(5.76)
Salesforce Developer Training: Good News / Bad News
No Code Solutions, Serious Cloud-Based Software
Capabilities Growing Every Month
Low Barriers to Entry for Developers, Techno-Advocates Create Rapid
Initial Progress but Big Trouble Down the Line
Charles Koch: “Conventional IT Might Be State of the Art, but it is Frequently Not
Profitable. Business Does Not Understand Well Enough to Challenge.”
Anti-Simplicity Strategy by Vendors: Acquisition of Dozens of Software
Companies Result in Layer Upon Layer of “New Stuff to Hype”
Technology Churn: Software Vendor Strategy of “Just Bolt on Acquired
Package” Creates Staggering Complexity and Costs for Customers
Hype, Buzzword, Fragmented Special Knowledge
Resulting in Complexity Beyond Belief
Solutions: Cost/Benefit Triage More Critical Every Month Because of True 5 Year Costs
If You Cannot Complete a Solution with No Code –
Triple Expected Cost of Development and Maintenance
A CRITICAL UNDERLYING CAUSE OF BUSINESS FINANCIAL NON-PERFORMANCE:
Failing to Understand, Control, Account for Full Systems Cost of Executing Strategy
Solutions: Margin, Margin, Margin!
Must Have Enough Profit / Payback on Projects to Account For True Costs and Risks
Solutions: Illustrates Why The “Project Engineer In Charge” With Authority To Match Responsibility Is
The Norm In Successful Model In Project Driven Industries
By Tom Ingram, 10/14/2020
Prediction: Public companies will mature toward government model of outsourcing everything, need to increase skills at oversight of technical projects. Texas Instruments and Other Defense Contractors Pioneered these concepts. I was lucky - got to learn from the best.
During the Covid-19 crisis of 2020 I decided to use the spare time to earn a Salesforce Platform Developer 1 certification. I spent 300+ hours studying, including a course from Salesforce and took the test twice. I failed on the second try by one point – but learned a great deal. The following lessons emerged.
Charles Koch’s Book Good Profit, Page 155. Koch's take on IT: “Conventional IT might be state of the art but it is frequently not profitable. Business does not understand well enough to challenge.”
Link to Visio of Salesforce Complexity Model:
Negatives:
1) DISCIPLINES, PROFESSIONAL SKILLS NEEDED FOR SERIOUS CUSTOM DEVELOPMENT:
a) The developer course went from original 120+ attendees down to 60 after 6 weeks. MANY DO NOT HAVE THE PATIENCE, EXPERIENCE OR PROFESSIONAL DISCIPLINES NEEDED FOR SERIOUS CUSTOM DEVELOPMENT.
2) BUZZWORDS, HYPE, FRAGMENTED KNOWLEDGE, TECHNOLOGY CHURN BEYOND BELIEF.
a) My favorite was “Component Event Propagation in capture and bubble phases”
3) FUELING COMPLEXITY:
a) No effort to streamline, consolidate, build on known concepts
4) PERSONAL AGENDAS SERVED AHEAD OF COMPANY / CUSTOMER INTERESTS.
a) Seeing a big personal incentive to “know something valuable that somebody else does not know”
5) DEVELOPMENT TOOLS, ENVIRONMENTS, BEHAVIOR CONTINUALLY CHANGED, DOCUMENTATION OUT OF DATE.
a) I was usually able to figure it out but significant time waste.
6) Development Independent Developer Environments (IDE): Mind boggling mix of freeware. VS Code, SFDX Command Line, Git, Github, Multiple others to do anything practical. Buggy, difficult to operate. $100 or so buys decent to good IDE packages but extreme complexity, learning curve. Welkin IDE might be reasonable.
7) Flows: Continually changing, training lessons poorly done, time wasters, may be future direction but stability, reliability in question.
8) Magnitude of things that can go wrong.
9) Super low barrier to entry allows novices to create custom code that works initially, but will blow up.
10) Technical churn – staggering. FOR SOFTWARE VENDORS: “JUST BOLT ON ACQUIRED PACKAGE” PRODUCES STAGGERING COMPLEXITY AND COSTS.
11) MUST HAVE BRUTAL DISCIPLINE WITH VALUE TRIAGE
- IF CANNOT DO WITH NO CODE – TRIPLE THE EXPECTED COST OF DEVELOPMENT and MAINTENANCE
- I SUSPECT CRITICAL UNDERLYING CAUSE OF BUSINESS FINANCIAL NON-PERFORMANCE: FAILING TO UNDERSTAND, CONTROL, ACCOUNT FOR FULL SYSTEMS COST OF EXECUTING STRATEGY.
- MARGIN, MARGIN, MARGIN
12) Must know six technical environments to be capable of custom development.
Positives:
1. Advocated KISS programming – how to think through up front
2. I loved the “make tea for friends” pseudo code documentation included at the top of each program.
3. Good News: Declarative tools getting better and better, lower % of code required
4. Advocating Test Driven Development
5. Flows continues to gain advanced capabilities, e.g. For Loop
6. APP EXCHANGE HAS CREATED GOOD MARKET FOR NO-CODE SOLUTIONS
Mixed:
- FLOWS: Attempting to make complex concepts such as Loops available declaratively. Mixed results. Have not completed one training module successfully