I have been working for over a year to get us some real professional work as a team (with pay). I have not finalized the deal quite yet, so I can’t give you many details at this time.
The opportunity is a perfect extension of the work we have been focused on as a team: Learning Management System (LMS)
I started this effort early in 2023 when I visited Bukavu and met a number of you. You can read the top section of the Home page, and the About page to see the vision for this site: To create a mentoring community for aspiring software developers. Mentoring is much more than Teaching or Learning, it is about creating a Community for success. This site is a primitive Learning Management System.
Since then, we have added the Student Survey App Platform and now the Team CRM (which is not published publicly yet).
As a team we have gained a lot of experience with WordPress and the Disciple-Tools theme. We have learned how to customize WP and DT. Our first major client is a CRM for a Basic Literacy project in West Africa. That project leverages many of the skills we have gained.
I believe that our next major initiative is to cooperate on a very large LMS platform. It is not just an LMS but is a cloud based LMS platform that can be customized for many purpose such as a corporate training facility, to school or university level institutions, or private communities that need to share resources in a highly secure way. Since it is cloud based, it will bring new dimensions to how large applications are designed, engineered, and deployed.
The first major contribution that we can make to that effort is something that is missing in their effort so far, and that is carefully designed UI and UX testing that not only is done manually, but can be highly automated. Their development team is not trained in those aspects, and we have the opportunity to fill that gap in their effort.
So, in light of that, I have launched a new section of our site: Testing your work. In this case we will be testing the existing development team’s work.
If we do this right, we will add a major new skillset to our community that will lead the way to many commercial projects like the one I have been discussing.
In the process of that testing we will learn a great deal about LMS systems, and will greatly expand our vision of that field. Finally, with that experience we will be able to improve and rebuild our MKB.com site and/or sites for the FreeDev-group.
Conclusion
Without neglecting the work you are currently doing, visit the new Testing your work section and start reading that. Soon, the subsections of that will get filled out and the Automated UI testing will have some projects that you can undertake as paid work that will benefit our whole team effort.
This article helped me understand that UI testing is not just a technical task, but a strategic opportunity for our team. What stands out to me is that this initiative is directly connected to real professional work, not just learning for the sake of learning.
I also see that this is a natural continuation of what we have been building: from WordPress and Disciple Tools, to Survey App, to CRM, and now toward a more advanced and scalable LMS platform. UI/UX testing becomes the missing layer that can elevate the quality of everything we build.
What I find particularly important is the emphasis on both manual and automated testing. This shows that we are not only expected to observe, but also to structure, systematize, and eventually scale our testing practices.
For me, this is a shift in mindset: moving from just “building features” to contributing to the reliability, usability, and professionalism of a product. I understand that if we do this well, it can open doors to real paid opportunities and position us as a valuable team in larger projects.
I am motivated to engage with this new section seriously and to start building this skill progressively.
Merci d’avoir partager la vision🙏