Re: Tool for programmer team

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On Jan 22, 2008 2:40 AM, Ronald Wiplinger <tm.ronald@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> What is a good tool to coordinate a team of programmers efficiently?


that is a big question, primarily because there are many facets of
 coordination with different tools to help out.
obviously version control is one of the fundamental tools of this
coordination.
it lets you do things like maintain 'versions' of your software.  there are
many
ways to leverage this concept.  development version vs production version;
customerA version vs. customerB version and so on.  there is also the nice
aspect where multiple developers can work on the same file simultaneously.
any one of the standard tools (others have already mentioned) cvs, svn, git
will have literature on basic usage of the software and the underlying
concepts.

in general though i think the question of managing efficiently is not the
greatest
perspective.  i would instead focus on managing 'effectively', see the 7
habits of
highly effective people.  and its still somewhat of an art in the end.

To give each one a different part of the project is a start, but it needs to
> get combined at some points to be a working project.


here you are getting into several potential topics as well.  so, the main
thing here
is dependencies.  say 2 developers are given a number of 'components' to
work on.
pretty simple right, look at the requirements, devA gets tasks 1-4, devB
gets tasks
5-8; no problem.  what you need to consider here are the relationships
between the
tasks, in particular, are any of tasks 5-8 dependent upon any of tasks 1-4?
if so,
then devB could end up having to wait for devA to complete a dependent task
before
progress on said dependent task is possible.
your decision here can also have an impact on the design of the software as
a whole.
see, organizing the tasks in such a way that there are no dependencies in
the tasks
devA and devB have (or next to none anyway) then you will get a high degree
of
throughput, because they can both be working on completing different
objectives
simultaneously; its sort of like threading.  i am of the opinion however,
that this can
get you some poorly designed software.  the developers may not be leveraging
the
strengths and covering the weaknesses of each other.  furthermore, its ideal
to divide
software into horizontal layers rather than vertical towers.  its more
complicated, but
you have a better product as a result.  so anyway this topic is a big
overall decision.


> Not to debug code you have written was a hint, to see actually bugs as a
> bug
> and not as a feature.


obviously you will have to debug code you write that isnt working.
generally,
functionality is perceived as 'features' near the beginning of a development
cycle,
and as 'bugs' towards the release of a development cycle.  watch out for
deeming
everything as a bug, because then youll get trapped in a horrible realm
where you
only implement functionality to fix these 'bugs'.  you should have a cycle
with well
defined phases and stick to it.  one important phase is after a major
release, you
need to go through the code, re-organize it, consolidate things and remove
the dust.
this will keep you in good shape for the next round of features (if you
perceive them
as such ;))


> Some hinted let programmer be on different places, others say put them
> together on a big table, ...


probly you should start small with everyone at the same location until you
have the
basics down.


> Where can I find more information about that subject?
>

check out the mythical man month if you get a chance.  its a short book that
is
generally considered as legendary.  its been recommended to me by 2
completely
unrelated millionaires and the dude who wrote the Solar framework;
basically, its key ;)
(but it wont help you to master any of these modern tools)

-nathan

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