Designing an architecture in a technology where expertise is lacking [closed]

You have to learn your chosen GUI eventually.

As one of those outside consultants that comes in for these kinds of projects, I suggest a variation on option #2.

• Engage one or two outside consultants.

• Have them guide you through something like your option 2. You actually learn WPF and then (with their help) develop the architecture and implement it.

Your follow-on question ("suggestions on firms with expertise") is disturbing. If you don't have trusted technology partners, now is the time to start cultivating them. It will take a while to locate folks you can trust.

The only way to locate them is to pay them to do some work and see if you like them and the work. This process can take a long time.

Problems with doing #1 by yourself are the obvious ones. If you try to do this on a deadline without experts, you'll make mistakes. You'll cast those mistakes into concrete. You'll try to live with them forever. When learning something new, the calendar is the most dangerous thing imaginable.

Option #1 works when there's no time pressure.You build something disposable while you're learning. Then build something which you know that you will have to throw away. Then build the real thing.

Problem with doing #3 is that you may be asking consultants to do too much. If they plan your architecture, you probably won't completely understand it. You'll cut corners and bad things can happen. If -- on the other hand -- you do it yourself, you'll understand why those corners shouldn't be cut.

Also, #3 is an opportunity for piling in every feature you think might be cool. Until you understand the technology, you don't really understand what's essential, what's easy and what's hard. You're very likely to demand something that's expensive and risky because it's difficult to understand exactly how expensive and risky it is.

First off, WPF is probably a good choice. This is being embraced by Microsoft, and really seems to be the direction things are going for long term development. I recently made a very similar decision to this, and decided to go with WPF. After the initial pain that comes with a new tech., it's proving a very good decision.

That being said, I'd highly recommend a mixture of 2 & 3.

If you can find a good consultant to help with the design, you should be able to bring them in to help you with the design and architecture phase, some initial construction of the project, and they can potentially also help your developers get up to speed. Having help in house (or at least on-call) will be tremendously helpful in getting the through initial phases of trying to develop with WPF.

It also helps to bring in a developer and/or designer who has experience working with WPF.