[consulting] Hiring People

Fri May 18 18:16:26 UTC 2007

This is a very interesting discussion.

On 5/18/07, Michael Haggerty <mhaggerty at trellon.com> wrote:
> Victor -
>
> To some extent, we do all of this already and use hybrid Agile development
> techniques in our approach to projects.
>
> The problem is, clients don't necessarily know what they want until they
> have it in their hands, no matter how much work is put into visualization
> and communication.

Well, that's it in a nutshell. But Agile development is an approach,
which means it stops being a technique "us techie guys" use... and
turns into a tool (I do have an agile process cck/views/etc mashup I
plan on releasing soon as a drupal distribution) to C A P T U R E
stuff in real-life prototypes the customer was not previously aware
of.

One customer hired us to do a Perl based head-hunter job resume web
app some years ago.

They asked us to revamp the app.

We went back and did business modeling with meme maps, had them
reading the Long Tail, etc., until they, the customers, formed part of
a team spec-ing out, planning, writing acceptance tests for and
testing an iterative process leading to a whole new constellation of
apps: an intranet (housing the workflow of the commercialization of
courses for businesses, and the job selection process itself) in sync
with three (yes, 3) web apps: one for the important content (including
premium content) the company wants to freebalize/preiumize; one for
professionals looking to blog-pimp their services (free PDF generation
of CV, free blog, free inclusion in job searches...); and one for
companies doing job searches, acquiring data (i.e., CV browsing, where
permission has been granted in exchange for free services benefitting
the author), and acquiring other services, and the housekeeping for
those services to be provided.

So, it's not a question of tacking on functionality to Drupal, it's a
question of getting the customer involved in the actual iterative and
incremental process itself (that's the Agile approach) and using a
framework such as Drupal to first prototype the functionality ("don't
know what they want until they see it") and then... hey, using a
framework such as Drupal to actually make that "prototype" (a)
production web app(s).

So, there's my excitement about this...

> And I am not talking about just the main points of
> contact on a project, I am talking about the executive sponsors and high
> level stakeholders who have their ideas about what the goals are. Sometimes
> the disconnect happens between people in the client organization, and I
> don't know of a process approach that is going to answer that kind of issue.
>

there you go: can't be any disconnect when the customer is driving the process!

> This kind of role would be a softer approach to handling the issues of goal
> setting and requirements gathering, and is really intended as a value-add to
> the range of services we already provide.

Hire the customer!!!

(of course you need to have people able to catalyze that... and that
is a second chapter of this how-to process)

saludos,

Victor Kane
http://awebfactory.com.ar

>
> Thank you,
> Michael Haggerty
> Managing Partner
> Trellon, LLC
> http://www.trellon.com
> (p) 301-577-6162
> (c) 240-643-6561
> (f) 413-691-9114
> (aim) haggerty321
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Victor Kane [mailto:victorkane at gmail.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2007 12:07 PM
> > To: mhaggerty at trellon.com; A list for Drupal consultants and Drupal
> > service/hosting providers
> > Subject: Re: [consulting] Hiring People
> >
> > Use the agile approach to software development and get the clients (or
> > someone from among them) to get creatively involved in the development
> > process, writing using stories, visualizing the business model and
> > where value can be added, writing test cases... then you may find that
> > you don't need this "expert strategist": you just need to listen to
> > your clients.
> >
> > Or... you need to have someone on your staff who does that, and forms
> > part of the development team.
> >
> > That's what I do.
> >
> > saludos,
> >
> > Victor Kane
> >
> > On 5/17/07, Michael Haggerty <mhaggerty at trellon.com> wrote:
> > > Trellon is growing and I am giving a lot more thought to how our team is
> > > composed. Something I want to do is hire an internet strategist. This
> > would
> > > not necessarily be a programmer, but someone who can really understand
> > the
> > > goals clients are looking to accomplish and advise them on the best ways
> > to
> > > get there. This person would craft strategy documents, review projects
> > under
> > > development to make sure they are really meeting the client's goals, and
> > > keep things organized outside just the production of a Web site.
> > >
> > > The problem is I don't really know how to recruit for this position. I
> > have
> > > spoken to people with a lot of experience in specific areas, but finding
> > > someone who is a generalist and knows enough about a lot of things seems
> > to
> > > be a tall order. It looks like this kind of work especially appeals to
> > > project managers, but it's not really a production role so much as a
> > client
> > > relations role. It's hard to convey the difference.
> > >
> > > Wondering if anyone on this list has any advice...
> > >
> > > Thank you,
> > > Michael Haggerty
> > > Managing Partner
> > > Trellon, LLC
> > > http://www.trellon.com
> > > (p) 301-577-6162
> > > (c) 240-643-6561
> > > (f) 413-691-9114
> > > (aim) haggerty321
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > consulting at drupal.org
> > > http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting
> > >
>
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