Sophie 2.0 Process

In update process. See current state in PROCESS_R3. Old version can be found here PROCESS/Old

Overview

In order to produce the highest quality product (both internal and external), we have defined process guidelines in this section. (This is related to the SCRUM mandatory definition of the done status state.)

This will help us meet the following challenges:

• Internal quality (quality of code)
• External quality (quality of the visible product)
• Documentation reading (many things are written, few things are read)
• Reducing unuseful process overhead

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Member requirements

1. Work towards the goal!

• No matter what this document defines, or how specifically your task is defined, there is no way to define exactly what should be considered good for reaching our goal, and what should be considered bad.
• You have to work towards the goal.
• When you work on something, you have to understand why and how it is related to our goal.
• You have to try to drive the whole team towards the goal (no one alone is capable of reaching it).

2. Be honest!

• You have to present the situation to the leader as is.
• Do this, even if it does not look good.
• For example, if you have no idea how to make something, don't say "almost done" to the leader.

3. Take initiative!

• If you find a way that you can make something better for the team, don't wait but propose that it to be done.

4. Look around!

• If you see problems in the code, in the product, in the organization, or whatever, announce them.
• Try to keep an eye on what other people do (either for things you can learn from, or for things they are doing poorly).
• Try to get a global vision of what is happening in our team.

5. Seek improvements (for yourself and for the team)

• No matter how good you are, there are always more things you can learn, or skills you can acquire (note that knowledge and skills are different things).
• Improving and learning is your responsibility.
• Not trying to understand how things work, but learning that this does this, and that does that will lead you nowhere! Really! Even if you've programmed for 20 years it's possible to make this mistake.

6. Seek the most appropriate solution!

• There is no perfect code. There is no perfect solution (or even if there is it is not reachable).
• There are no general good design rules - a design is good if it works well, if it is easy to use (for example, if it is a library, the clients don't need to write much), if it is simple, has good performance, is modifiable/extensible, testable, etc. Neither the number of design patterns used solves this, nor a code convention... nothing. You have to find a design that is good.
• Hacking around just to make things work is usually a time bomb. It is not acceptable to do this, because saving 1 day this month usually costs 7 days the next month.
• What we should do is to seek something between just making it work and making it perfect, but closer to perfection than just working.
• That is, seek a good solution.

7. Quality is not negotiable! Scope and resources are

• If something cannot be done with acceptable quality, given the resources (time) and scope (functionality) that it has, then we will either reduce the scope or increase the resources.
• We are not allowed to reduce quality!

8. Accept the challenge!

• We are not doing the next Store Information System, the next Lawyer's web site, nor the next database module for big company X
• What we are doing is something that only few companies in the world can do, and even many of them are not good enough.
• There are no instructions on "how to make the next generation desktop publishing software"!

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Discipline

1. You either follow the process or suggest improvements.

• Self-discipline is needed.
• If you don't have enough self-discipline, then this team is not appropriate for you (you should go to a company that forces you to be disciplined by other means).

2. Our workday starts at 09:30 am sharp.

3. You may work from home, or from other locations but only with the approval of the team leader.

4. You have to write in the end of every working day a daily report about what have you done that day. You have to write at the end of every iteration a monthly report - see REPORTS page to learn how to write reports.

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Scrum

We are continuing to use SCRUM methodology (info at ​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCRUM). What is new:

• Trying to have much higher quality.
• Extended product backlog is located here TASK_INDEX
• The sprint backlogs are on wiki pages (ITERATION_01 for example).
• Using a customized and flexible Workflow
• The Internal Backlog tracks:
  • Impediments
  • Documentation
  • Smells
  • Open Questions

• The Meetings are:
  • weekly meetings
  • progress checks
  • other meetigs

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Teams

Team splitting

We define three teams for improved performance and management while developing Sophie 2. The three teams are as follows:

• Analysis team - responsible for analysing the tasks for the current and the next iteration and for the testing reviews.
• Functional team - designing and implementating the tasks from the product backlog.
• Release Team - responsible for the releases, the reviews of the implementation phase, the testing phase and bug fixing(See PROCESS/Workflow).

For now the analysis reviews are made internally in the team which is responsible for the corresponding task(i.e. S2S_TESTING_SERVER_R0 analysis review is made by the server team). The design reviews are done by a functional team member(not necessary from the same team).

The teams are not fixed, it is recommended to change the team members each iteration or for every several iterations.

Team Roles

For each team there is team leader defined. They are not fixed also and can be changed even during the process depending on their productivity as team leaders. The other developers are called team members. The team leader should:

• be responsible for the progress of his/her team on the progress checks
• represents team members on the weekly meetings if they are not present
• gives direction to the team members if they don't know which task to take
• helps the team members if they have questions and obscurities or directs them to the person who can help them.

The team members for each task can be in the role of:

• reviewers - a person who is assigned to review a task
• implementors - the workers on a given task
• freelancers - remote implementors (or reviewers) with different working time

Each team member should:

• Respect other team members and their work
• Be present on Meetings or give all of the needed information to his representative (see PROCESS/Meetings for the list of things that you should give)
• Give impediments and smells in time and/or resolve them if needed

Team Processes

The Release team has a specific internal process described in PROCESS/ReleaseTeam.
The Analysis team has a specific internal process described in: PROCESS/AnalysisTeam.

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Workflow

Diagram

Each taken task in the current sprint should pass trough the following phases described in this diagram: trunk/sophie2-platform/doc/uml-design-diagrams/workflow.png

Explanation Of States

• new
  • task is waiting to be taken, and someone to determine what should be done
• analysis started
  • to learn how to write good analysis, see Platform Standards Analysis
  • there should be at least one example of how to do one or more things that should be done
  • it should take not more than 0.25 of the task effort
• analysis finished
  • it is already determined what should be done
  • the task is waiting for review. (Wait for the review of the analysis before starting the design otherwise your work can be for nothing!)
• review
  • the reviewer looks through the analysis to see if it is correct(observing the PLATFORM_STANDARDS_ANALYSIS document and trying to improve it)
  • the analysis should apply to its template
• analysis ok
  • the reviewer decides that the analysis of the task is correct
• design started
  • the implementer is designing the task or in other words tries to decide how it should be done
  • it is not compulsory but recommended that the design should be made by the implementer
  • it is recommended that the design should not be made by the analyzer of the task
  • designing is not only getting an idea of how to do something but understanding the concept, step by step
  • for many tasks the design phase should take most of the time
• design finished
  • it is determined how the task should be done
  • it is designed and is waiting for review.
• review
  • the reviewer looks through the design to see if it is correct.observing the PLATFORM_STANDARDS_DESIGN document and trying to improve it)
  • The reviewer can imagine himself as an implementer and see if he can implement the task following the design without problems
• design ok
  • the reviewer decides that the design of the task is correct
• implementation started
  • the implementer makes an attempt to complete the task
  • he/she should follow the design strictly
  • he/she should write an Implementation section of the task as the result of the implementation
• implementation finished: the implementer decides that the implementation of the task is ready
• review: the reviewer look through the implementation to see if it is correct
• implementation ok
  • the reviewer decides that the implementation of the task is correct
  • the implementation section must be filled
• testing started: there should be appropriate tests written for the task
  • Standards for testing can be found in the following documents:
    • PLATFORM_STANDARDS_AUTO_TESTS
    • PLATFORM_STANDARDS_MANUAL_TESTS
• testing finished: testing state is done, waiting for review
• review
  • the reviewer looks for missing or wrong tests
  • if there are any, the reviewer may decide they can be added later
  • if they are too important or wrong they should be fixed - the review fails
• testing ok
  • the last task state

• notes
  • failing a state (for example moving from implementing to analyzing because implementation failed) requires that the state of the product is reversed to the initial state
  • the transitions of each state are defined in Workflow diagram
  • for every task we have tickets which are available for reading and filtering in the View Tickets section in Trac. For every state of a particular task, you have to go to its ticket and update its status depending on the state you are working on. There are custom ticket fields which we should filled with information about the task phase owner, reviewer and score. There is also importance field(See SCHEDULE_WBS_DEPENDENCIES_R1 for its usage). See SCS_ISSUE_TRACKER_SETUP_R1 for more information about our issue tracking.
• Reviews should have reasoning for the given mark. These better be connected to concrete requirements in the standards,

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Other requirements are listed in ImportantDocs

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