V-Base Development Blog

v-base shout out to vbay 20 May 2008

’scuse the cringeworthy post title but we received a comment on a previous post saying that one of our friends from volunteer development scotland had dropped by – hi alex!

vds have their own v-base-like volunteering management application – vbay – used by all of the volunteer centres in scotland. olivier and i caught a train way up north to see them last year and they gave us a tour of their latest version – really impressive, especially as (like us) they don’t have the luxury of an army of developers.

ah yes, the old resourcing chestnut. when speaking to people involved in commercial software development they’re always amazed at the scope of our project given the size of our team and that we aren’t all working purely on this project but have other commitments in addition. i recently went on a training course for my product owner role and it was again confirmed to me that what we’re achieving with our limited resources is nowhere short of amazing.  i suspect the same applies in many non-profit technical teams and is probably largely due to the commitment of the people involved and their willingness to put in an incredible amount of effort towards something of social value rather than making themselves or/and their employers a huge bucket of cash.

anyway, enough of me giving us a pat on the collective back. it was great hearing from vds. as i’ve said before, you guys have an open invitation to visit us any time… as long as richard doesn’t thrash us too badly at pool (again)