I'm going to be developing an Intranet site for my specific plant, and our company standard for web-development is IIS + ASP.Net + VB.Net + Microsoft SQL Server (note that we have about 10+ plants). The Intranet site will only be used by my plant, and I'm the only one who will support it. I'm much more proficient with a LAMP setup, and I could do development and problem solving much more rapidly with PHP than I could ASP.Net. Even though the company "standard" is ASP.Net/VB.Net, most of what the company does as a whole is to purchase third party software (which is usually Java based), and very, and I do mean very few people in the company even know VB6, let alone ASP.Net/VB.Net.
That being said, is it better to violate the company standard and go with the setup that I can support better, or is it better to go with the setup that the company can support better if I ever were to leave, even though no one currently in the company can support their own standard anyway?
Some additional factors to consider in my personal case:
- Again, this is only for my plant, and I'm the only one who will ever be supporting it unless I leave the company, and then my replacement would be supporting it. Not someone else already in the company.
- The company does very little development with their standard anyway.
- Hardly any of the companies existing software uses their standard.
- If I choose the company standard, then I have to use the Express version of Microsoft SQL and a Windows 7 OS. From my readings, the Express version is okay for business use, but the database size is limited.
Best Answer
1 -- Don't Assume you're the only one who's going to support this. You do like your sick time and vacation, right? What if you need to take extended maternity/paternity leave or something? Who's going to support your app then? Also, what if you'd like to talk to someone about technical problems specific to your company? What if you'd like to have code reviews? Or need help with a tricky bug? In all these cases it helps to be amongst others with insight into the technology you're using -- specifically how it can be applied to solve your company's specific problems.
2 -- Just because some document exists doesn't mean its really the standard or means anything. It may simply mean that there's a group of politically influential individuals advocating this approach, and it may turn out there's other sub groups taking different approaches.
Your problem may simply be that the "standard" has evolved to some de-facto, undocumented state that conflicts with the documented "standard". Or there may be many little unofficial groupings of people using different "standards" -- with one of those groups managing to make their "standard" made official. You probably need to ask around to figure out what others in your group -- who might also support you and your app -- consider best practices. Ask what they feel comfortable with you using. Map out the real technology landscape of your company and figure out where the know how is. Just like any good piece of evolving tribal knowledge the only way you're going to know how to proceed is to talk to people.
3 -- Don't pass up professional opportunities to learn new things. You have to guard against being pigeonholed in this industry. Be nimble. You may have an opportunity to gain some breadth and learn a new way to solve a problem. Not to mention you're gaining new skills for your resume. It can mostly only help you to have to step outside your comfort zone to do something new. That being said, if the different/new thing is so extremely niche that you don't think you or any future employers will get any value from those skills, then maybe this isn't such a great opportunity. But getting a chance to be both an ASP.net and LAMP expert will certainly open your eyes and can only help your career. There's nothing like a real project with a deadline to force you to really learn something.
So my advice, don't go it alone. Figure out where people really stand and decide where you can best fit in. If you need to step out of your comfort zone, use this as an opportunity to grow professionally.