RailsConf Panel: Thoughtworks on Rails with. Obie Fernandez

“Obie Fernandez”:http://obiefernandez.com

!http://static.flickr.com/45/173799903_3497482c2a_m.jpg!:http://flickr.com/photos/kastner/173799903/

h3. What is Thoughtworks

A large “Enterprise” (700+) that does consulting on large projects

Roy’s Social Experiement
* Employ high level talent
* Grow a large org without hierarchy
* Give people info

Cast of characters (Some thoughtworks employees)
* “Martin Fowler”:http://www.martinfowler.com/
* Aslak Hellesoy
* Jon Tirsen
* Neal Ford
* Jay Fields
* Michael Schubert
* Kent Spillner
* Carlos Villela
* “Obie Fernandez”:http://www.jroller.com/page/obie

h3. First Project - ThoughtWorks Interactive eXchange (TWIX)

It’s major function was to get people in ThoughtWorks excited about Rails. Never really finished.
A social network with tagging where you can enter your interests and it would match you up with like-minded people also inside the company

They met with DHH because of the app, and they asked him what he really wanted, his response: “I want to change the world” - This got TW very excited about rails in general

h3. The Deere Project (The tractor folks)

Proof of concept site for supply-chain. In 6-weeks in Java. At some point, Obie saw an opportunity to use rails in the project. Obie ended up writing a totally separate part of the project (not even their work) in rails. It ended up making test data for their other project (the Java one). This turned into another project because he heard someone say “Yea, that’s neat, but what we really need is THIS” Those are magic words.

h3. The Deere COA project

They used task-modeling and paper prototyping and Task modeling.
Figure out who the users are, and what “tasks” they need to accomplish.
They had a Deere memeber on their team - what a cool idea.

h3. Wotif

“wotif.com”:http://www.wotif.com - an aussie-based travel site
A RoR site that is a hybrid J2EE - Rails app.
Don’t use rxml and AR when you have a lot of data flowing in. It’s too much of a hit (I’ve seen this myself).

h3. Kiosk App to count money

Instead of a Flash front end with a java backend, they used RoR with script.aculo.us. Instead of writing the interface to the usb coin-counter in C, they used ruby. It gave them the agility to explore more options. 1:1.1 test ratio.

h3. PCS Project (He can talk about this one the most)

Started in Chicago in Feburary 2006. Then kicked off in Delaware.
Blog about your work!

h3. Other TW Side projects / ex-TWers

* Stockhive by Yogi in India (uses ploticus)
* Revoo by “Ben Griffiths”:http://www.reevoo.com/blogs/bengriffiths/ (thanks for the correction ben!)
* Squisher Kurt Scharader

Links:
* “thoughtworks.com”:http://thoughtworks.com
* “blogs.thoughtworks.com”:http://thoughtworks.com
* “obiefernandez.com”:http://obiefernandez.com
* “jayfields.com”:http://jayfields.com