Will Bridges

Here’s the thing with any given project. You must have a chain of command. Especially in large projects but even in projects with 3 or more people. Programmers have a tendency to keep talking about something till everyone is blue in the face. Discussion is good and a natural part of software development but someone has to be there to draw the line and say ‘no more, we need to build the software now’. It’s quite a difficult thing to do when you are a programmer yourself and you are attempting to find the best way to accomplish a goal. If you aren’t careful you can get caught up in it all. Nobody should ever take a project without first establishing roles and deciding what the chain of command is. Though it is important to listen to everyone involved and not marginalize anyone who may have an important view on the project it is equally important to actually do the work. Using Ruby on Rails as a platform means you can easily change any aspect that does not fit later in the project at little cost. Personally, I still like a good plan of attack but I’m not so concerned about the small details until I come upon them. This is agile development in my opinion. Every once and a while you will find an issue is larger than you first though. But, that is the cost of development sometimes and as long as you built with extensibility in mind changing something shouldn’t be that serious.

The main point here is if you are a contractor or run a contracting company always make sure your contract says who’s in charge, who’s responsibilities are what, and give your project a clear way to resolve arguments quickly if need be. Development should be democratic in planning but more of a monarchy with advisors during programming and it should never be a theocracy!