Very Impressed with Project but

Since I discovered this project yesterday morning I have spent most of the last 2 days researching this this project and I am very impressed.

However there is one thing that worries me a lot, its the lack of a clear roadmap including DATES.

I can see the roadmap on the main site but it really does not have any detail, I also found a thread from 2014 with a roadmap to launch which seems to show that the project is much delayed. Before I retired I worked as an IT project manager for 30+ years an so I understand the problems of running a complex project and I know from bitter experience that things do get delayed, however not having any dates at all is very worrying.

As I said above I am very impressed with this idea to the extent that I am considering purchasing some of the project tokens but I really want to see some more details in particular when will Alpha 4 (vaults) be implemented.

Any info much appreciated and if it is here somewhere and I have missed it please point me in the right direction.

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Asking for firm dates in the roadmap for the SAFE project is akin to asking the pilgrims when they will discover California.

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Maidsafe does not operate on “dates” because it’s irrelevant to this project. They operate on “valve” time. AKA it’s done when it’s done.

If we put date on it, it would put too much pressure on the devs, and the community. In the end, we would be not satisfied with the work. Therefore putting dates is not the best way to deal issues.

This is the only company that actually done it right. They finish their goals based on the task they written down. Finishing the task is better than finish by the date.

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If they are a week away from releasing something they have stated that in development updates before. That’s about the only dates you’ll see given and even then I’ve seen instances where something happened the caused the release to happen a couple days later.

Best thing to do is follow the development dates and understand the direction they are going in. You won’t be able to calculate an ETA for the project, but you will see they are extremely open with everything they are communicating about the software. I also like to follow the Github repository of all the developers and the project itself so I can be that much more informed. It also allows me to guess what might be getting released soon.

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I have a pretty good hunch of something soon based off github evidence but I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

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Well as a an Ex PM I am not sure I agree with this however it does help me understand the way things work here.

Do you have access to infinite financial resources because without having any estimates you can’t know your costs :wink: I am pretty sure you do have some dates in mind but you choose not to share them.

:wink: I am not asking for firm dates just some sort of indication say to half year estimate.

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Why do you want to know that. If you like the project, invest now. Closer to beta date it will only get more expensive. Much more expensive

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You are not alone in having decades of IT experience here :smile: so I and others do understand your concern. We regularly hear concerns about this for that reason, and also because it is very frustrating not knowing when X will be done, but there are good reasons why MaidSafe have stopped trying to provide timescales. This has been discussed a lot, so I won’t rehash the arguments, but it comes down to the research nature of this project. When so much has simply not been done before it becomes misleading to put timescales on things, and that caused even worse problems than not providing dates at all. So instead we tend to read the weekly updates avidly and help out in whatever ways we can.

Hope that helps.

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Do a search for “timescale”. The most recent thread provides a wealth of information.

Happybeing, my concern isn’t about things being done on a strict timetable its much more to do with worrying that you will run out of resources or talent.

Fair enough, but those issues are also familiar here.

MaidSafe have said that they have enough to complete, but obviously they can’t be sure until it’s done. However, they have shown that they are vigilant about this, and are able to raise funds when needed. Naturally, they don’t discuss all their options openly, but over time I’ve seen them work on different options, and deliver in good time, so it isn’t a worry for me at this time. Ask me again a year! :wink:

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If you mean the thread then I have skipped though that, Should maidsafe start giving timescales? - #23 by whiteoutmashups but although it covers the arguments (which I don’t necessarily agree with)
it doesn’t really help with dates.

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But you can guess less than infinity :wink:

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This thread piques my interest because I’m still new to the software industry and am perplexed by how deadlines and wages are calculated.

I’m interested to learn from you vets about your thoughts on it.

My background is in agriculture and as a crew manager in a produce warehouse where I was very simply able to view reports stating incoming pallet cubes and outgoing pallet cubes, then allocate labor based on average build rates per pallet cube. So simple that it became intuitive.

Additionally, on-the-clock meant I was producing value in a certain amount of completed pallet cubes, whereas now I’ll be thinking about how to solve a problem, even when the timer is not running, which leads to code implementation, but the scale and reach of my implementation may have future productive value that I may not be able to estimate in the present. It also may cause additional costs in the future that I haven’t anticipated, if I do particularly shite work.

Getting to be a meta post :smiley:

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Well I love the project and I really hope it delivers what it promises, I am not personally concerned about making money from it but I don’t want it to run out of resources and fail because of that. Your prediction of riches in the future sounds very much like something which I thought was banned in these forums.

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Hunter, I worked on a wide range of IT related projects, and because they were all bespoke they were very hard to estimate accurately for cost, resources and of course timescales.

What I learned was that the only way to reliably estimate anything of complexity is if you have done something similar before and can use that as a benchmark. Even that can go wrong if course but it was the only method that had any chance of getting close!

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IT project estimates are similar to what you describe (normally), you estimate the amount of work that needs to be done and the resources you need to do it along with the costs of hardware and other services like network connectivity etc. You take into account any constraints such as when the project must be completed e.g in order to comply with legal requirements. A PM would then produce a plan showing resource burn and delivery dates and would then constantly monitor it to make sure that the estimates are still valid, if things change (they always do) then in consultation with the sponsors the dates and costs are updated.

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It does adequately explain why timescales cannot be nailed down for this project. If you read them carefully, you will also be able to discern rough expectations of knowledgeable participants. Wouldn’t worry too much about lack of resources either; worse comes to worse there could always be another equity or crowdfund event, probably much more successful than the previous ones. But I believe the team has capitalized on the crypto frenzy of the last 18 months so that those additional revenue draws will probably be unnecessary (just an uncorroborated guess on my part).

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Its horses for courses really. I was a PM, Designer on a pretty huge country wide network in the Middle East. If you know the elements of a project then you can get both timescales and costs. Typically you break the task into small pieces, then staff or sub contract (easier) for the whole job. There is usually contingency for weird stuff like historical finds, nature related delays and typical unknowns, like delivery of goods delays. These projects can include design and build of hospitals (we built 3) that can have many unknowns, but guessable components.

Then you have high levels of research/innovation etc. and the contingency gets much higher, rather than 20% it can be several hundred percent. You will see that with us, tesla, cern and the www, darpa and tcpip etc. now closer, quantum computing, generalised AI, flying cars (getting there) and while the upside of a final working product is immense the risk is large, due to the large contingency.

So to project manage the first kind you can break down tasks pretty close to how long they will take and cost, the other kind though the contingency or error rate is so high it becomes a guess. Then add in investors and supporters and the guesses hurt. You can show the road, see the travel along it, but not be sure of the end. The best you can do is show how far you have come and ask how much further will it be. Knowing the speed and distance travelled so far does say something, but not the end result, just the ability to move at pace and efficiently (we never fell off the road). The longer the road behind you then the more comfy folk feel, unless the road gets too long and it seems progress is not happening.

So a fine balance, kinda like you can map the seas now (remember join the dots looking back), but Columbus could not map the Americas until he made the journey. Those that followed could have timetables and costs though :wink:

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