Roadmap for the app: long term vs short/medium term

Hello guys,

As you might know we have been working in an app to manage the participants and their shifts according to their roles. The app as it is at the moment would mostly achieve what is currently being done through Airtable but Airtable seems to be working ok as it is for us.

My goal was to progress as much as I could before being back into full time work as I do not put so much time in front of the computer outside of work once I am full time working. Sadly within that time even if the app is mostly there there are a few bits and pieces there.

After a conversation with @Lai we thought that there are two options for the app now:

Short / medium term plan

Finish what is there and produce an app that is very bespoke to the needs of the Solidarity Kitchen. My estimate is that it would require an additional 15 to 20 hours of work, which could easily take me a good 6 to 8 weeks.

This would involve adapting the current Strapi back-end to include the different weekdays, and ensure that some CRON tasks are happening and finishing the React front-end app to enable easy registration and ensure that the shifts can be properly assigned by weekday according to the registration preferences.

This option in my opinion is best if we consider Airtable is not working for us and we would need to change it sooner rather than later.

Long term plan

Ditch a great deal of what is there, consolidate the part of the code that is more reusable and produce an app that is easier to adapt to wider purposes and that can be used by other mutual aid projects with similar management needs (managing participants, roles, shifts and other logistics). It is difficult to estimate how long would this take but we are talking the order of months rather than weeks.

This would involve ditching the current Strapi back-end and creating a custom one inspired on the database created using Strapi, produce a new admin front-end that caters for customisation, a greater deal of documentation and tests… Ideally it would also involve some more people involved.

This option in my opinion is best if we consider Airtable is doing a good job and can cater for the needs of the Solidarity Kitchen for the coming months, we want to attract more talent and contribute to the wider coop/mutual aid ecosystem.

Which plan do you guys consider is best for the app? Depending on the result I will produce within the upcoming month a more detailed road-map with tasks to be done that can be updated on a weekly basis for everyone to be aware of the progress.

  • Short/medium term plan (weeks)
  • Long term plan (months)

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On reflection I’ve gone for option 2. Airtable is good for participant data management but the real thing we could use is a better scheduling / rota system. However I think in 6-8 weeks we are unlikely to have such a need for scheduling participants, so I think the better thing would be something more long-term.

I guess this also means that we should look into whether there are any FOSS rota scheduling things we could use in the meantime

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