Question

We are a team of .net winform and asp.net developers building custom enterprise applications for organisations mainly in the public sector. Is it time to retrain/retool the team in WPF/Silverlight? How to make management, in first place and clients second buy the idea?

Answer 1

Clients shouldn’t care, necessarily. You’ll convince clients by showing them how you can be more productive and succeed in their goals, not by explaining tech. to them.

Management, on the other hand, is trickier. You need to convince them of the arguments for using WPF or Silverlight vs. Windows Forms. This can include:

1. Easier maintainability, especially when designed properly
2. More flexibility
3. More options to gain a competitive edge, via using new techniques such as better graphics/etc
4. Better support/lifecycle, since the newer technologies are actively developed and improved by Microsoft
5. Better deployment options (particularly with Silverlight), allowing for more flexible deployment strategies