Need to do a large conversion to vb.net in 11 months

[tstocksql]

Hi,
We need to produce a system in 11 months in VB.NET/SQL that does the following and is customizable by our in house developers. Please recommend developers, software, code generators, and anything else that might help us:

Contact Management
Invoicing
Payments
Test Scoring Module
Event/Workshop Management
Registration ( web and winforms )
Staff Management ( not HR )
Work Order Management
Project Management

We have 2 full time and 1 part time VB developer in-house.

Thanks ahead of time!

 

[chrissie1]

And they start from nothing?

Or do they have experience.

I would go for Visual studio team system.
I would use the versionning system that is provided by team system. Or otherwise go with Tortoisecsv or something else.
Use nhibernate and nunit. Perhaps even think about a performance testing software.

Also look at CSLA.net for a good framwork (instead of nhibernate)
Are you going to use forms? Otherwise you will need a webserver.

Are the developers experienced .net developers? Are they any good?




Christiaan Baes
Belgium

"My new site" - Me

 

[MzKitty]

Is your current system in VB 6.0?

Cathy, IL

 

[tstocksql]

Thanks for the responses.

We are coming from a large FileMaker application so definitely one of the tough parts will be the data import and export.

We have 1 very good .net/sql developer and 1 who use to program vb6/c that is catching up. We also have a web developer who will have to catch up on the .net syntax.

We have already purchased and started work with Visual Studio ( not team edition ) and SQL 05. We are using Visual Source Safe for source control.

My question was more meant for any ideas on how to get more rubber on the road. Has anyone had success with out sourcing? Or does anyone know of any systems built in VB.net (with source) that we can purchase to save us time?

Thanks again for your input!

 

[ThatRickGuy]

I would seriously recommend stepping back from development to look at your options.

You have 11 months, limited staff, and a long list of wants. Realistically that will only give you about 6 months of dev time once you consider documenting, prototyping, testing, refinements, training, deployment, and conversion.

It may be significantly easier, cheaper, faster, and more pleasant to look into a number of off the shelf, or 3rd party developed solutions.

Even if you have to piece meal some of the stuff, your devs may have to work on "translation" software to make two separate apps communicate well, but the outcome will likely be closer to your desires.

If you are going to develop the system in house (in part or in whole), document the system first. Take a few months and work with your employees/customers/users and find out exactly what their needs are, hash out business rules, determine security concerns. Trust me, spending 2-3 months documenting and planning your project will likely save you 6+ months of re-designing parts as your requirements shift.

I would recommend bringing in a project manager, preferably one who has software development management experience. Too often supervisors get shoved into the role of project manager with no training on how to manage a project, and that doesn't usually turn out well.

If you do go for it in house, I would also recommend a solid documentation system. I recently had a chance to fire up a Media Wiki system for our software documentation, and the system is amazing. Leaps and bounds better than trying to track dozens upon dozens of word documents with track changes and source control. Not to mention the price is pretty sweet ($0, can be run on WIMP or LAMP)

Bug/feature tracking is also critical, and a solid tracking system can really help project management. We picked up Test Track Pro from Seapine Software about half a year ago and it's a nice piece of work. Their support it top notch as well. The price isn't bad either (I think it's like $250/named license).

-Rick

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