For almost 6 years, I've been the lead developer of the Achievo Project Management application. It has always been an interesting project. While being a relatively small application, among larger suites such as phpGroupware, we've always tried to keep it simple, targeted at a certain set of functionality, with a specific focus. I think we succeeded in doing so, as because of this, it appeals to a specific set of users and mainly to smaller companies with small projects they need to track.


About 5 months after its first release, we rewrote Achievo from scratch, because a community started to form that demanded new features that were time consuming to add, even if it was just the addition of a new field. Achievo was in fact the first thing I ever wrote in PHP, so the code was not something to be proud of. We learned an important lesson from that first release, and we replaced the large set of php scripts with clean, object oriented code, and the basis of this quickly became a framework. About two years ago the framework had evolved enough to stand on it's own, and the ATK framework was released as a separate product.


Since then, ATK has seen a lot of growth. Last year, the ATK community became larger than the original Achievo community, and as such, took up a lot more of my time. Also, I'm working hard to get my own company, epointment up and running.


The result is that the Achievo Project Management application does not get the amount of attention that it deserves anymore. This is painfully evident in the release frequency, the last stable release was (although development never stopped) a year ago. This is not motivating for the developers that are working on new features, and it's not good for the community.


So I've made the decision to hand over the Achievo Project Management app, so I can concentrate on ATK and epointment. The most likely candidate for taking over is Sandy Pleyte, as he has been one of the main developers since the start, and has always fueled Achievo development. I've discussed the future of Achievo with him, and he has a lot of ideas, both for functionality and for restructuring the development process, so I'm confident that Achievo is in good hands with him.


This does not mean I will leave the project entirely. I will remain on the development team, and will continue to work together with the rest of the team. It's just that I think the project maintainer should be able to have more dedication for the project than I am currently able to offer.


So I think this is what's best for the project, and I wish Sandy the best of luck. You will probably start seeing the results of this very soon, as Sandy is eager to put his plans to action.