Bringing the old to the new

Before I dive into the details of what tools I'll be using and how I'll be using them I thought I should mention another defining factor which will inevitable affect the progression and success of our project. The developers working for my company are split into two teams: the ones developing and maintaining older systems written in Delphi 7 and the ones working on the future systems using .NET and C#. I work as part of the later team and one of the aims of my project is to get the developers in the Delphi team involved and familiarize them with the newer technologies.

This brings me against two to three areas of 'stuff' I have to transfer to the older developers. Primarily, the obvious first is the tools we use. The IDE: Visual Studio and the language C#. I think that will be the easy part. What I’m worried about is the getting them to think in a more object oriented, low coupling and high cohesion way about the software they are writing (not to in any way pass judgment in the software that they are already writing). I just believe that given the tools we use nowadays, we have two options: to either produce the same software faster or produce higher quality software in the same time. My thoughts are skewed towards the later.

Finally I have to introduce them into the processes we use. This I think will the hardest of the three to achieve. The reason is that processes in general stand up to the test of time: meaning that they'll have equivalent processes for working and those will be based on years of experience that I just don't have. And given my lack of experience I have to go by what is being written about with regard to software development processes. I have to understand the state of the art to the extent that I can present it in a comprehensible manor, to back it up when I have to, and genuinely believe in it to the extent that I can convey this belief to others. At the same time I have to draw on their experience and use it to factor and refactor the processes that we use to deliver software of the quality and in the time required by the business.