[consulting] Drupal Certification and Requirements

[paola.dimaio at gmail.com]

HI Liam

I think the skills validation idea may be serious, following whatever
approach suggested below is also an option (whatever works for you).
If someone could help me determine whether a developer has the best
possible skill to do the job, would save me money and time
because someone who knows their stuff can solve a problem real quickly,

>
>   1. Is this roughly the process you use for finding job candidates?

Nope- my IT skills are 'high level' (means I do not get anywhere near
implementation)
so I roughly outline the user functionality and coarse artchitectural
layout, then ask
around who could do it within my budget could they make of it - then
leave the rest to the devs

Being drupal developers on average a creative and adventurous bunch, I
have gone through an entire range of experiences

>From well wishers, students, would be coders, geeks from all walks of
life,  experienced programmers who want to charge me 60 dollars per
hour but cant tell me for sure how long its going to take them to do
the job, to people who give me unreasonable time estimates
and very few, only very few were capable of delivering the optimal
configuration within a time/money constraint: say, do the job within
2-3 days, which is what I calculate based on a rough function point
analysis type of estimate

I had to wait for 3 years to find someone who could migrate
content-wire,com and even then I took a leap. Really good consultants
were busy and only considered jobs r 3k up -
I had guys quoting me up to 22 thousand euros for the migration
(krreeeeeeiiiiks)
Friends who offered to do it for free but that could not work within
my time frame requirements
all sorts.

 I am lucky to have found a consultant who did the job well enough,
but I still have no way of knowing if we have the optimal
configuration and if everything is installed properly, just that they
did their best, the site is up and good enough, and have been always
prompt and professional in their work.

Note: I am not talking much new development! Just roll out a decent
drupal website with minimal customization and ad hoc config, which
should be doable within 6-8 hours of work at the most.

>   2. Does it work well?
Well - its very time consuming and risky, but I think a more standard
process can be evolved from that - maybe as a combination of the
proposed approaches


>   3. Would it really help if someone did it for you?
Yes! If you provide me a drupal geek validation service, I ll pay you a fee
to help me select the right geek for the job

Note: the right geek for the job for me is one that can work with me
on messenger, charges me a honest fee (say, not more than what I earn
per hour/day working as a lecturer) and that can set up a website in
the fastes possible way, abides to good coding and development
practices, and that does not get annoyed when I ask for tweaks and
improvements before writing off the task, etc -

>

> Catching cheats (if the tasks were standard) would mostly consist of a
> Google search, agreed that this wouldn't catch all of them though.

funny enough, I dont care about cheats at all - I have come across
guys who said they were cheating by scraping the code from somewhere
else. so what? as long as they acnowledge it, isnt this what os is
about? 'reuse'?
but still they need to be able to personalise whatever they scrape
elsewhere - and to bend it to fit the spec/requirement

I have come across very good geeks who did not have the faintest idea
about how to work
following even the remotest software engineering practice, and got all
upset when I asked them to  make well sure they tested their work
themselves  before getting me to check it out

I had to to find all the obvious bugs myself very often, cause the
devs felt that their job was to roll out the code, not to test it
(whoa)


> Perhaps the best route is somewhere in-between standard tasks and
> contributions; some selection on the bug form to include it as a
> 'certification task', and a list of Drupal concepts involved in
> completing it. Then a View where examinees can select tasks to pick-up
> and complete.

whatever - it would be nice to be left in the cold when we need to
find a developer
and/or not to have to committ to a full time job or a get a bank loan
to set up a drupal website

next best thing would be learn it myself, but that would be even more
risky in my case
:-)

what about some basic drupal  development training for non geeks? I ll
take that course
>


-- 
Paola Di Maio
School of IT
www.mfu.ac.th
*********************************************