Chapter 5 - How to justify Laravel

Here’s the problem (or a problem) …

You must work under the constraints your company places on you. Namely, that you must support the existing software and develop new code that plays nice with your existing systems. There’s a mix of .NET, some Java, but most of the existing code is PHP.

You’ve recently discovered Laravel and like it and want to use it for new development.

How can you justify switching to Laravel?

Let’s put on our detective hat for a minute.

Hmmm. The detectives I know (from TV of course) seem to follow the money when looking for suspects and motives. So let’s follow the money …

Customers provide money to businesses in exchange for goods and services. The better the product, and the more customers really want the product, the more money they fork over to the business.

Managers want the business to thrive. They want as many customers as possible to give them as much money as possible as frequently as possible.

Think about it from management’s perspective …

• I want my customers to be happy.
• I want new customers.
• Customer happiness equates to expectations being met.
• I want my programmers to be able to deliver the requirements on time.
• I want the programming team to be agile. (Whatever that means … see the box below.)
• I want to facilitate customer’s requests in a timely manner.
• I want great developers delivering great products

If the above list is the management perspective, then Laravel is easily justified:

• Customers are happy when their needs are addressed and met.
• Customers are even happier when their expectations are exceeded.
• Laravel provides a framework that …
  • Makes it easy to extend functionality.
  • Follows best-practices in design.
  • Allows multiple programmers to collaborate efficiently.
  • Makes programmers happy. (Remember managers: a happy programmer is a productive programmer.)
  • Let’s stuff get done faster.
  • Encourages unit testing, considering testing a core component of every application.

Laravel provides managers the ability for their programmers to get more done, quicker, and eliminates many of the obstacles inherent in web application development. I’ll expand on this later.