[thelist] developer ethics?

[Luther, Ron]

Hi Jay,


Interesting stuff again - as usual!   ;-)

A note or two:

<snip from Jay>
This is some of what we were getting into last week when I posted the
testing of web development candidates. This may apply to consulting firms as
well. Why not test them?
</snip>


(1) I agree with you 100% -- Consultants should most definately be 'tested' and 'evaluated'.  {Some also deserve to be whipped and flogged - but we won't go there.}

I used to be in a position to hire statistical fieldwork companies.  I won't kid you - it was a tough sell initially - but once I had some files to show folks ... vendor evaluation and testing eventually became an embedded business process.  I made on-site visits to my 'potential vendors'. Some during work hours - some after hours. (Stat folks are kinda odd like that!) I wrote up and filed my impressions.  I developed a list of questions I asked them - and things I wanted to see at their site.  I also eventually got my organization to set aside a day every 4 or 6 months and have half a dozen folks we hadn't done business with come in and give their 'pitch'.  I didn't get any travel out of it -- but I did get to extend my normal travels - so I would have time to scope out vendors wherever I happened to be at the time as well.

I think much of that kind of effort would be extensible to evaluating 'web vendors'.  What tools are they using?  Do they have checklists?  What is the environment like?  You don't have to be confrontational - you DO have to be observant - and ask a lot of questions.  {e.g. What kind of notes would you write down after touring a 'testing area' and finding everyone there using IE6 and giving you blank stares for asking about Lynx or Mozilla?}

[Bzzzt!  Wrong! - that *might* not be a bad thing.  Especially if you get an Intranet project in the future that uses that set-up.  The idea here isn't so much to find that ONE BEST vendor that's going to get all of your work --- it's to understand the capabilities (and price ranges) of all the vendors you have available to you and recognize where and when you might throw a project to any one of them.  It's comparison shopping!]


<'nuther snip from Jay>
Based on what I have seen lately the web development profession has reached
a crossroads. They question is...what are we as a group prepared to do?
Should we provide a testing service? Should we set some pricing guidelines?
Should we provide certification that could come to be recognized as the holy
grail in this business?
</snip>

(2) 'Us' as an industry? Or 'Us' as in evolt?  As an industry I think there is some progress being made. There are some [independent?] evaluation things like Brainbench that probably aren't very widely recognized.  There are also some 'vendor certification' routes through Oracle and MS - to name two.   There is also a US gubmint effort, (Gee - I get to pimp something I wrote! w00t!), with results forthcoming in a few months:
http://members.evolt.org/ronl/Junk/Overview.html

I think the 'evolt certification' was brought up recently on 'theforum' as a potential fund raiser ... but I don't think it has any legs at the moment.  Want a kind of lame hand to help work on it?


RonL.