Trevor mentioned to me once he believes that Web Developers of today are like the masons of the medieval period. These people would work on different projects like houses, churches and castles. They all had different skills and were engaged as their skills were necessary. 

I believe that this resembles how the web is built today. We all work on projects together and bring expertise to the project.

Now the question is what do we call ourselves? The problem for me is that I often refer to all people involved in creating websites, so my sentences usually end up looking something like “I work with developers, designers, copy writers and marketing people.” There’s got to be a better way to refer to everyone together in a single word. 

The other thing that I think we should consider in choosing a word is the fact that there are 2 types of web people: employed and self-employed or freelancers. So it would be good to have 2 variations of this word that would communicate their employment status.

So if you have any ideas or suggestions,
I’m all ears.

I’m looking forward to your feedback. 

Here is a list of things that I would like to see this service do.

1. Easy to add and create development environments
2. Development environment must be pre configured for the type of development that is going to be done (this is important because Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress development is slightly different – same for most part, but Python is very different)
3. It must have an api that allows us to manage permissions on each individual development environment quickly and efficiently
4. It must be secure, giving access to source code only by people involved in the project
5. Must allow SSH access
6. Must use Public Keys for authentication to make authentication quicker and easier (this applies to both ssh and mysql)
7. Must replica-table on many different servers – this will allow us to create a grid of computers working together to server individual development environments

I am happy to report that Vitalik, a developer who I’ve been working with for a year and a half, has taken my responsibilities as a lead developer.

Basically, here is what we found.

Lead Developer is a person who keeps the project together and makes sure that everything is done in a complete deliverable form. It’s the person who will fix all of the little issues that will come up when a project is going through development. Also, a great Lead Developer know when to delegate elements of a project to other people.

In the past, I’ve found that I am often the road block in the progress of projects. This is because projects require my input to move them forward. This I think is a sign that I was a Lead Developer, who needed to delegate more. 

I am very relieved that this is actually happening now. Nothing is perfect but we’re definitely making steps in the right direction. 

How do all these roles separate and how do you associate tasks with roles?

For example, where does Project Architect stop, Project Manager being and Development Lead starts.

What is the responsibility that Project Manager has and how do we make it easy for Development Lead to do his work and not worry about anything extra?

What is extra for Development Lead?

hmm… so many questions.

Right now our process looks something like this.

1. Client Advisors works with client to determine client’s needs.
2. Client Advisor takes these needs to a Project Architect who is familiar with many different development tools and can advise on proper tool for the project based on price, time and resources available(this brings up a point, Project Architect does not know what resources are available because he/she is strictly technology… hmmm)

This puts a damper into my post.

The problem is that it appears that we can not seperate Project Architect from Project Manager from Development Lead, because Project Architect can suggest what technology to use based his/her oppinion of what will be best for this project.

I think I just found my answer I think the answer is the Abandance principle. We must assume that all skills are available inside of the cooperative.

Which means that any technology that Project Architect chooses for the project will be implementable by the Beecoop members.

What does this mean for the process?

This means that process flows in the following way:

1. Client Advisor works with client to determine needs
2. Client Advisor takes needs to Project Architect
3. Project Architect recommends a technology to use for the particular project, including the CMS, modules and other elements that might be necessary
4. Project Architect creates the project, indicates which skills are necessary for this project and either requests particular memebers to participate in this project or publicizes to Beecoop that these skills are necessary. People will fill in the roles and indicate the time necessary to fulfil their element of the project. (development lead is also selected based on the skills necessary for this project)
5. Project Architect assembles all the information from Developers and Development Lead and provides the information to Client Advisor
6. Project Architect works with Client Advisor to prepare a quote that includes, cost, time and technology
7. Client Advisor goes to client and presents the information
8. Client Advisor gets deposit and pays Project Architect for his/her role in building project requirements and costs
9. Client Advisor pays deposits to all developers and development lead and the development process begins

Not too shabby only 9 steps.

ok, this is a mind dump, so it’s not perfect. I’m looking forward to your feedback.