Yeah, checking in would have been good - but I was only asked to design the specs, and then the project was handed off to some others. Then the project came back to me later.. but yeah, totally agree on that point. Thanks great responses everyone. I haven't outsourced much work - only a few projects, I'm used to making Flash apps that make sense on the front end and behind the scenes. :)
Jason Merrill Bank of America Instructional Technology & Media · GCIB & Staff Support L&LD Interested in Flash Platform technologies? Join the Bank of America Flash Platform Developer Community Interested in innovative ideas in Learning? Check out the Innovative Learning Blog and subscribe. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve Mathews Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 12:34 PM To: Flash Coders List Subject: Re: [Flashcoders] FW: [Flash_Tiger] Outsourcing and Actionscript specs It sounds like this was a situation where you just passed off a project and got the result in the end. My experiences have taught me to make sure to do reviews often and recommend changes early. I think there are several issues that cause these kinds of problems (language, education and styles to name a few), and other than "hand-holding" there isn't very much you can do. Steve Mathews Sr. Technical Lead Flypaper Studio On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 8:50 AM, Merrill, Jason < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm going to throw a question out there to see if anyone has experienced > something similar to this. Didn't get any responses on Flash_Tiger. > > If you have ever outsourced some Actionscript work to an outside vendor, > have you ever struggled with how to spec out how you want them to code > it? > > Reason I ask is we've had bad experiences with some vendors in India in > the past producing poor Flash/Actionscript sourcecode (we require them > to provide sourcecode in the contract, so if need be, we can tweak minor > things later). We've had better luck with U.S. vendors (nothing against > India or Indians at all, that's just been our experience). So we > decided to spec out how we would like them to code it (in general, not > extremely specific - for example, use AS3, use external classes, comment > the code, if they use a framework, tell us what it is, etc.). So the > new vendor we used in India did all this (did a pretty good job with the > final product), - they complied with our specs just fine, but they went > overboard in the coding in my opinion. They over-coded by making the > sourcecode EXTREMELY abstract, it was nearly impossible from looking at > it to determine where to make minor tweaks. There is virtually no way to > tell where to make a change, or what the change should be. They DID > comment their code, but it's at the function-level - not at the bigger > overall picture on how everything fits together. > > It's not a matter of being able to understand the code, I humbly > consider myself a semi-near-expert (not a guru, but certainly no where > near a novice) in Actionscript. The problem is figuring out how all the > classes tie together to make what you see on the screen. I could figure > it out, but it could take a very long time, and would require a lot of > diagramming to map everything out. So instead we are having to go BACK > to this vendor to have them make the change. I don't know if they > over-coded because they thought that is what we wanted, that's the only > way they knew how to tackle the project, or if they did it to ensure if > there were ever any updates, only they would make the changes, thus > ensuring future work (if so, pretty smart, but sneaky, which angers me). > > Anyway, that's the story, my general question is how do you define specs > for a vendor to ensure you get good sourcecode back, but it's not overly > abstracted, over-coded work? > > Jason Merrill > Bank of America Instructional Technology & Media * GCIB & Staff > Support L&LD > > > > _______________________________________________ > Flashcoders mailing list > Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com > http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders > _______________________________________________ Flashcoders mailing list Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders _______________________________________________ Flashcoders mailing list Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders
