Making software

management tools work

for youJohn MerticSugarCRMConfoo.ca 2010

Disclaimer: There are no silver

bullets

“For every complex

problem, there is a solution

that is simple, neat, and

wrong.”

– H. L. Mencken

Lots of Choices

Building A Process

Having a process makes choosing tools much more effective

How to build a process

Evaluate where you are now Address the good and bad of the current way of

doing things

Make a plan of where you think you should be

Starting making strides towards going there

Look for tools to support the process

Implement the tools

Evaluate to see what's working, what's not.

Release Management

Development Management

Product Management

Pieces of Software Project Management

Product Management

These are the stakeholders ( or their surrogates )for your project

Needs: Need to be able to build out requirements for

features ( use cases, screen mockups, etc ) Must have a collaborative environment so that

these requirements are easy to keep updated Must be kept in the loop on the progress of the

project

Development Management

Manages the developers working on the project

Needs Need to allow multiple developers to work easily

together ( version control ) Need to keep the codebase under control ( code

review ) Need to deal with bugs in the project ( issue

tracking ) Need to be able to track progress of features being

developed ( feature tracking ) Need to be able to collaborate with Product

Management on requirements

Release Management

Balances the needs of the stakeholders and the abilities of the developers to make the release successful.

Needs Setting timelines for a release.

Scheduling feature development iterations Measuring development team velocity

Evaluating product needs and decide on what’s in and what’s out

Need to provide proper QA for the project ( unit testing, functional testing, manual testing )

Tools should help keep it all open

Picking the tools to use

Do pick tools that … … you can get up and running with quickly ( for

those new to all of this ). … compliments your process. … are easy for your team to adjust to.

Don’t pick tools that ... … attempt to fix a problem that isn’t broken. … that are distracting or too cumbersome for

your process. … you and/or your team are not ready for.

For teams new to all of this…

Version Control: Subversion, maybe Git/Mercurial/Bazaar/Monotone

Issue/Feature Tracking: Spreadsheet ( Excel, Google Docs )

Collaboration: Google Docs

Communication: IM, IRC, Email, Meetings

After your team is comfortable with using tools…

Version Control: Subversion, also consider Git/Mercurial/Bazaar/Monotone.

Issue/Feature Tracking: Trac, Mantis, JIRA

Collaboration: Google Docs, Wiki

Code Review: No formal tools; utilize Peer Review and/or Pair Programming

Communication: IM, IRC, Email, Meetings Less big, formal meetings; more smaller “water cooler”

meetings

Resource Management: Spreadsheet ( Excel, Google Docs )

Tools well refined teams will use…

Version Control: Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar, Monotone Preference towards DVCS

Integrated Software Project Management: Trac, Mantis, JIRA, Teamwork, eGroupWare, RedMine Contains functionality for Bug Tracking, Collaboration, and

Resource Management Another solution is to build links between the Intermediate

level tools to help the workflow

Communication: IM, IRC, Email, Meetings Less big, formal meetings; more smaller “water cooler”

meetings Sandbox environment for previewing new features.

Code Review: Review Board, Crucible, Code Collaborator, etc

Tools well refined teams will use…(cont)

QA Automation Functional Testing ( Watir, Selenium ) Unit Testing ( jUnit, phpUnit, etc )

Continuous Integration: Hudson, CruiseControl

Documentation Code Level ( Doxygen ) End-user ( Wiki, Word, Google Docs, etc )

Summary

Importance of developing a process that works for you, rather make your team work in the process of a tool.

One shoe doesn't fit all - what works in one team may not in another.

Make small strides in making your team more efficient, not large leaps.

Re-evaluate your processes regularly to see if the current tools are meeting your needs.

Questions/Comments?

Thanks for coming!

Tell me how you liked this talk… Submit feedback on this talk to http://joind.in/

1302

Who I am: John Mertic Email: jmertic@php.net Blog: http://jmertic.wordpress.com Twitter: jmertic

Who I work for: SugarCRM – http://www.sugarcrm.com