Is Control Better than Speed for your ColdFusion Apps?

Do you feel like your company is moving in slow-motion? Would you like your company to be more agile and flexible? What about your ColdFusion applications? Do they move as quickly and efficiently as you would like?

Speed requires two other keys to in order to be achieved chiefly the willingness to let go of control and become more flexible.

Remember what legendary race car driver Mario Andretti once said,

“If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.”

Let’s talk about what you have to do to get your company, ColdFusion apps, and projects up to speed.

Scared of Losing Control?

I understand. Your company is your responsibility. You put out fires and solve problems. Your stamp of approval must be on everything. If there is a change in your ColdFusion applications, you need to know about it.

Maybe the reason your company is moving slowly is YOU.

Are you the choke-point or the weak link in the chain? That can be hard to fathom. There is only one of you. If you must control and micromanage everything, you may be the one slowing down progress.

Think about what Lisa Earle McLeod said in her Huffington Post article, “Everything is Not Under Control: That’s a Good Thing.”

“It’s tempting to want life to be more predictable, but keeping things under control, rarely creates greatness.”

Speed or Control?

Which option would you choose?

While having a fast and agile company is wonderful, things can easily get out of control. However, have faith in your employees. Relinquish as much control as you can. Let go of the micro-management and allow your people to do their jobs. This will allow your company’s tempo to increase while maintaining a proper level of quality control.

For your company and ColdFusion projects to be successful and run smoothly, you need to utilize a system that maximizes speed and minimizes loss of control.

How Speed can HELP in Adversity

We must move quickly to stay competitive in today’s market. It’s inevitable that we will occasionally fail. The key is to fail fast and move on. By quickly moving on, we are able to maintain a keen eye on changing industry trends.

ColdFusion Applications

ColdFusion apps are a different thing altogether. Whether you are creating a new application or upgrading your legacy code to the latest CFML, you need to work with a combination of speed and control. Control, like version control software, is especially important. However, speed is also necessary for finishing one project and moving to the next. By maintaining a proper balance between speed and control, you can minimize your use of resources and maximize your project outputs.

The Third Key – Flexibility

Flexibility is easier when you have a small company, but all the more important as your company grows. If you’ve given up some control and now your company is speeding along, flexibility becomes important when needing to make decisions quickly and trusting others in your company to do their jobs.

When you show flexibility, your employees are more likely to give greater returns.

Try it with your lead developers. Give them more responsibility and freedom. More often than not, they will prove to you that they can handle the load. The quality and speed of your ColdFusion projects will likely improve.

Matthew Toren wrote: “I define flexibility in business as the ability for a company to make whatever internal changes are necessary to respond effectively to the changing outward environment, as quickly as possible.”

Stay Agile

Agile is a project management methodology that uses short development cycles called “sprints” to focus on continuous improvement in the development of a product or service.

The Agile Manifesto was written in February of 2001 by seventeen independent-minded software   While the participants didn't agree about much, they found consensus around four main values. The four main maxims are:

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
4. Responding to change over following a plan

Related: 12 Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto

There are many benefits to both your company and your CFML project.

• Increased Flexibility
• Increased Transparency
• Increased Productivity
• Minimizing of Missed Goals
• Higher Quality Projects
• Increased Client Satisfaction and Engagement

An agile cycle normally consists of 5 stages. This a cycle that repeats itself until the project reaches completion.

1. Plan
2. Design
3. Develop
4. Implement
5. Evaluate

Agile development is exceptionally useful in software development projects –such as a new CFML project. It makes it easier for development issues to be identified quickly. This reduces the waiting time for correction. Improvements can be made immediately without having to wait until testing has been completed. A more agile project offers reduced risk and complexity which can lead to a much better project turnout.

Related: 078 Agile ColdFusion API Development (Amazing Postman, ColdBox and Agile secrets) with John Farrar

The Keys: Control, Speed, and Flexibility

Each of these keys alone and unchecked can be detrimental to your company and ColdFusion projects. An equal measure of control and speed, along with a lot of flexibility, will take your company to where it needs to be.

And to continue learning how to make your ColdFusion apps more modern and alive, I encourage you to download our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.

Because… perhaps you are responsible for a mission-critical or revenue-generating CF application that you don’t trust 100%, where implementing new features is a painful ad-hoc process with slow turnaround even for simple requests.

What if you have no contingency plan for a sudden developer departure or a server outage? Perhaps every time a new freelancer works on your site, something breaks. Or your application availability, security, and reliability are poor.

And if you are depending on ColdFusion for your job, then you can’t afford to let your CF development methods die on the vine.

You’re making a high-stakes bet that everything is going to be OK using the same old app creation ways in that one language — forever.

All it would take is for your fellow CF developer to quit or for your CIO to decide to leave the (falsely) perceived sinking ship of CFML and you could lose everything—your project, your hard-won CF skills, and possibly even your job.

Luckily, there are a number of simple, logical steps you can take now to protect yourself from these obvious risks.

No Brainer ColdFusion Best Practices to Ensure You Thrive No Matter What Happens Next

ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist

Modern ColdFusion development best practices that reduce stress, inefficiency, project lifecycle costs while simultaneously increasing project velocity and innovation.

√ Easily create a consistent server architecture across development, testing, and production

√ A modern test environment to prevent bugs from spreading

√ Automated continuous integration tools that work well with CF

√ A portable development environment baked into your codebase… for free!

 

Learn about these and many more strategies in our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.