Application of Knowledge - Customizations vs Native Features

Question 1

Repurposing native functions

Answer 1

• Effective strategy to take advantage of existing core code as possible through extending. This carries both pros and cons. Pros are that the code has already been tested and should be stable; it also should save time. Cons are that you need to ensure upon version upgrades that there are no breaking changes.
• An example of repurposing native functions is we added the idea of website reviews onto the product reviews module. Pretty much the same concept and allowed for the site administrators to add these reviews using the familiar interface.

Question 2

Customization strategies

Answer 2

• The least customization possible. Customers don’t want to pay more than necessary, and custom coding often brings in defects. While an excellent QA team help to mitigate this, there is almost no way to get it 100%.
• The more native functionality that can be reused the better.