Does Transitioning Work?
Our experience certainly indicates that when you start out with a healthy organization and attempt to assimilate a new technology, transitioning developers works. In three sample mid-sized projects that we surveyed, more than 99% of developers successfully transitioned to their new roles. The remaining 10% were not necessarily bad developers; they just continued to be more comfortable and more productive working in their original environment. The survey results follow:
Project 1
- Application domain: Signal processing
- Project description: To implement a new set of signal-processing algorithms
- Total developers: 12
- Length of project: 11 months
- Number of developers with at least average C skills at start of project: 5
- After 2 months: 7
- After 4 months: 10
- After 11 months: 11
Project 2
- Application domain: Custom text search and decision support
- Project description: To re-architect a decision-support application from a client/server to a web-centric architecture while modifying/adding approximately 75% of the original functionality
- Length of project: 9 months
- Total developers: 20
- Number of developers with web-centric experience at start of project: 0
- Number of developers with at least average web-centric skills after 2 months: 5
- After 4 months: 15
- After 9 months: 18
Project 3
- Application domain: Manufacturing
- Project description: To re-architect an electronics manufacturer's mainframe scheduling and production planning application to a client/server architecture using a commercial ERP package, including new interfaces to other legacy systems
- Length of project: 15 months
- Total developers: 40
- Number of developers with client/server experience at start of project: 7
- Number of developers with at least average client/server skills after 2 months: 12
- After 4 months: 32
- After 9 months: 37