Capgemini website article: Prototyping and Ruby on Rails

It’s official: Today our web team posted an article on our Danish Capgemini website: Prototyping and Ruby on Rails.
www.dk.capgemini.com/ydelser/technology/prototyper (in Danish)

The publication of this article marks a point where Capgemini officially adds Ruby to it’s service offerings (although some job offerings like this has mentioned it previously).

Here are some short extracts that I translated for your convenience:

[…]Ruby on Rails opens up towards a more flexible development process, where it’s much easier to implement client requirements as the project runs. In collaboration with Capgemini , this means that it’s possible to lower price and time-to-market significantly for a product. But also to improve the quality of the final product

Jesper and Mads building bricks as a symbol of ruby prototyping

Capgemini has recently proved that prototype development in advance of actual implementation can improve the result significantly. Jesper Rønn-Jensen, developer at Capgemini Denmark:

»We have had working prototypes up and running in a matter of hours. A specific example was a project we decided to implement in Ruby on Rails. Originally the project was estimated at 400 hours in Microsoft .Net. With Ruby on Rails we could deliver it in 110 hours.«

A prototype can be an experimental version of an unknown product, but can also be an early version of a future product, where the prototype along with a supplementary requirements specification can be used to visualize what the future system will work. The client gets a visualization of it’s ideas and will also get an idea of what further possibilities that can be added.

Instead of writing detailed requirements documentation, we can develop a prototype that gives the client a concrete base to make decisions upon. At the same time it also provides the opportunity for our clients to challenge our ideas and thoughts, which only improves the product,

adds Mads Buus Westmark.

If somebody is interested in providing a full translation, please do so … (i will probably translate more of the article at a later point or if you want it).

Photo by Reimar Juul (reimarjuul.com)

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3 Responses to “Capgemini website article: Prototyping and Ruby on Rails”

  1. Jonas Follesø Says:

    First: congrats on a great article, just finished reading it. Well written and manages to communicate the essence of Rail to “non-developers” in a good and efficient way.

    Second: Great to see a fellow Capgemini blogger, with some of the same interests (web front ends and usability). Personally I’m really into the Microsoft technology stack, currently focusing on Silverlight development. I work for Capgemini Norway, but am doing a one year transfer to the Capgemini Melbourne office.

    It’s great to see that Capgemini is keeping up with latest market trends, and that a Scandinavian Capgemini hub is now offering Ruby services. I think Capgemini Oslo is in the process of looking into Ruby, Python and more agile development frameworks.

    Personally I think the dynamic languages will continue to grow, and with Microsoft support through IronRuby and IronPython it’s probably going to become more feasible to get started with these languages at existing .NET based customers. The support for Ruby in Silverlight 2 opens up an interesting Ruby continuum, from Rails on the server to Silverlight on the front-end. The clean MVC separation, as well as good support for REST-services opens up some interesting RIA scenarios.

    I’ve added your blogg to my RSS reader, so I’ll keep an eye on what you’re up to in Denmark!

    Cheers,
    Jonas Follesø
    Senior Consultant Capgemini Trondheim
    Microsoft Regional Director, Norway
    http://jonas.follesoe.no

  2. Jesper Rønn-Jensen Says:

    Thanks a lot for noticing Jonas. In the case you liked the article, I must recommend our new Capgemini client magazine. It features a 3 page article on prototype driven development with Mads and me (photo above is from the magazine).

    For now it’s paper only, and I’m gladly sending anybody a copy. Please mail me your physical address for a copy. My gmail username is “jesperrr” (attention 3xR before the @-sign)

  3. justaddwater.dk | Rapid Prototyping With a Piece of Wood Says:

    […] Capgemini website article: Prototyping and Ruby on Rails (apr 2008) […]