💃 The case for hiring that TA 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! We all know this, but implementing Salesforce is expensive!! 💰💰 Now just think about how expensive it is to implement Salesforce … without a Technical Architect. 😵‍💫😵‍💫 How far down the path will a business get before they realize they need architectural oversight? What sorts of problems bubble to the surface that cause the need for a TA? What is it a TA is looking for when they take the gig? Let’s imagine a scenario and see what it turns up!

Agenda for today includes

• Foundations

• The case for hiring that TA

• Daily Principle

• All the Memes

Foundations

🎬 Allow me to set the scene 🎬

• Universal Container implements Salesforce w/ a local boutique partner

• Engagement wasn’t great, but they end up getting the app deployed

• After contract is complete, the company appoints their PM as the Salesforce lead, this is his first time working Salesforce

• Within a month, the new lead hires dev (~ 2 years exp)

• Two years later, another dev (~2 years exp) is hired

• One year later, an Admin (~10 years exp) joins the team

Over the course of a few years, an app was spun up and a team has formed around it. The devs quickly begin to refactor much of what the partner implemented while simultaneously adding new functionality. 🔥

At first, thing are great. Processes are being automated, features are being added quickly and everyone seems happy! 🤙 Sweet! 

🛑🛑 Halt! There be dragons here! 🐉🐉

The case for hiring that TA

From a TA’s perspective, scenario’s like this usually produce a dumpster fire of a situation that the they will now own. 🚒

Right on cue … soon cracks in the proverbial foundation begin to form. New functionality takes longer to introduce and when it finally is released there are bugs 🪲 introduced along with it - either the feature itself or some seemingly unrelated piece of functionality is now defective. This is a major bummer for the devs because performing deployments can now takes hours! 🥴🥴

Luckily our TA is seasoned. She recognizes the business is suffering from a lack of extensibility and maintainability.

📖 Extensibility - ability to accept an “extension” to functionality

📖 Maintainability - how easy it is to “maintain” the system overall (improve, correct)

Problems like these can often be traced to a codebase that is far too tightly coupled. 💯 This happens when boundaries between modules are blurred to such an extent that they fully depend on each other to operate.

Systems in this condition are a pain to work with and deploy into. 😡 Everything is made harder and takes longer. And the output is often times marred with issues of some sort.

She takes immediate action to address a lack of common standards, practices, patterns, and tooling. A ⚙️ development framework is introduced, a ⚙️ CI/CD pipeline created, a new ⚙️ Kanban board created and a project is now underway to slowly refactor old code.

A good TA will do an initial environment assessment, and then follow the code or other automations in place in order to prescribe a solution to a problem. Salesforce is a powerful platform that allows for rapid customizations that automate business processes. Having a TA from the start that will create and enforce proper technical governance is a critical piece to shortening the pathway to success! 💪

Daily Principle

and now....Your Daily Memes