Thanks to both @maidsafe and the community for all of the continued efforts this past year.
I hope the coming year will bring with it some positive opportunities, some time to relax, and, perhaps, a bit of luck. 
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Happy new year Maidsafe! Last year brought good an exciting progress from Alpha 1 to Alpha 2. Through scaling up the team, Maidsafe showed that it knows how scaling works very well in contradiction to blockchain projects. 
, and as a result the speed of progress went up. But the best is yet to come, I have a good and strong feeling that 2018 will be a year of even greater and more exciting progress. The feeling is very strong that 2018 will be a moving year for the Safe network and that we will see some amazing things happen. With the new front end Office in India my analysis is that the confidence in the back-end progress is very strong and confident of significant breakthroughs in a not to distant future.
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@tobbetj I am glad to see that you are excited, I am wondering if you could share your data points that you used to measure in order to come up with your analysis. I have been poking around and cannot find any way to measure progress toward the end goal.
I see lots of work being done, but I cannot tell how much work needs to be done, therefore I cannot measure progress.
I am interested in knowing how you are measuring progress.
SolarDude
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Can anyone @maidsafe please provide some additional context to the the weekly updates?
For example:
I love reading the updates, but it is like counting sand on the beach without knowing where each item is within the scope of the overall project.
Each of the updates/achievement/ Action Item corresponds as a piece of the whole. It would be awesome to be able to identify each update with the corresponding scope.
For example:
If the above could include some measure that would indicate the weight of the achievement within either the entire project or preferably within each User Requirement?
Like thisā¦
a new version of Peruse (the custom browser that will eventually replace SAFE Browser) This mean we are 75% complete with Alpha3.
With some assumed guard banding (Ā±15%)
That would make these updates mean a whole lot more as I could actually track forward movement. As it is, after reading I wonder if you have figuratively bolted on the steering wheel, or installed the complete engine. Using a car to illustrate point.
Bonus Points for weighting both the User Requirement and overall scope.
example:
a new version of Peruse (the custom browser that will eventually replace SAFE Browser) This means we are 75% complete with Alpha3. Completion of Alpha3 means we are 50% of the way to āGo-liveā/Launch.
Thanks for any additional info that can be provided.
SolarDude
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Iām just wondering what tnis would do to turnover in Maidsafe and the price
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Yea that is a good observation.
btw no criticism @solardude but I do have a different opinion, I will try and explain a bit.
The recurring theme of this is not innovation it is a project, its all been done before so put timescales on it just wont wash when its innovation or research. I would love the folk that ask to jump on the cancer cures, aids cures forums and ask the same questions. People do mix innovation/research and just programming a widget, even if it is a big widget. All the project management terms and statements in the universe cannot really answer the when question. Many of us on this forum have managed projects with timescales and budgets and can see clearly why these are needed on building stuff, but never when researching stuff, unless it is costed research that will stop on date X but then the outcomes at date X are indeterminable.
However our approach is not to say nothing till it is done. We have taken a very open and measurable approach to updating progress and it is hard, it takes time and eats into dev time. It is worth it though as it means there is very little project bloat or straying form the target/goal of launching āthe impossible networkā which in itself is interesting. Much of what we have done in the project in many experts opinions just is not possible, never mind giving an end date for them 
The updates should show the progress and yes the hard part is done, the unanswered questions are hopefully behind us. The road to launch is clearer every day/week. So all in all I feel progress is both happening and very much on target for a solid working system. In terms of time to complete, we can say it is not yet clear even with contingency, but we are all here, the team developing this are increasingly satisfied and comfortable that we can see the launch. We can probably now make better judgements of launch, but we would still be wrong and upset the apple cart. The updates and weekly solid progress are way better yardsticks.
It is really the JFK kinda thing here, We did not choose to do this because it was easy, we chose to do the hard thing here and we chose to fight struggle and persevere in the face of opposition criticism and defiance. We did choose a hard road, we have travelled that path and know how it all works. We will finish the journey because that is who we are and that is what the company and this community exist to do, so we will. That is not a guess, that is a fact, timescales would be a guess and while we can knock down anything in our path, we just cannot defeat unknowns, if we could identify every unknown (so kill them) we could provide timescales, not guesses. So until that day we work and work hard, we are good at that 
So again no timescales, but every single day and week progress happens. Its a long road we cannot see that start looking back, but the end is ever closer and that keeps us all going.
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I think most here understand this and it is great that good, tangible progress is made week on week. I think it would just be good to tie the weekly updates to some sort of high level roadmap (without time scales!). Is this something being considered/worked on?
I know we have had low level ones in the past (which i assume were too detailed to easily maintain) and the website one is very high level. It would be great to just know what main features are done, which have been identified but not done, and which alpha/beta they are likely to go in. Just big bucket stuff really.
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Maybe instead of traditional timelines the progress of the project could be depicted in some kind of Challenges hierarchy and updated each week. Such as:
Major Challenges
1
2
3
Intermediate Challenges
1
2
3
Minor Challenges
1
2
3
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@dirvine Thanks for sharing your nicely articulated updated perspective.
Not to pervert your reference, especially as it is a unfair (due to scale, mass, &funding) comparison, but even JFK had a timeline for going to the moon, <10yrs.
SolarDude
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manā¦ I am still not sure whether JFK made it to the moonā¦!
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As a long term supporter, paritipating of the ICO, I continue supporting and believing, but the comparison to the cure of cancer/aids really scared me 
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The comparison was about completing projects where there are unknowns, not all of those have the same level of difficulty, but all suffer the fate of not knowing a date when they are successful. So the comparison was not about the task, it was about doing research, pretty much any research and development of an end product.
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I can tell you for certain JFK did not make it to the moon 
, he died too early for that.
But ham radio operators and the workers at the radio telescope in Australia can tell you the radio signals were definitely coming from the moon. I wasnāt an engineer at the time (not old enough) but it was easy to tell that a rocket took off and stage 3 went to the moon and the video signals were coming from the moon. That myth of not going to the moon was debunked so many times it hurts whenever someone questions it.
But as David says the comparisons was about project management of a project and complexities involved. So Iāll leave my anti-conspiracy at that.
Sorry, no data points, just fundamental analysis. David wrote a message in this or a earlier update that he feelt positive about the datachains design, he dont do that if there is no significant progress. The expansion with front-end office would not be logical if they where not positive on the SAFE core development. I believe front-end development can be done in a year give or take, but it is just my personal beliefe, Iāam not a professional coder or developer.
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