What can the Rails Maturity Model do for me?
Ever since the introduction of the idea of the Rails Maturity Model I find myself thinking about it and some questions come to mind;
- Why was the idea even conceived?
- Who is going to benefit?
- Who will care about it?
I don’t really know why I think about this idea at all. Maybe because I run a small Rails shop and I try to envision how my company might be part of it but there is not a single compelling reason at this point in time. I do respect Obie Fernandez for all he has done for Rails, the great book and all the times I have heard him speak and always take something away from each talk.
I have to admit HashRocket seems to be doing a great business in an economy that is less than stellar. The folks at HashRocket seem to really love to work there, so something is being done right.
So it comes back to my original three questions, the first being Why was the idea even conceived? I have looked over RailsMaturityModel.com and I can only seen companies who have jumped on the bandwagon and raising their hands to each practice they claim to follow. It is really by the honor system since there is no way to know each company actually does these things. Guess who is the first in each category…Hashrocket. This seems a bit too convenient to me.
Now looking at who will benefit, it is really unclear to me. If I was going to apply to a job with any of the companies on the web site I guess if Pair Programming is important to me then I can find out who follows the Pair Programming practice. For me it comes down to what benefit can I get out of being part of RMM. I can’t think of a single one. My clients won’t care. People looking to hire me will have never heard of RMM and won’t care that my company is on the list either.
The only folks who I have seen who remotely care about this publicly is Hashrocket. Even the companies on the bandwagon have not blogged (that I have seen) about how they feel about it. I would like to hear feedback from them.
I have however seen some feedback from companies who do NOT believe in RMM;
Both are interesting opinions on the subject and worth a read.
I wanted to get my thoughts out and finally put this behind me. I have thought more than my share about it and have to say it doesn’t seem to have any value to either my clients or future clients. I think my clients are the most telling of just how my consultancy stacks up against others by the value I add to their business. Not a single client of mine will care if I have consultants in the same room or across the planet nor do they care that I pair program.
It is interesting to look at the endorsements on the site, who appear to be either principals of the firms or buddies of the firms owners, employees or groupies. I did not see an endorsement from a professional client.
I think this is the last I have to say about RMM, oh except..I really hate the name. The whole RMM really has nothing to do with Rails or maturity. It is just a collection of practices determined to be useful by a bunch of consulting companies. These companies could be doing PHP or Python and use the same practices, so Rails should not be in there. Maturity…well, seems like the practices are really an evolution of practices used by past developers.
Maybe I just don’t get it. Enough said.