It's not always clearly planned, and in most case will have no direct, immediate effect on game behaviour.
In this instance, though, I am planning on converting the guild/religion turn script, and thereby fixing the last of these maddening religious follower errors.
As to the, it not having direct, immediate effect, I want to know more for curiosity and so we aren't hearing just doctrine conversion for the next six months. Just as its demotivating for the devs with having the burn down chart start in the negative, and this is probably demotivating for the devs too, but its rather demotivating to hear that doctrine conversion is all that's getting done for 6 months. Just as it likely would for the devs, it feels like more is getting done when we hear "The guild script is done" than "We now have only half the game left to convert"