Tony Lepage

Me: “I can dedicate two hours a day for eight days to have it completed.”

[Great! This way I can work on my other tasks and have time at night to work if the project is harder than expected.]

Manager: “If my math serves me correctly, two times eight is sixteen. That’s two days, we need you to work on this primarily because the application and related documents need to be packaged on Friday.”

Manager: “Can you have the app completed for Wednesday. Are your estimates correct?”

[Doh!]

Me: “Yes.”

[What is wrong with me?!]

I just learned my first lesson as an IBMer. When you give an estimate, be sure to leave a comfort zone so that if anything unexpected arises, you’ll have time to deal with it. No one knows how fast I can perform, so leave some extra safety padding!

What exactly do I have to do? Well, our team creates courseware for the training clients. All of the courses we have need to be updated for the new version of our software. The first on our priority list is a course directed at the business thinkers. This course needs some serious revamping. As it stands, students will have to install some software in order to use it. This brings up all kinds of problems because this audience will have little or no experience doing this type of work—and it shouldn’t be necessary.

Because our software is middleware (well, not exactly), there are plans to create an interface available through the internet. This is perfect because users will only need to have an up to date browser installed on their machine to take part in the course. This also helps us avoid a pile of licensing issues and installation headaches.

I volunteered to create a Ruby on Rails interface and woo everyone with its splendor, elegance and functionality. The problem is I have no experience integrating RoR with enterprise applications. It’s taken me a long time just figuring out where to start. I’m also quite new to RoR AND J2EE! My biggest hurdle is making the RoR communicate with an EJB, or Session Bean. Once that is done, the joy of RoR will allow me to add all my functionality with ease.

Because I will be creating courseware on a daily basis, I will also post a tutorial because I don’t think there is a single resource on the internet dealing with this task.

Hopefully I can develop this as I am envisioning because it will do wonders for my reputation.