Brainstorming a post -- 10 Tough Technology Questions?

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tomjoht
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Brainstorming a post -- 10 Tough Technology Questions?

#1

Post by tomjoht »

I'm brainstorming a post that would provide answers to 10 of the toughest Church technology questions you have. What might some of those questions be?
russellhltn
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#2

Post by russellhltn »

I'm trying to define in my mind "toughest". I'm thinking along the lines of "When will x happen?"
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craiger
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#3

Post by craiger »

How does the church prioritize tech initiatives and feature sets? For example, why has the calendar and other ways for units to communicate (which seem to be highly utilized and have a significant impact on administrative overhead associated with running a unit) seem to have the same or lessor priority as the study tools (which seem to be minimally used and have a small impact on church service). Or another example, why does the duty to God online tool not have any visibility for parents or leaders to see progress, but the personal progress online tool does?
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#4

Post by lajackson »

Why is is so hard to keep things simple?

Here are four examples. Church websites display differently in different browsers. Many pages take forever to load or refresh on any but cutting edge computers and the highest bandwidth lines. Every help question has to be asked two times. Most of the internal search functions return sketchy results.
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#5

Post by kisaac »

While maybe not the toughest, it's perhaps one that I'm most curious about. What's the process for a technology application, from idea to final implementation? How many approvals does it take, and who approves it?
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aebrown
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#6

Post by aebrown »

Here's a question:

Why is it taking so long to implement Single-Sign-On across all the Church websites. We still have to have a separate login for the classic ward and stake websites (that one's somewhat understandable, since they are based on old technology, but it's still annoying), and the missionary recommendation system, and FamilySearch (where New FS is a separate login from FS), and the Temple Entry System, and I'm sure I'm still missing others.

At least these systems can all use LDS Account, which is nice, but I love the fact that I can move from Directory to Leader Tools to Calendar to My Study Notebook without having to sign in again, so it is jarring when I go to one of those other systems and have to sign in again.
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johnshaw
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#7

Post by johnshaw »

Why does implementation vary so greatly FM to FM.... Why can one FM say yes, while another says No to the EXACT same thing.

How does one see the spiritual impact of all the time they devote to making technology work? (we had an STS that just couldn't 'get it' he was released because he couldn't make the connection
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aebrown
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#8

Post by aebrown »

What kind of research with real users goes precedes the development of software?

For example, I often hear people say of MLS something like "They never would have implemented it that way if they had only talked to a clerk first" or of the Calendar, "the developers clearly never talked to a building scheduler before they implemented the new calendar." I'm sure the implication behind those statements isn't true, but is there any standard procedure for interviewing users or doing contextual inquiry, or some other user-based research as requirements are developed for a new project?
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kisaac
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#9

Post by kisaac »

who really decides the "rights" of online access? It seems to be a little of "trial and error," and has all the hallmarks of being multiple "committee" driven, as I've seen access changed and modified, relaxed then tightened, and often the final decision is surprising to me. It's often tough for us "in the trenches" to figure out who can do what, and we end up in a ward council or other leadership meeting trying to find out who can access what. The bottom line is the local bishop/stake pres. actually assigns which tasks his extended presidencies (clerks, assistant clerks, exec. sec's, etc) do, but you are somewhat "locked into" some of these tasks by the permissions granted via our on-line tools.

Some small examples: using the "send a message" function: A stake assistant clerk is not given the "rights" to email the whole stake membership, but the stake president can....but he can't assign me to do it as LDS.org won't allow it. The stake president can assign me to research a topic in Handbook one, and search through all "official" communications, which both I am allowed to see, but I don't have "online" access granted to Handbook one, nor have any access to the "official communications library" online, so I have to tell him to research the Library online himself, and search handbook one manually, as the online search tool for Handbook one is available to me. As a Ward Clerk, I was not "granted" access to see my own "official" ward boundary map from CDOL, although I was responsible for each household within this map....An error existed, and I could not track down at what point it existed, so it has persisted.
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tomjoht
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#10

Post by tomjoht »

These are great questions. Thanks for surfacing these for me. I'll try to tackle as many as I can in this upcoming post. If you have any more, just keep posting them.
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