We’re starting to see the real potential of our microfrontends experiment bear fruit!
It’s hard to believe that two months have passed since we first discussed the next steps for Microfrontends, formed the Microfrontend Squad, and identified a handful of product owners like Burke, JJ, Mike, and Mark - all of whom have been following and chiming in on the Microfrontend Squad’s RFCs and on the @microfrontend channel.
During that discussion, some key interests that they wanted to see come out of this initial work came out:
- They would like see a clear path for running this side by side/co-mingling with current applications, how quickly can we integrate something new into existing frameworks,
- There was also strong interest in leveraging/using what has already been built that can be used (ie: react components library), open to changing/improving what has already been built.
Even as answers to these initial questions have become clearer in recent weeks, other, equally important and real questions are coming up. Last week alone, at both the hackathon, in the Microfrontend RFCs, and during our Strategy and Operations call, people began asking questions like: what this will mean for the community and implementations? What about migration strategy and approach? What about styleguides? Is there a sprint I can join?
The styleguides question has already led to Monday’s Design Forum discussion on Styleguides, which will continue on Talk and the Styleguide RFC.
Truth be told, these are all important questions for us to discuss as a community - especially as the initial, exploratory work of the Microfrontend Squad begins to transform into something more concrete and within reach.
So here are some suggested next steps for us to think about taking in the coming weeks:
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Look at what has come out of the Microfrontend Squad’s work as well as the Kenya OpenMRS hackathon and re-visit those initial questions posed by product owners. If you are interested in attending a follow on to our initial Microfrontends: Next Steps discussion from May, please respond to this Doodle poll to indicate your availability in the coming weeks.
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Guided community discussions on migration implications and strategy. We have known that we’ll need to figure out a migration path. It’s also important that we recognize that migration goes beyond technology: there are considerations in a number of areas, such as implications for the underlying data as @akanter brought up, capacity/knowledge, use + useability, etc. We’d like to have a rich, community discussion on migration that spans these and any other areas of interest. If you have particular considerations or questions about any aspect of migration that you want to include in these discussions, please share!
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Look into setting up a UI Design group or squad to work with the microfrontend project - or even others working on OpenMRS features. Over the past several months, there have been a few discussions around this on Talk and at the hackathon. Following @jdick’s post about a new Appointments UI, @c.antwi has proposed holding a Design Forum where we can discuss what this group could do and next steps.
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Hackathon safari! @wanyee has been in touch with a few countries who are eager to host their own hackathons. We’re exploring the idea of holding virtual hackathons to go along with these local hackathons. We’re hoping to integrate planning for these hackathons with our ongoing planning for OMRS19.
Other ideas or suggestions?