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We want Mifos to be faster, lighter and cheaper to change so that it is more responsive to the needs of MFI’s and Integrators. TThere are a number of things we can do that individually and when combined together will help us achieve this goal of faster, lighter and cheaper:
We will start by working through the individual lending microfinance model. From there we will incrementally work on and deliver other models (in no praticual order as yet):
- Grameen-style joint-liability groups
- self-help groups and federations
- cooperatives and SACCOs
- village banking
Whilst working through each microfinance model, we seek to work in close collaboration with an MFI that practices the given model on the ground so we can understand their needs and pain points and deliver useful software to the MFI.
Some of the product advantages could be:
- Greater flexibility in support loan schedules (automated or manual) over time
- Globalisation support: support for translations, number and date formatting in any locale.
Some of the technical advantages could be:
- Ease of deployment/installation
- Ease of configuration
- Seperation into a 'services provider'(backend) and 'client application' (frontend user interface)
- An application developer oriented platform API
- Simplification of database structure
- Simplification of client application responsiblities (globalisation)
- As of yet, no overnight batch jobs
- More suitale to multi-tenant setup
Project Milestones
- July 2011 to September 2011: Prototype work on ad-hoc volunteer basis (1 developer)
see Loan lifecycle and date flexibility: see Mifos 2.2 versus MifosX - Loan lifecycle and date flexibility
see Loan schedule flexibility: see Mifos 2.2 versus MifosX - Loan repayment schedule flexibility
see bulk upload/data migration for clients, loans (and loan repayments): see Mifos 2.2 versus MifosX - Bulk upload - Jan 2012 to March 2012: Individual lending functionality (2 developers)
Worked in close collaboration with CreoCore to provide functionality related to individual lending as was required by them whilst maintaining the vision of an open API led platform for microfinance.
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