue tracking 
plugin.  Perhaps I've simply misunderstood what I've seen/read about 
Zope.

> Longer answer: No!  Been there, considered that.  So has Digital
> Creations, I think.  There's lots of us working at using Zope for
> exactly the above sorts of applications (NOT all tightly integrated...
> that goal went out with Win 3.1) and we have no plans to turn to
> anything else.  It is very suitable in many ways for those things and
> more.  On the other hand, it has a *steep* learning curve, and becoming
> as productive as Zope promises to be will take more than a couple of
> weeks.  We've been learning for several months and only now have gotten
> past using a very simplistic Portal and a Wiki (220 pages and growing)
> for a group of ten.  And we now have one dedicated staff member on this
> project, though I'm sure a small group could use it effectively with
> only 20-40% of one person's time dedicated.

Wow!  Okay.  Thanks for the numbers.  

> > Any advice before I waste a lot of time digging into this topic would be
> > much appreciated.  (The time frame is very tight.  My boss is planning to
> > lend me one of his personal machines to play put on my network at home as
> > a zope or sourceforge or ??? server so that I can evaluate it next week.
> > He definitely wants something in place in the next few weeks.)
> 
> I agree with the other poster: your boss is (IMHO) an inexperienced,
> optimistic dolt if he thinks anything can solve his problems in a couple
> of weeks.  Tell him to re-read Brooks on the topic of Silver Bullets.

I must step in here in defense of my boss.  He's an ubergeek who developed 
on this product before he was moved into a much needed development manager 
position.  (Before that, we didn't really have a manager in charge of our 
development team on a daily basis.)  I don't need a collaborative env. 
in the sense that multiple people can simultaneously edit the same doc. 
in an online discussion.  I need a place site that functions like a 
SourceForge for a single product.  Flexible bug tracking would be great.  
We already use Perforce for SCM (which has options to give command line 
output as marshalled Python objects).  I'm going to set up the FAQ Wizard 
and hopefully a web board where we can post notes and quick instructions. 

We're just looking for a centralized resource for developers on our team to 
jot notes such as, "I modified the CUSTOMER table but the following two 
modules need to be modified to take advantage of the changes."

> On the other hand, if he is willing to face reality and take a gamble, I
> would recommend he look closely at Zope *anyway*, and consider using it
> for a simpler, less grandiose support environment while he takes the
> time to *really* evaluate it and his own needs (which sound ill-thought
> out), 

No.  They're well-considered, trust me.  Perhaps I was writing too hastily 
last night.  I have a *good boss*.  He's *knows* the product at the code and 
the business level.  In the past, I have spent Saturday mornings with him 
migrating our NFS servers and configuring NIS.  He knows what we need and how 
long it would take to do it right.  He also knows that we won't get a green 
light to spend the proper resources to do it.  If we don't get *something* 
usable and centralized, we risk losing a lot of accumulated product knowledge 
over and over again as employees come and go.  So...basically we'd like to 
figure out a workable solution that is flexible enough for us to do neat 
things in the future (such as echoing SCM changes to a weblog) while giving 
us a lot of functionality up front (simple discussion board, interface to 
a bug tracking system like Bugzilla, document repository, etc.).  I was 
hoping that Zope + plugins + a few weeks of scripting by an experienced 
Python coder would give us something basic and usable while providing us 
with a platform for future improvements and extensions as time permits.

> and over time dedicate at least a fraction of somebody's time to
> improving and developing it.  We have a lot of faith in Zope's future,
> and I recommend it on that basis.  But it won't take a few weeks to get
> what you want!

I guess the question is whether a few weeks would get us something that 
would be usable by the developers without causing a huge administration 
burden or training requirement for the developers.  Another major option 
is SourceForge, but I hesitate to use it because no one here knows PHP 
and because we would only populate it with a single project.  I also set 
one up a few months ago, and it was non-trivial to get everything set up 
at first.

I'd personally like to hire a Python/Unix hacker college student here in 
Raleigh who would be willing to dive into Zope for a 10-20 hours per week 
job.  My boss said that he'd hire one if we could find him.  Anyone 
interested?

---Tom