Jim Connolly, Director of Software Development, Kettley Publishing, Newport Beach, Calif.
Q: What was the last application development technology transition you've lead?
A: Recently, I lead the technology transition for Kettley, including the needs analysis, point-of-sale and client education software, from Visual Basic 6.0 to .ET 2.0. We had to review over 200,000 lines of legacy VB6 code and overhaul the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) process. We began by choosing the Rational Unified Process as our software development framework for managing the SDLC process. Then we created a more effective environment by retooling the entire development infrastructure, from source code control to QA test beds. Then, to maximize the throughput of new reports and calculators produced by our Subject Matter Experts; and to maximize the flexibility provided by a new Word Processing Standard called OPEN XML, the company developed a process for manipulating Microsoft Office 2007 .ocx files directly. We were able to use a few pieces of the existing VB6 code, and now we had a platform that supports both a web and desktop environment (using shared assemblies), is extensible, and is more easily shared with our business partners.
