[LRUG] Freelancers pairing with existing developers on short term projects - this common?

[Brent Snook]

Hi Chris,

2009/8/6 Chris Adams <mail at chrisadams.me.uk>:
> Hi there,
>
> Is it unheard of for more experienced freelancers to be brought on for
> a few days to pair with less experienced in-house developers, working
> together to implement features, and transfer knowledge, instead of
> sending the less experienced developer off for sheep-dip style rails
> bootcamp training sessions?

Definitely not unheard of. The things you learn in a training course
will never stick as well as those you learn working one on one with
someone else.

The tricky thing is finding someone who has both the knowledge that
you want to seed among other developers and the skills to pair
effectively. Without the combination you run the risk of everyone
having a bad pairing experience.

A few days sounds like a very short amount of time to get the most out
of skills transfer through pairing. If you just have a specific
problem that you want to solve, a couple of days of their help might
get you over that hump but to learn a decent amount from your pair you
might need more time.

> I ask because I'm working in a very small team working on a rails
> based web app as the front end developer and community manager, with
> an embarrassingly small budget, and I'm looking for a more experienced
> developer to pair with for the next phase of development which is
> beyond my own skillset.
>
> I'm have enough experience with Rails to be happy implementing fairly
> simple features on apps, or using gems like hominid and paperclip, and
> I know enough on a command line to be fairly comfortable setting up
> linux virtual machines for running rails apps, but after losing
> depressing amounts of time hunting bugs introduced by stupid coding
> mistakes that would be caught by a second pair of eyes when pairing,
> or a well thought out test suite, I know that trying to maintain and
> develop a rails app further by myself is folly.

If you're talking about learning better test design and things that
help the long-term maintenance of your app then I'd definitely suggest
a bit longer than a few days.

It sounds like you need someone with three separate groups of skills;
rails, test design, pairing.

> In cases like this, would be the most cost-effective way to improve
> the quality of the code in the app, to allow for more sustainable
> development over the coming months?

Having someone pair with you to do this does sound like a good way to
go about it but it might take a bit of time. Like Luis suggested, you
need to know exactly what you want to get out of pairing and how much
the budget for your project will allow.

Brent.

> Thanks
>
> C
>
>
>
> --
> Chris Adams
> mob: 07974 368 229
> tel: 0207 558 8971
> skype: chris.d.adams
> twitter: chris_d_adams
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