Why isn’t code reused in Microsoft Dynamic CRM projects?

Microsoft Dynamic CRM code and customizations are rarely reused between projects and few companies create solutions to share between projects. This means CRM companies need to rewrite the same code again for each project but is there an alternative method.

CRM projects focus on delivering solutions but don’t to reuse solution and code.  In many companies CRM developers can create different versions of the same solution.

When developers work on projects they are focused on delivering a solution to meet the customers requirements.  Iftimethe developer will

• Improve code design
• Refactor code
• Reduce technical debt
• Unit test code
• Update documentation

The tasks mentioned focus on long term benefits and the reason they are often omitted.  Improving code design and refactoring make code easy to understand, extend, debug and maintain, these steps are unnecessary but make a huge different in maintaining the code.

The difference between good and average CRM developers can’t be seen in functionality delivered to the customer because they will be the same.

This posts

Why your CRM code and customizations should be simple

The problems with complex code and complex CRM Customizations

It’s difficult to simplycode, refactor and improve the design, a reason average developers omit those steps.  Explained beautifull by Martin Fowler

“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand“.

Martin Fowler

Simple code reduces time spent debugging, maintaining, understanding and interacting with the code e.g. further phases of development.  This explains why failures in CRM projects often occur after the first release of a CRM solution when the CRM developers struggle with a messy solution.

Other signs you CRM project is doomed can be found in this article 13 signs your CRM project is doomed

I have worked on a project where a plugin had a method which was over 1000 lines long.  This method became a bottleneck in the project because developers struggled to understand what it did or how it worked.  Small changes took hours whilst developers tried to understand the code, work out where to put their fix and testing the fix hadn’t broken existing code was impossible because the code was to complex to unit test.

Custom code

Most CRM projects will have custom entities which exist only in the individual project to either make the customers business processes or needed to deliver the required functionality.

Writing bespoke projects often preclude the project code and customizations being reused because the customers requirements are not needed in other projects.

CRM developers who don’t use solid principles to reduce coupling in their code are unlikely to be able to reuse code.

Code cannot always be be reused because of unique requirements, most of the time CRM developers don’t think about reusing the code or writing it to enable reuse.

New project, new code

“Before software canbe reusable it firsthastobe usable.”
– Ralph Johnson (computer scientist)

Reusing code is a great, you can add code which has already been written and tested.  It takes more effort to write reusable code, to write code in a generic way ensuring there are no dependencies on the current project.

Developers are not rewarded for code reuse or encouraged to write reusable code and customization’s by their employers.  Without motivation or reward why would developers go to the extra effort of writing code which benefits developers/company in the long term?

To write of reusable code you need skilled developers, sometimes called craftsman.  Highly skilled developers, take pride in their work and consider long-term implications of their code and who look to reuse code.

Most CRM projects are run with short-term goals in mind, answer these questions about Microsoft Dynamics CRM projects you have worked on?

• How often do CRM developers reuse code from earlier projects?
• Do CRM developers know what earlier projects did to understand if any of the code or customizations could be reused?
• Howmany projects isthe code goodenoughtobe reused?
• Does anyone look at previous projects to see if they could create a generic reusable project?

Companies don’t reuse code or catalog CRM projects.  CRM professions and CRM developers move companies often, most existing and new developers didn’t work on earlier projects and are ignorant of them.

Interaction with historic projects usually occurs whena bug is raised or through a change request.  If you are unluckily enough to be dragged into an old project, they are legacy projects with code and customizations arranged in a baffling structure taking days to decipher even the simplest of bugs.

Is there another way?

Wouldn’t it be great if new CRM projects were created by plugging together small separate solutions.  It would be quicker to create solutions like this and the code would have already been tested.

CRM developers could look at old projects for common functionality that could be reused in different projects.

Identifying functionality whichcould converted into a generic reusable solution.  If the solution was useful it could be sold but at a least it could speed up development on new projects needing that functionality.

This would involve taking a long term view of CRM development and ensuring their CRM developers are writing quality code and customizations.

Why doesn’t code get reused

Code reuse has many advantages but I haven’t seen any examples of code reuse in the projects I have worked on. I have listed some potential reasons for this below

Developers

A lot of developers don’t love writing code and to them it’s just a job, this shows in the quality of their code.  They are not passionate about it and certainly wouldn’t classify themselves as craftsman.  I don’t enjoy decorating, I take shortcuts and aim to paint a room as fast as possible.  The lack of enthusiasm and passion for decorating the room, shows in the finished product, I spot bits I missed and drip marks.

The same result can happens with the code of people who don’t enjoy developing,

To write simple code you will have need to want to improve, the best way is to have a mentor but you can get a paper/electronic mentor by reading classic books on programming or have a mentor to teach you.  I recommend

• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin)
• The Pragmatic Programmer
• Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (Object Technology Series)

CRM companies have s high churn rate, offering small payment increases to staff based on their current salary.  LinkedIn pressures this model with recruitment agencies offering CRM professionals the current market rate for their skills and experience, more than the current salary plus inflation.

The regular movement of CRM developers leads to a lack of long term thinking and planning.  Why write code withlong term benefit if you arenotgoingtobethereto gain from it.

Development standards and way of working need a consistent workforce to implement and developers adhere to them.

Project view

CRM solution providers organise effort at a project level, gearing everything around projects.   The approach is understandable because customers pay for projects and effort is focused on money.

Creating reusable code and solutions is an activity which needs to be done around or outside of delivering a project.  It may involve going back and identifying reusable/generic solutions or taking a little bit longer to write reusable code.

Maturity of Microsoft Dynamics CRM

I’m not sure about this but I wonder if creating reusable code/solutions is something which will occur with maturity of companies and developers.

Will companies get tired of recreating everything on each project?

Versions

Microsoft Dynamics CRM currently has a major release every year, this adds a significant challenge to creating reusable solutions and code.

A solution created today could become standard functionality in the next release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM or your solution might not work, with a need to upgrade the solution to be compatible with the new versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM online is increasing in popularity, CRM online projects use a different architecture than CRM on premise.  This provides a barrier to reusable CRM on premise solutions because those solutions won’t work with the limitations of CRM online.

The long term view I have is CRM providers will create micro services in azure which will integrate with CRM online services, this architecture allows one service to be used on many CRM Online projects.  This architecture model is being used by FieldOne and their autorouting service, which is hosted in Azure.

Size of CRM companies

Small CRM solution providers whose model doesn’t afford to spend time on non project work.  Bigger companies should have an advantage over smaller companies by creating resusable code and solutions but I’m not sure many larger CRM companies do this at the moment.

Summary

It’s easy to point out the problem of lack of code reuse, it’s harder to pinpoint the steps to overcome this.

The CRM project mentality creates project focused code, not reusable or often known about by other developers in a company.