Revisiting how the Web Commerce IG Works

Problem statement

• The intersection between (1) industry trends and (2) necessary Web capabilities is rarely understood.
• This leads to missed opportunities and higher costs for industry, as well as missed opportunities for W3C to improve the Web.
• The Web Commerce IG exists to bridge this gap.
• The Web Commerce IG has faced obstacles to doing so efficiently.

Goals of a Reorganization

• Improve the Web by more quickly identifying standardization opportunities for W3C and ensuring key stakeholders are participating in discussions.
• Increase the focus, level of activity, and investment of IG participants for areas of common interest.
• Provide insights to IG participants about the evolution of the Web.
• Facilitate contributions through operations better suited to participants.

Obstacles to Participation

• risks associated with bringing business requirements to public forum (e.g., proprietary strategy)
• difficulty translating industry requirements into Web capabilities
• limited Member resources allocated to standardization activities
• hard to keep resources focused over long periods of time (may be easier to allocate at certain phases); topics may be far from day jobs.
• hard to find the right set of skills in one individual (awareness of business/product and technology)
• scheduling challenges (e.g., weekly meetings, time zones)
• complexity of tools and communications channels

Levels of Participation

• Active
  • Lead work
  • Contribute
  • Review
  • Express support
• Passive
  • Monitor progress, learn
  • Ignore

Reorg Strategy

• Understand the goals of the participants and their preferred participation level.
• Understand the nature of likely contributions.
• Understand the obstacles and catalysts for engagement.
• Understand a productive combination of participant skills.
• Adjust the group's agenda, composition, and operations to meet participant goals.

New: Periodic Updates to the IG

• Four telephone updates annually to IG participants about W3C activities and Web trends, organized by the Chairs and W3C staff

IG Deliverables

• Vision (cf. original Vision for a Web Payments Architecture)
• Use cases
  • These are the starting points for identification of standardization opportunities.
• New: Industry Analyses (i.e., short white papers)
  • These might help frame Working Group charter proposals, then track WG progress against evolving industry changes

Use Case Considerations

• Grounded in business problem
• Describes a user experience improvement
• Offers benefit to a significant proportion of industry
• Explains need for interoperability
  • E.g., where new browser capability required or to coalesce diverse existing practice

Proposed to manage through champion process.

Operations

• The Chairs and staff contact have project management responsibilities: soliciting input, ensuring champions produce deliverables in a timely fashion, organizing meetings as needed.
• Two face-to-face meetings each year (one at TPAC)
• New: No regularly scheduled calls for the entire IG (other than the four "update" calls). Chairs may schedule calls as needed.
• Task forces or editors organize calls as needed
• Use cases and analyses developed online

Discussion

• What would you like to get out of participation in the IG?
• Would "four updates to the IG" be valuable to you?
• Why don't people volunteer to develop use cases? Are they not useful?
• Would "short white papers" be valuable to you or to the industry?
• Would "a vision" be valuable to you or to the industry?
• Is an explainer (cf. the pay at the pump explainer) a helpful use case description?
• Any there other obstacles to participation?