Re: Shift from a single developer team to a multiple developer team
There are several things that I would suggest, in moving from a single developer to team development dynamic: Source Control is critical (personal pref - VSS doesn't cut it, go to SVN or Git) Developers should/must setup/maintain their own development environments Development and initial testing should be done locally (on user's desktop), QA and final testing on a centralized staging server, then finally deploy to production Local, Staging, and Production environments should match each other as closely as possible Establish a good set of Coding Guidelines, that everyone on the team must follow going forward Write standardized naming conventions (in your Coding Guidelines) of variables, directory and file structure, db architecture, HTML id's and classes, etc. Steve Cutter Blades Adobe Certified Professional Advanced Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 Developer Co-Author of Learning Ext JS http://www.packtpub.com/learning-ext-js/book _ http://blog.cutterscrossing.com On 10/20/2009 8:13 AM, Eric Cobb wrote: A friend of mine originally asked this question on LinkedIn's ColdFusion Programmers group but didn't get much response, so I told him I would post it here to see what you guys thought. His original post can be seen here: http://bit.ly/4aJjes Here's his post: I have been the primary developer on an application for a number of years and we have recently gotten the additional resources to bring on 3 more programmers. I am excited and terrified. We have a Visual Source Safe environment set up for file sharing management, but I am curious if anyone has made this transition and has any tips for how to head off issues down the road. The application is somewhat modular, but certainly not to an object oriented extent. I am no project manager and am fearful that without proper planning we are going to be stepping on each other's toes an awful lot. ~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:327372 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
Re: Shift from a single developer team to a multiple developer team
Second that, plus, and this is really important - talk to each other. We have a daily 5 minute catchup and it nearly always brings up little things that need further discussion between two dev's (that probably wouldn't have taken place had a discussion of what everyone's doing today had not). HTH Dominic 2009/10/20 Cutter (ColdFusion) cold.fus...@cutterscrossing.com There are several things that I would suggest, in moving from a single developer to team development dynamic: Source Control is critical (personal pref - VSS doesn't cut it, go to SVN or Git) Developers should/must setup/maintain their own development environments Development and initial testing should be done locally (on user's desktop), QA and final testing on a centralized staging server, then finally deploy to production Local, Staging, and Production environments should match each other as closely as possible Establish a good set of Coding Guidelines, that everyone on the team must follow going forward Write standardized naming conventions (in your Coding Guidelines) of variables, directory and file structure, db architecture, HTML id's and classes, etc. Steve Cutter Blades Adobe Certified Professional Advanced Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 Developer Co-Author of Learning Ext JS http://www.packtpub.com/learning-ext-js/book _ http://blog.cutterscrossing.com ~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:327374 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
Re: Shift from a single developer team to a multiple developer team
I second what Cutter mentions here. They are common practices and really work well on getting the job done within development teams. In regards to the development/staging/production environments, you should make sure that only one maybe two people are responsible for pushing code to at least production. Too many people pushing code could really screw something up. I noticed that you said your application is somewhat modular. This can play to your benefit as you can separate a large task by assigning a person to take care of front end work, while another can take care of back end work. It keeps the team talking with one another as well as can keep toes from being stepped on during the development cycle. Basically you work on this and you work on that and let it come together in the end. -Pat On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 7:26 AM, Cutter (ColdFusion) cold.fus...@cutterscrossing.com wrote: There are several things that I would suggest, in moving from a single developer to team development dynamic: Source Control is critical (personal pref - VSS doesn't cut it, go to SVN or Git) Developers should/must setup/maintain their own development environments Development and initial testing should be done locally (on user's desktop), QA and final testing on a centralized staging server, then finally deploy to production Local, Staging, and Production environments should match each other as closely as possible Establish a good set of Coding Guidelines, that everyone on the team must follow going forward Write standardized naming conventions (in your Coding Guidelines) of variables, directory and file structure, db architecture, HTML id's and classes, etc. Steve Cutter Blades Adobe Certified Professional Advanced Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 Developer Co-Author of Learning Ext JS http://www.packtpub.com/learning-ext-js/book _ http://blog.cutterscrossing.com On 10/20/2009 8:13 AM, Eric Cobb wrote: A friend of mine originally asked this question on LinkedIn's ColdFusion Programmers group but didn't get much response, so I told him I would post it here to see what you guys thought. His original post can be seen here: http://bit.ly/4aJjes Here's his post: I have been the primary developer on an application for a number of years and we have recently gotten the additional resources to bring on 3 more programmers. I am excited and terrified. We have a Visual Source Safe environment set up for file sharing management, but I am curious if anyone has made this transition and has any tips for how to head off issues down the road. The application is somewhat modular, but certainly not to an object oriented extent. I am no project manager and am fearful that without proper planning we are going to be stepping on each other's toes an awful lot. ~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:327375 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
RE: Shift from a single developer team to a multiple developer team
Just to add: Documentation, documentation, documentation... -Original Message- From: Patrick Santora [mailto:patwe...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 7:37 AM To: cf-talk Subject: Re: Shift from a single developer team to a multiple developer team I second what Cutter mentions here. They are common practices and really work well on getting the job done within development teams. In regards to the development/staging/production environments, you should make sure that only one maybe two people are responsible for pushing code to at least production. Too many people pushing code could really screw something up. I noticed that you said your application is somewhat modular. This can play to your benefit as you can separate a large task by assigning a person to take care of front end work, while another can take care of back end work. It keeps the team talking with one another as well as can keep toes from being stepped on during the development cycle. Basically you work on this and you work on that and let it come together in the end. -Pat On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 7:26 AM, Cutter (ColdFusion) cold.fus...@cutterscrossing.com wrote: There are several things that I would suggest, in moving from a single developer to team development dynamic: Source Control is critical (personal pref - VSS doesn't cut it, go to SVN or Git) Developers should/must setup/maintain their own development environments Development and initial testing should be done locally (on user's desktop), QA and final testing on a centralized staging server, then finally deploy to production Local, Staging, and Production environments should match each other as closely as possible Establish a good set of Coding Guidelines, that everyone on the team must follow going forward Write standardized naming conventions (in your Coding Guidelines) of variables, directory and file structure, db architecture, HTML id's and classes, etc. Steve Cutter Blades Adobe Certified Professional Advanced Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 Developer Co-Author of Learning Ext JS http://www.packtpub.com/learning-ext-js/book _ http://blog.cutterscrossing.com On 10/20/2009 8:13 AM, Eric Cobb wrote: A friend of mine originally asked this question on LinkedIn's ColdFusion Programmers group but didn't get much response, so I told him I would post it here to see what you guys thought. His original post can be seen here: http://bit.ly/4aJjes Here's his post: I have been the primary developer on an application for a number of years and we have recently gotten the additional resources to bring on 3 more programmers. I am excited and terrified. We have a Visual Source Safe environment set up for file sharing management, but I am curious if anyone has made this transition and has any tips for how to head off issues down the road. The application is somewhat modular, but certainly not to an object oriented extent. I am no project manager and am fearful that without proper planning we are going to be stepping on each other's toes an awful lot. ~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:327377 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
