We had a well attended Web Business Group - Meeting with two presentations that generated interest. In the Agile arena it now raises the question is the Mythical Man Month now a myth. We should be in a position to debate this at later meetings. The suggestion is with correctly implemented and managed Agile projects adding more developers to late projects can stop them getting later but bring them in earlier.

This is a good business argument, how often do we encounter scope creep and watch the time line expand as well as the budget.

The other subject was how the complexity of Java coding can be overcome with the elegance of CFML and the J2EE .Net implementations.  Some doubts in this area over the aggressive Adobe numbers, however a consensus that it would be quicker but we are debating over how much.

Looking Forward

The open discussion focused on future formats for the meeting.

High on the Votes were.

Case Studies - tell us about your development problems, surrounding business issues and how you beat them.

Take Something Away - Attendees mainly had a project management and business background want to take something away that helps them with the business case.

Adobe Feedback - A consensus is the new versions of products are an improvement, however the benefits of some features seem of more interest to the technical purists rather than the business. We have set ourselves the task of rating these features from the business perspective. A feature list will be created and circulated.

.Net comparison - as above but with the comparison of .Net features and CF 8

Volunteers to open a session on todays (Credit Crunch)Problems and Challenges

Meeting are held under the Chatham House Rules

"When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed".

Not just for techies.

One of the purposes of this group is to be more open about the advances in technology that are and have taken place recently. This group intention is to highlight technologies that can advance business easily and in some cases dramatically.

Bring this tools out of the technical theatre and drama section of the IT Crowd into business and discuss how these can be deployed in business, and what are their costs and what are the benefits.

Costs are always the first question.

Return on this investment the second

Then how quickly is the third