Each year, XWiki SAS employees gather for an annual seminar. The Seminar gives us the opportunity to discuss face to face about XWiki SAS finances, strategy, HR, etc. It also gives us the opportunity to discuss about the XWiki product's future, ideas, what we could improve or change, status, vision, etc.
One of the sessions this year was a brainstorming about XWiki features. Participants were asked to contribute ideas in four categories, regarding on what features:
- to add: features that are missing and could increase our adoption;
- to improve: features that still need some functionality or polishing;
- to remove: features that are not needed anymore because they are old, not that good looking or that don't match our Standard flavor's purpose;
- to make paying: features that are more interesting for enterprise users.
The data gathered during the brainstorming comes from 7 teams, composed of 35 people, during one hour. The teams submitted an average of 11 ideas per team, gathering 82 ideas (23 to add, 40 to improve, 7 to remove and 12 to make paying). Here is a preview of the raw data:
Analysis
Most ideas for features to be added in XWiki were submitted for Attachments, Edit mode, Flavors and Rights.
Improvements were requested on Rights, User Interface and the Workflow Publishing application.
There is no clear winner on the features we want to remove. Actually people contributed the least ideas in this category. We need to keep in mind that in order to have a simple product we also need to remove and curate functionality from time to time. Regarding paying applications, the most requested application was Workflow Publishing Application.
In terms of overall mentions of the functionality, no matter the category:
- Rights were the most mentioned (with 9 entries),
- Attachments, Edit mode and Workflow (each with 6 mentions),
- User Messages (5 mentions),
- Admin Tools, Flavors, Search, Skin, Task Manager, Translations, User Interface (each with 3 mentions),
- Distribution Wizard, Export, Invitation (each with 2 mentions).
You are welcomed to share your opinion about the results or provide more input into the dedicated forum topic at or in the comments below.
Help us decide what areas XWiki should tackle in our next releases and let's make XWiki the greatest open source extensible platform out there.
Disclaimer: This survey doesn't represent a roadmap. It's just a set of ideas that could be used to elaborate future roadmaps. The more people mention a topic (including anyone in the community) the higher the likelihood that the item will be considered in future roadmaps!
