When a company project team has to deliver an application, with the help of a Plone consultant (or consulting company), they generally have two possible paths to follow: 1) get the Plone expert to do the job for them, and then deliver some knowledge transfer, or 2) get enough training to help them get started in the Plone world and then continue with their own in-house learning and development process. Sometimes, none of both approaches (outsourced or in-house) is adapted to the constraints and deadlines of the project. A third way of doing, somewhere in between, exists. We call it "coaching-based development", and we have been using it with great success ! I will present a real case where I worked with the project team of HEP Bejune (a Swiss Education Institution) to help them with the development of an Education e-Portfolio application. Attendees of this talk will learn how to get more productive with this way of working, lessons we learned from practicing it, and how, as an additional benefit, it can be used to strengthen our community.
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Kamon Ayeva The Platform, The Framework And The Coach How The Right Trio Helps For Application Fast Time To Market
1. The platform, the framework and
the coach
Coaching for in-house application developments
The case of ”HEP-Bejune Portfolio”
Kamon AYEVA
Ingeniweb
2. Introduction
Kamon AYEVA
Custom development & Training @ Ingeniweb
3. Let's start with the most
important question !
What do our clients want ?
Solutions (Not Technology)
CMS and/or web-based apps that deliver service to
employees/partners/customers.
You may replace ”clients” by ”users”
5. Approach A : Outsource
Hire Plone consultants to deliver the complete
solution ; very common.
Also : They don't want to ”enter” in the technology.
6. Approach B : Get training
Train the developers that will deliver/maintain
the applications on top of Plone ; frequent.
7. Approach C : Flexibility
A mix of A and B generally occurs after 1 or 2
successful project(s).
8. Good news, all this works !
Clients find
Experts that understand their problem domains, and
deliver the customized solution.
A helpful community : 3rd-party modules,
documentation, mailing lists, books.
Good training offering.
9. But there is a flaw...
Isolation : We (Solution Providers) are
perceived as ”the only experts” that understand
the technology.
As a consequence, the day it does not work as
expected, disappointed users could simply
switch to the competition.
10. It's important to solve this...
... because we have big plans for the ”web-
based applications” industry.
11. Plone's ambition
Be at the core of every major intranet or
collaborative site... and beyond.
12. IMHO, 3 efforts
Simplify the technology
Spread the technology
Help the company's team adopt the technology
13. #1 : Simplify the technology
It's getting better : See Plone 3 !
Modular
”Batteries included”
Settings : Sensible defaults + configlets for easy
changes.
14. #2 : Spread the technology
It's on its way : The community is alive !
15. #3 : Help the team adopt the
technology
Help companies get their staff more involved.
IMO, the best way to do that is through
”Coaching” !
16. Value of coaching – for the client
Interaction with someone that has a good
knowledge of the platform's internals.
He is a member of the community.
He is ”engagé” in the project.
17. Value of coaching – for the
provider
Better understanding of what users want...
More opportunities for those ”AHAH” moments
A more exciting way to transfer knowledge
18. We are doing it !
HEP-Bejune
A regional education center for trainers : ”Hautes
Etudes Pedagogiques”
A project to build their new website
20. What HEP-Bejune got right !
If you know how to use the power in Plone, you
can win big !
There are many possibilities beyond basic
content management.
Getting trained soon in the course of the project
helps avoid many traps.
21. History
Internet site project (Plone 2.1 + AT-based
custom content types + CMFPlacefulWorkflow
& GrufSpaces...)
A first training for integrators, in the middle of the
project.
22. Our coaching experience
Development of an add-on to be integrated in
the website : HEPB Portfolio
A first 2-day session on-site : specify + develop a
prototype
2 x ”2-day virtual sessions” (using Subversion +
email + phone)
Ping/pong between the coach and the developers with
code changes.
Help with improvements / quality / bugs.
Along the way, the coach explains the
techniques/tricks used in the code.
23. Démo of the application
Some code snippets...
Let's see it in action !
24. Lessons learned
Build a ”team” (possibly virtual).
Prepare coaching sessions up front (using a
wiki or other specifications tool).
Choose realistic objectives.
Generally 4/5 days.
Use the first day for a general introduction to the
framework, APIs, and the development tools.
Use Subversion for better collaboration on the
code.
25. How I will do it next time
Methodology
Scrum ?
”Getting Things Done” (productivity methodology) ?
Framework & librairies
New generation ”content types” techniques.
Grok ?
