A BA should be a RAD developer. Maybe Not!

So I've had some more thoughts along these lines.

After delving into the world of Dreamweaver and XHTML, CSS & Javascript [we'll see about AJAX], and talking to a real good front-end developer and senior BA, I've come to realize that my assertion about BAs becoming RAD developers is probably far-fetched. I was eager to learn it and with a bit of training and getting up to speed, I could probably create some workable pages (which I'm in the process of doing).

But I saw after my interactions with these guys that the front-end development I was thinking about is probably going to require someone devoted entirely to that task: a full-time HTML or ASP.Net front-end developer. There are just too many details that would need attending to. This is really a developer task. While I might be able to deliver workable pages (something perhaps good enough to show my users) they probably would be hacked and not very tightly coded; definitely not worthy of production. And I personally wouldn't want to go that route. My interests aren't in developing HTML pages.

So my thoughts have changed. I would say that having a BA along with a front-end developer at the high-cost centers (read: NY, London, anywhere that's close to the user) should be the new paradigm. The front-end IS the application from the user's point of view. If we get that right, everything else follows. But we need to get that right. We need customer involvement in getting there.

So if a BA and a front-end person meet with customers or users and are able to rapidly turn around the requirements into a working, clickable prototype, GREAT! You could have them iterate as much as they need to get it right. And then the front-end developer could deliver working XHTML code to the back-end developers. You can also start utilizing the front-end developer on other projects if the back-end people take a bit longer to deliver their pieces (or maybe not, depending on the methodology you're using: waterfall vs. XP for e.g.).

The main point here is that having a front-end developer to carry out RAD very close to the customer is the item that will start to foster good relationships between IT and business. The business will see that IT is more responsive because IT is able to come back in a few days with improvements in the interface that were requested. BAs will have more definitive answers and be more confident about what they're asking developers to do. And the RAD developer can deliver production-ready front-end code that back-end developers normally want nothing to do with. This is a win-win situation!

In our particular environment, we have branding guidelines we need to adhere to. The branding department has provided us with a framework of html and css (both with and without Javascript) as well as various code snippets. The front-end developer doesn't need to start up from scratch on each project. This makes high-fidelity prototyping or RAD more within reach than ever before.