I was reading a post in the Servant Matcher Extension thread and Mark Stephenson wrote the following in response to an inquiry about a feature's availability:



This got me to thinking...

At my day job, I am an Engineering Manager over technology and product development for high data rate communications electronics. Periodically, I have to create/update technology roadmaps. These plans give a general and sometimes specific framework for the products that we will develop and the techologies that will support them. Sometimes I even include a "thumb in the air" estimate (e.g.-FY07 Q1) for when the product will be in prototype release stage.

Does something like this exist for WEC? Even if it was simply a bulleted list, I think it would be very beneficial to have a glimpse at WEC's targeted direction. I would understand if there are some items that you may not want in public discussion because the ideas are still too preliminary, etc. However, I could see it being beneficial to have such a list that can periodically be updated to remove items, add items, provide further details, etc.

I have also seen a similar concept on several open-source software websites where the authors will list a set of planned features and many times people then discuss those features through a WIKI or forum.

Just my two cents...I think WEC is doing a wonderful service and I am enthusiastically advocating the WEC package to people that I encounter.

By the way, I could also understand if this is one of those planned action items that just keep falling off the bottom of the list...I have several of those myself!

In Christ,

Heath

Heath,

Yes, we have plans, goals, and milestones for the year that are submitted in writing to The Foundation for Evangelism. We also have a list of approved projects that are managed and tracked. I write a monthly report that describes the progress on all the projects and where we are on meeting our milestones.

The challenge we have is that when users hear about a new feature we are developing, they are not too happy when it does not arrive for 6 months due to the process of designing, developing, testing, and documenting. Also, priorities change and technology changes. We are very ministry driven and Holy-Spirit-driven. So we commonly make adjustments based on who God sends to help with this ministry and what the needs are. For example, we just learned of about 30 Korean-speaking churches that are interested in WEC-TYPO3. So, we just put resources toward ensuring that we know how to support the UTF-8 representation of data and languages like Korean. Pretty exciting! This was not planned for but was driven by the ministry need.

The primary focus for WEC in 2007 is:

- Improving the usability of TYPO3
-- We are conducting a short study to make sure we understand the skills of churches and how best to simplify the WEC-TYPO3 interface
-- We are prototyping an approach to editing TYPO3 pages/content much more simply with a web 2.0-like interface

- Adding some basic Church Management Features
-- We are helping develop the Calendar Base extension and the Party Framework extensions. They say churches are all about people and events. That is what these two support.

- Maintaining and enhancing our current extensions
-- Everyone sees this. Changes are driven by user feedback and bug fixes.

- Adding more templates
-- We are adding 20 to 30 new template series. We added 10 more already. 10 more are in development right now.

- Adding many more How-Tos to help with learning and using WEC-TYPO3
-- We are trying to add over 100 more How-tos by the end of the year
-- We are also creating standard trainings that we can use to teach people how to use TYPO3

I hope this gives you a glimpse of where we are headed. 2008 will have lots more development of usability related software. I could report more in the future. We are thinking of creating a WEC weekly or biweekly or monthly e-mail that provides WEC news. I do think we need to share more because this is a community effort and we all need to be involved. There is just the challenge of putting that all in place. But we will get there. Please let me know if you have any more questions.

Blessed to Serve,
Mark

Mark,

This is great!!! This is the type of information that I was looking to see. I completely understand the concerns with changing schedules and ministry priorities. Above all things, we must remember that we are on God's time-table and not our own.

I am particularly excited about the Church Management Features. I know that those extensions that you listed are not controlled directly by WEC but it would certainly be interesting to get yours and others (Jeff, Dave, Cristoph) opinion on their status and how you all see the development progressing. I just read the Party Information Framework Scenario and I was very intrigued by the possibilities that it presents. (http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/Party_Information_Framework_Scenario)

I have also been wondering about Calendar Base...I knew that Jeff was working on the team but I had not read a recent update to get a feel for it's maturity. Do you thin that WEC will use those extension as they stand or will you ultimately modify them for a WEC specific version?

In regards to the templates, do you have a feel for which of your existing templates are the most popular? and did you let this guide the direction of the development of the new designs? If not, are there certain overall design concepts that you are trying to achieve to "fill out" your "catalog"? just wondering...

I think that the WEC Status email is a great idea as well. It would help keep people aware of the changing priorities and help keep people's anticipation in check.
One aspect of that email could be a list of areas where you need help. (e.g.- testing a "beta" version of an extension, documentation (per a given format), et.) I feel sure that there are many who will offer help if they know where it is needed.

Thanks Again!

In Christ,
Heath

Amen!



On both extensions we are actively participating on the develop team so they have WEC requirements built in. We did not start those efforts but we are developing and we are also helping with the documentation, at least on the calendar base. You will know they are ready for use when we add them to the WEC Starter Package. The Calendar Base extension is very close. I'd guess one month away. I just received a copy of the latest document to review. The Party Framework is a ways behind. Once the Calendar Base is out and ready, I hope we can help it more.



We are trying for usable variety. We want lots of different choices but not the way out choices that few churches would consider. We also want modern looking templates that are all CSS based. I am not sure about template popularity except to look at the WEC websites we know of. We can't tell by downloads because many templates are included in the WEC Starter Package.



Excellent feedback and suggestions. Thanks! I know one issue is we need another TYPO3 extension developer.

In Christ,
Mark

May we have a 2008 update at some point? Thanks!

Thanks,
Will Dennis
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Hi Will,

Here are some of the things we are working on in 2008:

- A new frontend editing capability that will simplify content entry. I hope we can release this in the second quarter of 2008. We also plan to do some usability testing to refine it and we may call upon many of you to help in that.

- Calendar Base is available now but will soon become our preferred calendar. It will provide the full-featured calendar we need for many WEC features.

- WEC People is an extension in early development. It used to be called Party Framework. It will become a full-featured extension to store all information about people including the groups they are in and their relationships with others. I am oversimplifying somewhat but churches are all about people and events. So Calendar Base and WEC People will address these two for us.

- We are thinking through the design of a simple extension that uses WEC People and probably Calendar Base to track food given out to people in a food pantry. We have a few WEC churches with a need for this capability. We are considering it partly because it might be a good application to work through some of the interface requirements on WEC People and Calendar base. We have not decided to create it yet, but it is likely.

- We are nearing completion of the Spiritual Self-Assessment extension. It will help people understand where they are in their Christian growth and can make suggestions on what specific next steps to take. It will also work as a spiritual gift inventory. You can peek at a pre-release version here: http://webempoweredchurch.com/no_cache/gettingstarted/deciding/readiness/

- We are working on a more modular way to architect our templates so they are easier to modify and maintain. We are also developing a way to install templates more easily.

- We are adding some usability features to our Sermon Management System extension and we are also adding a more powerful search capability

- For some time we have looked at ways to provide more of the features that you might see on social networking websites. We are still trying to identify the right way to make it happen. When we do, we will get started.

- We are working on a survey that will help us get better. We get feedback through these forums, but we'd like to ask some specific questions and to get more input from the WEC community.

- This year you will also see WEC publicized a lot more. For example, we are writing articles in different magazines, speaking at more events, and conducting more workshops. The reason is that it is time to expand the impact of WEC around the world. We will update the WEC blog to announce publications and various events. We also ask the community to help us get the word out.

Of course the Holy Spirit can adjust our direction at any time, but these are the main projects we are planning on now.

Thanks for your interest. God is good!

Mark