from the horizon

Writing the specifications for the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) database was only a small part of the challenge. I had to build it too! Fortunately I had some help from Rima, an Acehnese programmer working in M&E, unfortunately his previous coding experience had been in FORTRAN (for the non-geeks out there, it’s a programming language which is 50 years old!). But all programming is kinda the same, as I explained to him, FORTRAN is like building your own car out of spare parts, and then driving somewhere. Access and Visual Basic (what we used for the database) is like getting into a Ferrari!

I decided to adopt an Extreme Programming Training style to confront the problem. My understanding of extreme programming is that is involves 2 programmers working at the same computer, on the same problem. The concept is that they a more likely to spot the bugs, and if they both understand the code, it will be of a better quality. So we both sat down in front of the computer and started coding. Initially I did most of the programming, and talked him through what I was doing, made sure that he understood. It was great, I got to program and talk at the same time!

As we continued I guided him through doing parts of it, and eventually he was quite happy to create reports from the database on his own.

It was a busy 2 weeks, I certainly rushed us through the whole processes. And added to the challenge it is the first 2 weeks of Ramadan, so Rima wasn’t eating or drinking during the day! I’m sure he will be glad when the pressure if off once I’ve gone, and he can try and understand some of the stuff I was talking about.

But overall it was a success. After the first week we had a basic database, and after another week of touching up we have a complete working database, with some snazzy features like different options for different users and email synchronization! But most importantly Rima is now familiar with Access, and a little Visual Basic, so he can make additions to it by himself.

This sort of capacity building is popular in the development world. Some people worry, as they are essentially working themselves out of a job. I personally think of it as training someone else to do what I can do, so I can go a sit on a beach somewhere! Unfortuanately there’s no beach for me yet. I’ve got a Grants database to finish … all by myself.