A couple of Railsconfs ago, Courtenay and I did indeed discuss
certification and I advocated an organization to set guidelines for
what the characteristics and measurements that set apart a successful
and disciplined Rails shop apart from the unwashed masses. Rather than
trying to certify individuals (too easy to game!) I think it would be
useful to have a certification process for organizations that involved
an actual extensive interview process and audit of code and practices,
with associated scorecards and registration in some sort of official
directory. Yes, you would have to pay handsomely to get this
certification, and the result would not necessarily be what you
expect. The details for this is all very rough and frankly I don't
know the value of it, just an idea that's been in the back of my mind
for a long time so I'm putting it out there for debate.
The name and concept is somewhat influenced by CMM, which I suppose is
anathema to most Agilistas. I'm the first to admit that I don't know
much about CMM other than it provides a scoring system for
organizations.
In a Rails context, you would establish a scorecard that categorized
your shop on a scale of 0 to 3 (or whatever, just thinking out loud
here)
RMM0 "aka Cowboy level"
- No formal development process
- No test coverage
- No standardized business practices
- Static analysis failures
RMM1 and RMM2 would have to be something in-between. RMM1 is
considered negative. RMM2 is considered positive.
RMM3 "aka Master level" (Purposely exclusive territory here, I can
imagine that only a handful of shops in the world could achieve this
level!)
- Agile software development practices
- 100% test coverage WITH THE APPROPRIATE TYPES OF TESTS (For
instance, at Hashrocket lately we are doing much less unit testing at
the MVC level because automated acceptance and integration testing
with Cucumber is so powerful and effective.
- 100% pair-programming (muahaha)
- Formal and standardized business practices
- Institutionalized continuous learning and process improvement
- Positive customer testimonials
- Successful deployment of Rails application(s) with substantial scaling demands
Incidentally, I'm bringing this up for discussion, but I might be
interested in a joint-venture along these lines with an out of work
senior Rails developer that feels like taking the idea and running
with it. (Rick?) In fact I can envision the idea expanding to the
point where being a RMM auditor could be a profitable little part-time
gig for Rails freelancers with the right personality type and
enthusiasm.
Obie Fernandez
CEO & Founder | Hashrocket
904.435.1671 office
404.934.9201 mobile
Hashrocket, Inc.
320 N 1st Street
Suite 712
Jacksonville Beach, FL 32250
