Every revolution needs a martyr (ALT.NET) Part 2

The first time I listened to Scott Bellware’s interview on the Alt.Net podcast #17 “The State of Alt.Net” I was a little off put by Scotts dissatisfaction with the community…

The Meeting

I walked into this so called “concerns” meeting with nothing but uncertainty. How would it all play out? Would I be challenged about the implementation? Would I be required to do "forms over data”? How would the vendor be considered in all of this? How would these decisions effect the project scope?

The one outcome I did not consider, nor did anyone who commented on the last post, is probably the saddest. Not caring. The the lead developer nor the highly touted (project manager) PM and my PM could give a carp less about the implementation.

The one outcome I did not consider, nor did anyone who commented on the last post, is probably the saddest.

I was not questioned about the implementation. The meeting revolved about two main points. First; would I be following our standards and how would using these principles effect the project.

Since, even though we have a committee, we have almost no-implementation principles I was able to answer Yes in regards to using our trivial “standards” and “framework”. Discussion of other projects never came up. I was not challenged; I was able to keep my mouth shut and keep my job.

My PM asked one very good question to which I tried to respond in a manner that would ignite the conversation. She asked if using these principals would make increase her projects timeline and/or make it harder to support. To which I responded something alone the lines of “I am trying to ensure maintainability and save project hours”. I guess if I was actively trying to get fired I could have said “I am trying to ensure this project does not end up like your projects” in reference to the other PMs projects. But that was not the goal; just the expected outcome.

The Outcome

I was instructed to make a list of 10 development “things” that we can tell the vendor about how to create the application. I actually think this will be very beneficial for this project and hopefully for this organization. If these 10 principles are followed and the project is successful it could go a long way.

New Thoughts

If developers don’t care the community effort is futile. As such I am beginning to think that its not the developers Alt.Net needs to reach but the managers, the C level individuals. Acting less like a gorilla movement and more like business.

I’m covered from head to two with Tattoos, I come in late and leave early. I ride a Harley and listen to large headphones all day long. I am far from the ideal person to make this suggestion. Also, I’m sure its not new…

Our industry is still young and our implementation and tooling is ever evolving. I think its fair to say that by using the best of what we have today that path to success (or failure) is shortened. I feel like; in either case ROI is something tangible that we can hang our hat on. From the methodologies to the tooling ROI can be found, documented and presented like a product.

The Future

The last few days have been very busy. I’ve been meeting with the vendor to architect the application. As expected we are very much on the same page. Since the development is going to happen offsite I wont be privy to most of the project management related goodness but here are the highlights.

1. Agile – Scrum
2. 3 Week Sprints
3. Sprint Planning Meetings (involved)
4. Weekly Code Review (involved)
5. OOP – Entities, Models, Services, Repositories, and more…
6. WCF Services – non-iis hosted
7. WCF Services – iis hosted
8. ASP.NET MVC
9. IoC/DI – Unity
10. Logging – Nlog
11. Validation – xVal
12. DAL – SubSonic

The next few days will be spend writing justifications documents for items 9-12. FAIL

Also, while the vendor can “do either” they are more conformatable with C#…but oddly enough we dictate VB. FAIL

I can’t write anymore; I’ve got justifications documents to write. FAIL

Related posts:

1. Every revolution needs a martyr (ALT.NET)