[Dev] Dogfooding Chandler

[Philippe Bossut]

Hi there,

I said it to quite a few of you and now I'm announcing it: I started to 
dogfood Chandler seriously since Friday September 23rd!

So far, I'm fairly happy with it though I ran through a couple of 
crashers that I carefully walk around in my daily usage. But despite the 
bugs, the great news is: Chandler is rapidly becoming usable, there's 
nothing I was doing with iCal I found myself not being able to do in 
Chandler, I can save my data (in .ics) and read them back with no loss. 
This last aspect is of course paramount when dogfooding and I'm glad to 
report I  haven't lost anything since Friday (knocking on wood...).

So, what does it mean to "dogfood" Chandler?
- Stop using iCal and run Chandler exclusively: I know it's hard to get 
rid of old habits but, if it's hard for us, just think about how it will 
feel for others outside OSAF.
- Take notes of every behavior or issue you find when running Chandler: 
mild annoyances, UI defect that bug you, anything that make you want to 
leave Chandler and start iCal again... Those are things that are not 
necessarily bugs and that you may want to discuss with someone on the 
team (idea: should we have a "dogfood" mailing list to discuss such 
issues? Is there an existing mailing list that would be appropriate for  
that kind of discussion?)
- Report bugs in Bugzilla religiously: don't just send an e-mail out and 
hope someone else will track the problem... 

I've been logging quite a few bugs since Friday but don't feel bad about 
it: this is exactly where we should be right now.

I encourage everybody in the Dev group to start dogfooding. This is 
important we get some mileage among ourselves and feel confortable with 
the application before we roll it out to non-dev type within the 
organization (i.e. Esther to handle our Office calendar) and, later, to 
the World.

I know: after years of development it feels strange that some people may 
actually use our stuff but this day is actually really really close 
now... and it's a pretty exciting place to be... :)

Cheers,
- Philippe