Rails adoption questions

Rails
1

For my thesis I’m constructing a questionnaire and I would like to
know your opinion about it and perhaps additional questions. The
research will focus on the adoption factors and demographic
characteristics of companies using rails. So if you happen to know
good questions, or think they’re inappropriate, let me know.

I’ll start off:

Organizational

  1. What is your company name?

  2. What city is your company located in?

  3. What is the country your company is located in?

  4. What is your core business activity?

  5. What is the industry sector of your clients?

  6. Percentage of projects implemented with rails?

  7. Do you operate online or do you have a physical location as well?

  8. What is your responsible position?

  9. What is the annual gross revenue of your organization?

  10. Does your organization exclusively use rails? (yes/no)

  11. How many people does your entire organization employ?

  12. How many full-time IT employees does your organization employ?

  13. How many full-time Rails employees does your organization employ?

  14. How many full-time Ruby employees does your organization employ

Ranking of rails features

  1. When using rails, what are the most important features for your
    organization?
    (5 point Likert scale: totally not important up to very important)
  • Active Record
  • Migrations
  • MVC
  • Open Source
  • etcetera

Strongly disagree up to strongly agree questions

Compatibility

  1. Rails has a good fit with enterprise strategic IT architectures
  2. Rails provides application portability
  3. Rails provides data integration
  4. Rails can coexist with your organization’s key applications

Complexity

  1. Rails is easy to use
  2. It is easy for the developers to remember how to perform tasks
    using rails
  3. Using rails requires a lot of mental effort
  4. Using rails is frustrating

Relative advantages

  • advantage 1
  • advantage 2

Relative disadvantages

  • disadvantage 1
  • disadvantage 2
2

What i miss in the list are the questions focussing on the adoption
process of rails, questions like:

  • How long has the company been using rails?
  • Where there any complications when introducing rails? If yes, please
    specify.
  • What framework was used before rails, and why the move to rails?

I think if you want to focus on the adoption process, questions in
this trend will be helpfull.

Will post if i come up with more.

3

Thanks, for the additional questions. I think this question can be of
use as well:

  • What would be the present decision to adopt rails? (retrospective
    view)
4

On May 25, 1:45 pm, Michel B [email protected] wrote:

  1.  Do you operate online or do you have a physical location as well?

I think this question is a bit vague. Even online companies have a
physical location; the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

  1. How many people does your entire organization employ?

  2. How many full-time IT employees does your organization employ?

  3. How many full-time Rails employees does your organization employ?

  4. How many full-time Ruby employees does your organization employ

In your intro, you mention demographic characteristics. Therefore you
might want to know what the average age of the groups mentioned above
are and what the ratio of male and female employees is.

Another question might be “who made the final decision to introduce
rails/ruby into the company?”. I’m not sure, but I think I’m missing
“why was rails adopted?”.

Grtz,

Wouter

5

Just a lot of other questions that came up in a couple of minutes,
just take the ones you think do apply/come in handy
for your questionaire. They are a bit rough so maybe you have to
rephrase them.
GL with it!

Cheers,

rjk

[ORGANIZATIONAL]
How big are the individual project teams at your organization?

Have these project teams changed in size since the introduction of
Ruby on Rails at your organization?
If yes, did they became smaller?

Do you consider you company to be classified as a
indy developer
startup
small developer
enterprise organization
other … ?

Does your organization develop rails apps for customers or do you
develop applications for the organization?
(providing a service vs products to the customer)

Have the executives chosen for Rails or the developers?

[EMPLOYMENT]
Is your company in need of (extra) Ruby on Rails developers?
(If yes, how much?)

Could you give an average income for a Ruby on Rails developer?

Is your company hiring Ruby on Rails coders or general developers that
get an
inhouse Ruby on Rails training?

[EXPECTATIONS]
What changes do you expect from the Ruby on Rails framework in the
future?

Do you think your company will stay on the (Ruby on) Rails for at
least a couple of years?

[GENERAL DEVELOPMENT]

Are you actively using the new features introduced by edge Rails?

While switching to Ruby on Rails, have you also changed your software
development cycle?
(eg from (a more) waterfall method to an agile method)

What’s the best feature of Ruby on Rails that comes to mind?

What’s the general/most used IDE or editor used for developing Rails
apps at your company?

Are there features that you explicitly miss in the Rails framework?

Are there features that you explicitly want to remove from the Rails
framework?
(eg a feature that needs to be extracted into a plugin)

Are you already actively developing in a REST style?

[TESTING]
Are you testing your code?
In wich form?
-TDD
-BDD
-Other: …

Were you testing your code before using rails?

Are you using continous builders while developing in rails?

6

This is what I have come up with so far. Please provide your feedback.

Organization

  • What is your company name?
  • What is your responsible position?
  • What is the annual gross revenue of your organization?
  • What city is your company located in?
  • What is your core business activity?
  • What is the industry sector of your clients?
  • Are you a commercial or noncommercial company?
  • How long has your company been using rails?
  • What month and year did you start using rails?

Decisions

  • What features made the company decide to adopt rails? (5 point
    likert scale - very unimportant to very important)
  • What motivated the company to adtop rails? (5 point likert scale -
    very unimportant to very important)
  • Did the managers decide to adopt rails or the developers?
  • How did you decide to adopt rails (5 point likert scale - very
    unimportant to very important) (bv. eerst een intern testproject)
  • In retrospective, would you still make the same decision as
    before?

Projects

  • Does your organization exclusively use rails?
  • How many projects have you implemented with rails?
  • How many mission critical applications have you implemented with
    rails?
  • What is the percentage of projects implemented with rails?
  • How big are the individual project teams at your company?
  • Have these become bigger since the adoption of rails within your
    company?
  • Does your company develop rails applications for customers or do
    you develop applications for the company itself?

Employment

  • How many people does your entire company employ?
  • How many full-time rails employees does your company employ?
  • How many female rails employees does your company employ?
  • How many male rails employees does your company employ?
  • Is your company in need of (extra) rails developers?
  • Could you give an average income for a rails developer?
  • Is your company hiring rails developers or general developers that
    get an inhouse rails training?

Expectations

  • What changes do you expect from the rails framework in the future?
  • Do you expect other companies from your country to adopt rails as
    well?
  • Do you think your company will be using rails for the coming years?
  • What (future) features of rails might make other companies consider
    to adopt rails?
  • How can rails be promoted best (5 point likert scale - very
    unimportant to very important) (bv. sponsoring)

Development

  • Are you actively using the new features introduced by edge rails?
  • While switching to rails, have you also changed your software
    development cycle? E.g. from a waterfall method to an agile method?
  • Which complications did you face during the adoption of rails?
  • What framework was used before rails?
  • How important are the following rails features for your company? (5
    point likert scale - very unimportant to very important)
  • What is the general / most used IDE or editor used for developing
    rails applications at your company?
  • Are there features that you explicitely miss in the rails
    framework?
  • Are there features that you explicitely want to remove from the
    framework?
  • Are you already actively developing in a RESTful manner?
  • What are the disadvantages of rails? (5 point likert scale - very
    unimportant to very important) (performance, deployment too difficult
    etc)

Deployment

  • Are the rails applications hosted inhouse or at an external hosting
    company?
  • If so, which company?
  • What tools do you use for deploying your rails applications?
  • What OS is used for the deployment servers?
  • What webserver is used (Mongrel, Apache, Lighttpd etc)

Testing

  • Are you testing your code?
  • In which form are you testing (TDD, BDD, other)
  • Were you testing your code before using rails?
  • Are you using continuous builders while developing in rails?