Send them to the Philly Emerging Tech conference in two weeks - I'm giving a talk on the management track about the glorious benefits of managing/automating parts of your development process with Maven.
http://www.phillyemergingtech.com/schedule.php Eric On 3/18/07, Adam Hardy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Jerome Lacoste on 18/03/07 19:13, wrote: > On 3/18/07, Adam Hardy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> I want the software house where I work to go to the next level with maven >> from where we are at the moment, which is a case of gross >> under-utilisation. We use maven as a glorified ant script to run tests and >> build jars. >> >> There are several other projects in-house which have not been mavenised but >> could be, there is a great opportunity to implement maven's release cycle >> management, and the need for configuration, filtering and profiles is huge. >> >> >> No-one on the project management side though has much interest in all the >> reports, the QA, test coverage, continuous integration or release >> management. I have a meeting with a chief PM lined up and I have to present >> hard data in terms of developer-days saved if we put maven into place. >> >> What is the best way to nail down potential future gains from mavenization >> into easily grasped cost savings? Are there any good stories out there on >> this sort of stuff? Does anyone have some experiences they would like to >> share in this area? > > > Introducing a new technology will always incur a cost. And resistance to > change. So focus on the maven benefits and on the strategy to make these > changes happen. > > Maybe can you start moving all projects to maven then improve your use of > maven. Or maybe you should start. Probably a mix of both. > > * on projects not using maven. Compare them to those using maven. If maven > is already helping, and people in the team already recognize the benefits, > then this case is easier to argue. Further, you reduce the amount of > technology used across projects making it easier to move people around (or > when you take in new employees), or have site technology champions. Try to > first migrate the projects which are related to the ones that already use > maven (maybe because they use similar, or they share a pool of developers, > or are on the same network and share the same development server). > > * on projects already using maven, you identify the gap doing 2 things: > ** for each plugin listed under maven.apache.org and mojo.codehaus.org, see > if you're using it. If not, estimate what would be the cost of introducing > it, how often you would use it and what it would bring. Select the 4-5 most > relevant plugins. I guess the release one should happen there. > ** look at your process, and identify areas where automation/uniformisation > would help. The plugin might exist, but it may not. Where do people make > recurrent costly errors (during development/deployment/maintainance/...)? > Can those be detected ? Think how you could make this part of the build. > > * identify one project and start adding the things yourself. Don't start > with a too big of a project. Do this on your own time if you don't get > approval. Make it in a branch if necessary. After some weeks, compare the > before & after states. Be objective. Still for each costs look if these > costs would go down if you were to share them across projects. If the boss > is not happy for you to taking initiative, consider that you at least > improved your own knowledge. > > * Look at indirect savings. Do they have problem to hire the right people ? > Do people leave because they feel they don't learn new things? Is the > motivation low because of problems that this change could address (at least > in part)? Etc... > > > 3 last things: > * identify the right people to convince. Sometime to convince your boss you > have to convince the right coworker. Or a respected person in your company > * know the person you are talking to and identify the words he wants to > hear. > * be patient. > > Hope that helped. And come back with a summary of how it went ! All very salient, thanks alot. I'll definitely let you know how it goes - although I think it may be easy to get agreement, but more difficult to get any action! Prioritisation is always on new functionality here - the stuff that brings the bucks in (rather than the stuff where the bucks get spent again!) Thanks Adam --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- Eric Redmond http://codehaus.org/~eredmond
