The Suits Can Learn a Lot From Web 2.0 Coders

3. Stick to the script.

Web 2.0 companies are partial to dynamic scripting languages like Ruby, Python, Perl and PHP, finding them better choices for their projects than Sun's Java or Microsoft's .Net.

Forrester's Hammond noted that once developers become proficient in one of the dynamic languages, they can build new applications quickly -- 30% to 40% faster than they could with Java or .Net.

More than half of all North American developers are using scripting languages to some degree, according to a December survey by Evans Data Corp. , a Santa Cruz, Calif., research firm.

While more than half of those developers now use scripts less than 20% of the time, both the total number of developers using scripting languages and the amount of time spent will likely increase over the next year, according to the Evans survey.

4. Release early and often.

Wesabe, like Flickr, updates its site often, usually several times a day. The constant interaction with users provides Wesabe developers with almost immediate notification of bugs, Hedlund noted.

In addition, Wesabe and many other Web 2.0 companies run so-called shadow versions of their sites, which help determine how users respond to specific feature updates. A report compiled by the shadow site could show, for example, how often users log off the site or whether the amount of financial information uploaded by users has dropped.

Recommended Reading Inc.'s Mixx.com social news site, which allows users to submit and rank news items, is also updated far more often than traditional IT applications -- about once every week or two, said CEO Chris McGill.

In fact, "long term" for Mixx means a product road map that stretches out only six months, said McGill, who founded the McLean, Va., firm in 2007 after stints as general manager of Yahoo News and vice president of strategy at Gannett Co.'s USA Today newspaper.

The Mixx.com development team, which meets daily to discuss the previous day's work, uses the Scrum agile development method.

5. Let the users, not the developers, determine new features.

Top Internet companies like Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc. release new features to small subsets of users and then compare their feedback to the experiences of control groups. The companies say the method provides much better validation for new features and products than customer surveys or even discussions between users and product managers.

Mixx.com hopes one day to follow the same process, McGill noted, adding that it has already moved to take advantage of a community formed by its users. Mixx uses the community as a "24/7 focus group" to bounce ideas off its members, he added.

Shifting Opinions

Although most large companies are unlikely to flock quickly to Web 2.0 development techniques -- and some applications would not be a good fit for this methodology, observers acknowledged -- some are starting to realize the merits of these new processes. That's the message of a July 1 survey of more than 1,300 developers that Glastonbury, Conn.-based TopCoder Inc. conducted for Computerworld .

In the survey of developers taking part in a recent TopCoder online coding competition, an overwhelmingly majority (70%) of the respondents said that traditional corporate development teams could benefit from Web 2.0 techniques, specifically the incremental feature releases, quick user feedback loops and quality assurance programs that include users.

What's more, 57% of the respondents said that problem-solving and analytical skills will be key requirements for next-generation developers, while 18% cited the need to work with online communities. Meanwhile, 24% said that code generation is the key long-range development skill.

Gribbons said that corporate use of application development 2.0 techniques -- especially the focus on the user -- could be critical to reducing the number of IT development projects that are scrapped before completion.

As he pointed out, "no other industry would accept a failure rate that we have in our industry."

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