Island Hopper News Sample Team Structure

Julie MacAller
Microsoft Corporation

January 1999

Introduction

The Island Hopper News sample is an automated classified ads system created by a fictitious company, Island Hopper Publishing, as a test project to evaluate converting the current paper-based weekly newspaper into an online newspaper. The design team consists of the Island Hopper News editor, the Classified Ads and Accounting department heads, and two developers.

This paper describes the team structure and skill sets of the team used to develop Island Hopper. You can compare this information against your own team structure for building a similar application.

Scope of Project

When you look at the number and type of deliverables that comprise the Island Hopper sample application, you can see that the project is fairly large and requires a broad set of skills. The deliverables for the Island Hopper News sample include:

A SQL Server database, classifieds.sql
Two user interfaces, one written in Microsoft® Visual Basic® that consists of 10 forms, their accompanying code and two modules, and another, written in HTML, DHTML, and script that consists of 21 separate pages.
Three business components, six data components, and a utility component, all written in Microsoft Visual Basic and using COM and MTS.
One business component, one data component, and a utility component, all written in Microsoft® Visual C++® and using COM and MTS.
Note Remember, COM components are language-independent; you can write them in any language that supports COM. The Island Hopper News application components were written in both Visual Basic and Visual C++ to demonstrate this language independence and to show the COM development capabilities of both languages.
A complete setup and uninstall program.

Development took approximately three months, from November to the end of February.

Team Size

The Island Hopper sample was developed with a small team, consisting of the following people:

Area	Number	Responsibilities
Program Management (PM)	1	Define scope of project; publish project plan; write specs for project; coordinate team efforts; keep everything going.
Development (Dev)	2-3	Modify existing code and write new code; develop user interfaces; work with PM to make sure the project tracked to specs; work with QA to make sure the project was tested.
Quality Assurance (QA)	1	Test all aspects of Island Hopper
User Education (UE)	1	Document Island Hopper.

Developer Skill Set

When building a distributed application that showcases many technologies, it's important that developers have a broad range of skills. Like many projects that make use of comparatively new technologies, the Island Hopper project had difficulty finding skilled developers who were able to work with the many different technologies. As a result, the Island Hopper design team came up with a recommended developer skill set; that is, things to look for in a developer next time. This recommended skill set is as follows:

Solid programming skills for Active Server Pages (ASP) and one programming language or tool that can be used to create COM components, such as Visual Basic (VB), Visual C++, Microsoft® Visual J++®, and so on.
Solid database design skills, programming skills, and a good understanding of transaction management.

DHTML can be learned on the job.

For More Information

To find out the background on the Island Hopper News sample application, see Island Hopper News Sample Overview.
To find out about the rest of the design process and read about the final architecture, see Island Hopper News Sample Architecture.
To find out about the database design for Island Hopper, see Island Hopper News Sample Database Design.