Note - this document is still a work in progress.*

Introduction

This document outlines the strategic positioning of the Zope platform. It is not about technical strategy, but rather about answering the questions: What is Zope? What is it not? What problems is it intended to solve? Who is it for? What are the audiences that drive Zope development?

As an Open Source project, it is important that the community have a shared understanding of the strategic context of Zope. In a large and distributed community, there are a lot of opinions. A common understanding of strategic goals ensures that we work together to make good decisions.

Audiences

In any Web-based enterprise, there are many people who generally play one or more of the following roles:

• Consumers

Consumers are the "end users" of web site content and services. These are the people who go to a site to achieve some goal (buy a book, book a flight, etc.)

• Business Users

  Business Users are those who produce and manage the content and services for use by consumers on a Web site. Some examples of Business Users are:

  • The columnist who writes stories for a site
  • The people who manage the inventory updates for an online car dealership
  • A manager who pulls up sales reports for his direct-sales website.

Business Users are generally non-technical. Their goals are business goals: to meet the deadline, to staff the document, to have numbers for the boss when he wants them.

• Site Designers

  The job of Site Designers is to assemble Web sites that meet the needs of their Consumers and Business Users. They are responsible for overall site design, the user experience, branding and integrating new services with the site.

  Site Designers are fairly technical. They are familiar with HTML and graphics production, are usually familiar with client-side scripting (such as JavaScript) and have often had experience with some form of server-side scripting (ASP, CFML, or PHP for example).

• Site Developers

  Site Developers provide components that can be used as building blocks by the Site Designers who design and assemble a site. The components may wrap a back end system or implement the core business logic of a service.

• System Administrators

  System Administrators are responsible for the management and deployment of the hardware and software that a site depends on. They are also usually responsible for providing access to these systems to those who need it.

• Information Architect

  Finally, the Information Architect is the strategic decision maker in an organization. He has a comprehensive view of the systems involved and is the driver of the Web vision for the organization.