Software Roadmap 2026

Hi all, the purpose of this thread is to provide updates about the core Roadmap presented at the end of January. Similarly to what product folks used to do years ago, the intention is to provide a regular snapshot of where we are at, share what the team is working on, and provide a space to ask questions and give feedback.
Please share any thoughts and suggestions to refine the process of how to keep the community in the loop. A couple of general slack channels where more granular conversations are happening are #delivery-circle and #frontshop-uplift.

Timeframes shifts

After 3.5 months of work, the aspirational timeline is unfortunately not achievable. The planned features are more intricate than I expected, and capacity is limited. I am more than happy to dive deeper on the why’s if anyone is keen, and very open to recommendations on how to assess this better in the future.
The one big lesson (which is not really a new one) is that being able to pinpoint how long it’s going to take to build a feature, or even more so a list of features, is very hard. So for the time being, I would prefer to simply share what we are working on now and what we are planning to work on in the near future (3 to 6 months max from now).

The roadmap snapshot (doc available in Global Google Drive here)

Feature by feature

Taler payments - EU Grant
Github Milestone | Slack channel
Thanks to @rachel, @maikel and folks contributing to this, now it’s completed!

Paying with credits - Funded feature (UK)
Github Milestone
Thanks @gaetan, @BethanOFN and everyone involved in releasing this feature. It’s completed, and there might be room for a little extra functionality, pending stewardship’s circle confirmation.

Tech modernisation (global)

  • Stripe integration is up-to-date

  • OFN backups can now be performed independently of AWS

  • Rails 7.2 is closed to be achieved

  • Shackapacker upgrade closes a lot of old security vulnerabilities

Linked variants - Funded feature (FR)
Github Milestone | Discourse Thread | Slack channel
We are getting close to completion for this initial pilot, with some last quite complex assessment of how ownership changes for linked variants and discussing setting up demos for the funding hubs.
This piece of work is also getting us closer to sunsetting inventory.

DFC 2.0 Upgrade - Funded as part of Connecting Farms to Markets (CA)
Github Issue | Upgrade Guide
@maikel deep in this. Confident that the old API can still be used, which helps with external connections like Discover Regenerative.

Products grid view - Core feature (AU)
Github Milestone | Discourse Thread | Slack channel
This falls under the shopfront uplift umbrella.
Off the back of the concept testing feedback and the analysis of the product refactor, we are now kicking off development. @gaetan has picked up the first issue last week.

Multiple product images - Core feature (AU)
Github Milestone | Discourse Thread | Slack channel
This falls under the shopfront uplift umbrella.
Off the back of the concept testing feedback and the analysis of the product refactor, we are now kicking off development. @chahmedejaz has picked up the first issue last week.

Product categories navigation - Core feature (AU)
Discourse Thread | Slack channel
This falls under the shopfront uplift umbrella.
@tschumilas, @dcook and myself have kicked off inception.
It is a complex piece of analysis since it involves assessing DFC integration and maybe enabling custom taxonomy for users, which we currently don’t do. Hard to tell when that’s moving to development, but release of grid view might be dependant on some of this being done.

Product pages - Core feature (AU)
Github Milestone | Discourse Thread | Slack channel
This falls under the shopfront uplift umbrella, and picks up on the highly desired Product modal links from a couple of years back.
So far only some concept designs have been explored, and we are currently at full capacity so we are not able to start deeper inception and analysis. Once some of the above are at a more advanced stage, then we’ll pick this up.

Implications for Developer Team Future Capacity to support new projects

The dev team is at capacity to deliver the current roadmap within existing hours. Taking on additional work would require one of the following: deprioritising something on the roadmap, increasing team hours (capacity exists for this), or bringing in a paid contributor or contract partner. Please share your use case so we can assess whether we can support it in-house or identify the right partner together.

What’s after this?

Still assessing what the remaining budget for Flower Farms is, then we might prioritise some of the OC improvements or bulk tagging.

Checkout improvements and cart reminders have been discussed during concept testing, and might be the next priority since it bundles nicely with the overall front shop uplift.

Backoffice mobile optimisation is a design-heavy big piece of work, we’ll see how to sequence it, and likely break it down and spread it across a long delivery cycle.

More ideas and opportunities have been listed as part of the January workshops and roadmap presentation + some insights from concept testing are surfacing as well. Once we have a bit more time available, we’ll start reviewing those as well and work with the community to understand how important they are.

Thank you

1 Like

Hi all, here’s an update on the roadmap from the past month. Please let me know if there’s anything else that you would like to be included in this snapshot, and I will try to update for next month.

A couple of general slack channels where more granular conversations are happening are #delivery-circle and #frontshop-uplift.

Feature by feature

Tech modernisation

  • Upgraded to Rails 7.2, it was released on Monday the 22nd

  • Fixed performance issues of the admin product page so that it’s now faster than before

Linked variants - Funded feature (FR)
Github Milestone | Discourse Thread | Slack channel
There are still a few issues left to be worked on, in preparation for the demo with the funding hubs that is planned for the 7th of July. By then this feature will likely be close to completion.

DFC 2.0 Upgrade - Funded as part of Connecting Farms to Markets (CA)
Github Issue | Upgrade Guide
The OFN DFC API now provides data in DFC v2 format on all endpoints and we are working on importing farm data from Litefarm in the new format as well.

Products grid view - Core feature (AU)
Github Milestone | Discourse Thread | Slack channel
Gaetan is making good progress on it. We have 2 issues close to being released (behind a feature toggle, so not available to the public yet).

Multiple product images - Core feature (AU)
Github Milestone | Discourse Thread | Slack channel
Ahmed is focusing on building the carousel for the shopfront and cleaning up the database, which has some unused images stored that need to be removed. The carousel won’t be available for the public yet, but once we enable admins to upload one image for each variant, then we can allow users to have multiple images and make use of the carousel.

Product categories navigation - Core feature (AU)
Discourse Thread | Slack channel
No inception progress on this since David is focusing on linked variants and Mario on dev support.

Product pages - Core feature (AU)
Github Milestone | Slack channel
This is now ready for development. Maikel is likely to pick it up once he has capacity to do so.

What’s next?

As you can see from the snapshot, we don’t have anything planned for next up yet. We will likely start discussing how to prioritise the next items for the roadmap in the following weeks. If you are interested in participating in the process, please let us know here or in #product-circle

Thanks @Mario for those updates.
I find it disappointing that we aren’t making progress on the UX Order Cycles development. Significant design work has already been done, and it would be a real step forward for the users.
It also sends a bad signal to those who volunteered their time to contribute when it doesn’t lead to any results.

Agreed. It was the ‘flower farming’ funds that covered the development of the new OC UX, and several flower hubs had input. They will indeed be disappointed. We had intended that the ‘flower farming’ funds would also be sufficient to implement the new UX design. But unfortunately, there seems to have been some issues tracking how the flower farm funding was spent, and it still is not totally clear how much remains. But it is seeming like there are now insufficient funds to do the OC UX. I share your frustration, and I know the flower hubs will share it too.

I wonder if it is possible to re-visit the estimates on how much we need to do the OC UX implementation. Maybe we can ‘crowd source’ this directly from interested users?