XanaStatus for the Board

[Marc Stiegler <marcs>]

I promised you a copy of the status report I created for Chris to show the
board; here it is.

Status Of Xanadu, 8/14/89

In the last status report for the board, progress was measured 
against the March PERT chart projections. We will continue to 
refer to that PERT, to afford a stable anchor point, though dramatic 
revisions to that PERT have been made. 

Candidly, progress as measured against the March PERT  has been 
slow. Many tasks which had not yet been identified in March are 
now included in the PERT, increasing our knowledge of how long 
it will really take to complete. Delays have occurred in the 
high-reliability disk handler which is required to protect large 
information pools, and in the completion of the high-level interface 
from the backend to the frontend applications. 

The delays in backend-frontend interface also contributed to 
slips in the frontend . And we have had frontend delays in implementing 
one of the key visual representations, the "inclusion list", 
which unifies many of the functions of a file directory, a document 
outliner, a conference listing, and a mailbox, within the hypermedia 
context.

We conducted a major triage on the planned product on 8/7, to 
prune elements that could be postponed until a second release.

Despite these disappointments to our March intentions, real progress 
is indeed being made. The high-level interface from the backend 
is now complete, getting both the backend and the frontend moving 
forward again. Progress on the ent, which is the key proprietary 
technology underlying the system, is still on schedule. 

Due to the cuts identified in the triage, Alpha test for the 
backend has moved up significantly; it will be available for 
use by Autodesk this month, in August.

Alpha testing for the frontend begins in November. Beta for the 
backend begins December. Beta for a partial version of the frontend 
begins in January; Beta for the full frontend begins in March.

The key PC frontend programmer position has been filled. We are 
closing on hiring our developer support person, who may be able 
to write some of the software as well as promote it. 

The first draft of the marketing plan was completed in mid-July; 
the second draft is now in circulation. The marketing plan suggests 
a slightly different target market for our first frontend than 
originally planned. We have modified the frontend design to support 
this new positioning; the modifications will have negligible 
impact on the schedule.

--marcs