I’m since the movie “Remember the Titans” a fan of football. A game which can only be won when the teamwork is really great. Because of lack opportunities in Switzerland, I enjoy the fact that each time when IBM Connect is, it is also Superbowl time. This time a great defence won over a good offense.

Inspired by an article of Paul Withers http://www.intec.co.uk/back-end-developers-are-from-mars-front-end-developer-are-from-venus/ I try to explain a good XPages Development Team with some Football words. And football fans forgive me, I’m a swiss guy and I will never have any chance to fit the knowledge of any football fan but….

Front-End Developers / UI Developers are the Offense!

They do the brilliant stuff which makes an application shiny and intuitive. They care about the first impression. They are interested in fast response from the backend, and love to do the most of the application logic (not the business logic) in the client. They measure loading time and render time. They are great in visualisation of data and love a clear interface.

Like in football, these guys makes the points!

Back-End Developers are the Defence!

They do the hard work 🙂 because they build the API for the Front-End Developers to process the data. They care about a robust domain-object-model and a stable API. They care about the transactions to the storage and the processing of the processes. They are more interested in brilliant algorithms than any kind of UI representations.

Like in football, they are responsible that you do not lose the ground.

Interfaces, Integration and Connections – The Special-Teams

Most applications are not islands. They are integrated in business processes and depends on other system. Here comes your Special-Teams to the game. You need these guys who have a deeper understanding of the interfaces and can talk with the “guys on the other side”.

Like in football, the Special-Teams can make the difference! The last point you need to win!

In what kind of developing are you good?

PS: Next Time I write maybe about RAD and Fast-Prototyping 😉