A few months ago, Lewis & I attended a training course and got into a discussion with the other delegates and course instructor about the development tools and methods we use in our day-to-day work. Up until this point we had all assumed that we, as web developers, tended to use the same things to help us build and manage our products, but quickly discovered that this was not the case.
Are we that different?
The diversity of tools and methodologies may stem from our own unique role within Shropshire Council (and Local Government in general).
We have a variety of different sub-sites and applications making up the shropshire.gov.uk site (and affiliated services) that we are expected to quickly learn, develop and administrate - quite often with a limited, or non-existent, budget for training. This can mean that our days can range from either putting together a new theme for a WordPress site, to writing LotusScript to support our creaky old CMS, or building our new site in Umbraco from scratch.
In comparison, the other delegates on the course had more rigidly defined roles within their own organisations with tighter focus on one or more products. In those situations, the existing tools and passed-on knowledge were sufficient enough for them to achieve their goals, with a training course supplied if and when they were expected to support something new.
That's not to say they were apathetic about how they did things, but rather they didn't have the time, resources, or business case to explore different options within the tight deadlines of their projects.
The training session exposed us all to new ways of thinking about the way we work, and we all found ourselves sharing tips & tricks, suggesting alternative open source/free software tools and useful blogs, including Project WIP itself.
Social media is changing the way we work
To add another spin to this, Chris Jones, Louise Tierney and myself attended the Digital Futures 2012 event at the Theatre Severn in Shrewsbury. The interesting and entertaining sessions given by the speakers provoked a lot of food for thought when it comes to considering how digital and social media is changing the way people work. Some of the points raised reinforced our own current work practises and lent weight to ideas we want to explore, but mostly showed us that we still have a lot to learn.
Failure shouldn't be something to be ashamed of
Similarly, when I attended The Theory of (Re)volution 2012 event, along with Chris and Lewis (and old Project WIP members Martin Wright and Chris Ellis) the creators of the recently decommissioned Workfu, Neil Kinnish and Mike Kus, explained how things are different again when going it alone.
The freedom of putting together your own company, along with the opportunities it brings does not always result in a successful product, no matter how good it may seem at the time.
The fact that their presentation was about how Workfu failed, and how they were able to take away a lot of good things they learned over the lifetime of its development was inspiring.
There is always something to learn from someone else's point of view
Ultimately, we have come out of that training course and the web conferences we've attended with more than knowledge about ASP.NET and development best practises, and what's more, know a little bit more about the trials and tribulations faced by our fellow web designers/developers in other public and private sector organisations.
Likewise, we are constantly striving to be more open during our development processes. After all, how can we be sure we are giving our customers what they want unless we get their opinions and try to see things from their point of view?