Re: How do you make decisions that optimize software quality?

From: Ronald E Jeffries (ronjeffries_at_acm.org)
Date: 08/13/04 

Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 08:21:25 -0400

On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 16:20:59 -0200, Juhan Leemet
<juhan@logicognosis.com> wrote:

>> 2. Every line of code the developers write must be integrated that
>> night. The integration and build system must run all of the passing
>> acceptance tests to date, and all of the unit tests must run at 100%.
>> The build must finish with a properly packaged deployable. The build
>> system may run analysis code like code coverage metrics; if so, unit
>> test statement and branch coverage must be at 100%, and acceptance tests
>> coverage and branch metrics must be fairly high.
>
>That sounds pretty arbitrary to me: esp. "every night". That's the popular
>line, but any period would do, depending on the shop and the process, etc.

Actually, the period makes a big difference. Imagine that the tests
ran unobtrusively every millisecond. Then whenever I made a mistake,
the computer pings and I back the mistake out before it ever really
gets in.

Imagine on the other hand, that the tests ran only every other week.
In the course of two weeks, I will inevitably break something, and now
it's integrated into the code line. Bingo, a week later an alarm goes
off: Something is broken. Who broke it, and what did they do? We begin
debugging ...

Agile methods -- in fact all methods -- thrive on feedback. The sooner
we know something isn't right, the better we'll do.

Or so it seems to me ... 

-- 
Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
I'm giving the best advice I have. You get to decide if it's true for you.

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