[ruby-talk:10654] Re: How to convince management

Phil Tomson wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 
...
> 
> 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

What overwhelming positives are there for using Ruby? It seems to me that
   the negatives for any new language are easy to understand and sympathize
   with. Management doesn't have:
     (a) established procedures for evaluating quality;
     (b) established procedures for finding new talent;
     (c) established documentation standards; 
     (d) widely distributed knowledge of the language in the
         organization;
     (e) existing notions of how fast progress should be made in
         the new language;
     .... (the list goes on)

Against this you need to have something important on the positive side just
     to realistically get any consideration. No argument that `this is a little
     better than ...' is going to be worth much. Even if you think you are
     going to be able to save 50% in development costs (would that be
     realistic in your situation?) you probably will not get off the ground 
     as management (rightly, IMO) will (a) discount your estimate substantially
     (they have no experience to base a more optimistic view on); and (b)
     they will demand more than a 25% improvement just to be worth the effort
     of bringing in something new.

IME new languages only come into organizations when the case is _overwhelming_.
We successfully brought one new language into a large New York firm by
using the weekend that was supposed to be used to develop our proposal to
actually implement the system. Since previous efforts had taken >9 mos. and had,
in addition, failed, this got a lot of attention. And management, seeing a
9 month implementation drop to 3 days understood the economic consequences to
themselves immediately. We'd never have made it work if all we had to offer was
a proposal to implement in 5 months instead of 9.

If you want to bring new technology into an organization, you should recognize
that (a) that is the `cart leading the horse'; and (b) you should spend your
time looking for situations where your choice will simply overwhelm 
alternatives. Otherwise you are, IMO, destined to spend a lot of frustrating
time...