We’ve found that looking for parallels between web development and other industries can be a great way to clarify our processes or best practices. We create websites; tradespeople create buildings. In either case experience, skills, tools, and raw materials are used to build something that meets certain needs. So what can we learn from the trades?

One key to success as a tradesperson is choosing the right tools and building a standard toolbox. Expert carpenters have well-worn hammers, saws, and drills in their toolbox. Ours just happen to be code snippets, libraries, and software packages instead of hammers, saws, and drills.

Working with the same tools and building mastery with those over time allows us to:

• Implement and build sites efficiently.
• Predict potential problems and know the solutions to mitigate those problems in advance.
• Manage sites in a more standard manner.
• Develop in-house expertise that’s easy to replicate on future projects.

Just as a carpenter wouldn’t buy a new saw every time he cuts a piece of wood there isn’t a good reason to arbitrarily change our software toolbox. We consider changes if the needs of a project won’t be met well with our standard tools. Typically these cases involve:

• Technical requirements our standard tools don’t meet.
• Availability of a new tool that’s substantially better than what we’ve been using (cheaper, faster, better).

The key for us is working to attain mastery with our standard tools. We’re proud of our work and understand that it reflects who we are, so we strive to do the best job we can on each site we build. Knowing our tools and using them to the fullest is one way we realize this goal.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 7:20 pm and is filed under Development, Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.