- This is great stuff, but what does this have to do with Rails?
- First of all, thanks! Glad you like it. To answer your question, we'll point out something that you may or may not have considered before. A lot of what makes the Rails community special might not have that much to do with Rails technology itself. We could be right about that, or we could be wrong. Either way, we're interested in finding out about the practices of the Rails community and don't really care about other communities.
- Why are you trying to tell the Rails community how they should operate?
- Whoa, hold on a second. We're really sorry that we gave you the impression that this site is prescriptive. It's really not meant to be that way at all. If you go to the Practices page and look carefully, you'll notice that a lot of the practices contradict each other. That's because we want you to pick and choose from among the practices ala carte! When you add your firm, you're only supposed to add practices that you seriously implement and consider part of your recipe for success. Trying to do them all would be like going to a restaurant and ordering every single dish on the menu.
- Are you trying to setup a certification scheme?
- The short answer is no. The longer answer is that at Hashrocket, we've succeeded by doing things in one particular way, and other firms achieve success in their own ways. We're curious how they operate and this site is the first step toward a good-natured study of the success of firms and their processes. We believe that the site can function as an introspective tool for the community to better understand itself. We hope that in time, the practices documented here can help new and/or struggling Rails organizations to emulate their successful peers.
- Why stick with the controversial name? Why not call it RailsBestPractices?
- For one, the controversial name is undeniably catchy. It drew attention and Obie feels that the P.T. Barnum's "all publicity is good publicity" rule applies to such things. Secondly, we're not trying to cast judgment on any of the firms or practices. Each has their context and to try to claim that any particular practice is "best" universally is unacceptable. We are striving to create an environment where practices can be examined and studied in context and with supporting information, which is where the implementation details and endorsements become useful.
- But seriously, how can you call this a "Maturity Model"?
- Perhaps it should have been called RailsMaturityModels (plural), since we are not trying to define one model to rule them all, so-to-speak. Every successful operation creates a "maturity model" for itself, comprised of its own practices and attitudes towards continuous change and evolution. This site aims to give the community a rich picture of the "maturity models" that are out there, to serve as a reference for other firms, clients and casual observers.
- So are Hashrocket's practices always going to be at the top?
- We don't see that happening as more firms are listed. Ranking is determined by popularity of a particular practice, which is in turn driven by the community. For example, Hashrocket practices pair programming, which is far from universally accepted.
- Is this a commercial venture?
- We have plans to support the site financially via ad revenue and sponsors. Explicitly not planned are any sort of auditing or certification schemes based on the data collected.
- Why is the site in ALPHA stage?
- Since this is a data-driven site, we have a so-called "chicken and egg" problem at the beginning, where there isn't much to look at, since there aren't many members yet. However, we had to soft-launch into production in order to seed the site with data from our initial set of member firms and people. Sometime during Railsconf 2009 we will switch to BETA and begin to publicize the site to the greater Rails community.
- How did this come about?
- In a lengthy discussion on the Ruby on Rails meets the business world Google Group, Obie Fernandez started a discussion regarding the concept of a Rails certification for organizations instead of individuals. That discussion, distilled by many public conversations on sites all over the Internet, became the impetus for the site you're looking at now. If all you read was the first email message of that very long discussion thread, you might get the erroneous idea that Obie is trying to setup a certification program. You'd be wrong.
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- Bakedweb was endorsed by Igor Guerrero about 1 month ago
- VinSol was endorsed by Ritu Kamthan 2 months ago
- Honk joined the site 3 months ago
Site News
Sneak peak: Obie's going to be talking about RMM at Aloha on Rails. Development of the site is on hold, but the concept lives on.
Tweeted 6 months ago by railsmaturity