[ruby-talk:10619] How to convince management

I wrote a project proposal for an upcoming project and I proposed that we 
use Ruby for it.  In the project planning meeting the proposal to use Ruby 
was strongly opposed by management types - "We use C++ and Perl for 
projects here and that's it!  This project will be done in Perl!".  I 
managed to get them to at least let me schedule a future meeting where I 
will present the case for using Ruby.

Background - This is an internal application for distributing testcases to 
several client machines on a network.  Results from running testcases need 
to be gathered from client machines and results posted on an internal 
website that must be updated as tests are run.  To me it seems a natural 
dRuby application - objects running on remote machines which take care of 
running testcases as they come in from a central server.  Other objects 
taking care of 'harvesting' results data and sending it to the web server.  
Currently we use Perl for a similar system that is not distributed (it has 
just a single client and a single server) hence the push for continuing to 
user Perl.

Managment is understandably suspicious of using Ruby - they've never heard 
of it before and they don't know if it is stable.  They say there is no 
in-house Ruby expertise (actually only myself and one other programmer 
would be working on the system and I don't think it would be difficult to 
transition from Perl to Ruby for either of us).

Has anyone else out there faced a similar situation and succeeded in 
convincing management?  Does anyone out there have success stories about 
using Ruby for fairly largescale projects that I can show to my 
management?

Thanks.

Phil