Whats in the toolbox of a successful software craftsman

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Whats in the toolbox of a successful software
craftsman

• XPDay 2007 Technical Experience
  SessionFabrizio Cannizzo, Nathan Fisher,
  Gabriela Marcionetti, Paul Moser

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Introduction

• 4 of a distributed team
• 40 members
• split in sub-teams
• London, Ipswich, Belfast, Denver (Colorado, US)
• 2y project
• Java, .NET, Ruby, PHP, Python,
• The product
• Web21C SDK
• Make phones ring in one line of code
• http//web21c.bt.com

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About BT

• Global provider of network-centric solutions,
  services and products
• (2006/07) 36 of revenues from IT services sales
• BT Company Stats
• 100,000 staff globally (25,000 outside UK)
• Operate in 170 countries
• 20 million ( Residential. Business Customers)
• Annual Turnover 20 Billion (2007)
• IT Organisation BT Design
• 8000 People
• 4000 on customer facing IT
• 6000 subcontract staff in India

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Experience

• XP/Scrum
• Tools and practices
• Open source, Free to use, Customisable
• Manage team communication
• Distributed, Highly motivated, Believers in Agile
• Comply with agile practices
• High visibility, Fast feedback, Complete
  automation
• Evolving set of tools and practices
• Some previously used tools were abandoned in
  favour of new ones
• Examples StarTeam for ScrumWorks, JBuilder for
  Eclipse, Exactor for FitNesse and Selenium,

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Toolbox
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Practices vs. Tools
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Eclipse IDE for Java development

• Tips for Fast feedback and automation in Eclipse
• Commit to Subversion .project and .classpath
• Configure Eclipse and Ant independently from the
  development workstation environment
• Use Eclipse to run Unit tests and Metrics before
  committing the recently modified files
• Dont make Eclipse build and Ant build dependant
  each other
• Use Eclipse plug-ins to collect the same Metrics
  collected in the main Ant build

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Eclipse IDE for Java development
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Eclipse IDE for Java

• So
• Automate code base sharing
• Speed up feedback by sharing config and running
  plug-ins
• But what are the problems?
• Dependence on Eclipse platform
• But remember ANT still rules
• Each Eclipse project has only one build directory
• Possible class shadowing
• Forces a naming convention on resources in the
  classpath
• Ant build dir structure is way more flexible

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ScrumWorks

• Emphasises simplicity
• All stories are the same, and treated in the same
  way no separate bug tracking system
• Ordering is the only method of determining
  priority no separate settings for priority and
  importance
• The backlog is visible to everyone and everyone
  can add to the backlog and access it

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ScrumWorks

• Burn down chart
• Same information for those inside and outside of
  the team
• Easy to see work remaining for the iteration
• Provides information on how the iteration played
  out
• Useful to examine during the retrospective, and
  to compare iterations and look at trends
• Access historic data (charts of previous
  iterations)

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ScrumWorks

• A burn down chart

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ScrumWorks

• Another burn down chart

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ScrumWorks

• Cons
• No ability to add un-estimated stories/tasks
• No ability to see who added stories and when.
• Forces tasks to be estimated in multiple of hours

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CruiseControl

• Monitors SVN and runs an Ant build if something
  changes
• Ant build output can be merged into the reporting
  web application
• Alerting mechanism after build completion
• Peers are notified for unsuccessful builds
• Tags successful builds in source control
• Builds and publishes deployment artefacts

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CruiseControl

• Automation
• Build happens Automatically every check-in
• The process looks after itself
• JMX console to drive the CruiseControl server
• Visibility
• All can access the (customisable) reports on the
  project builds
• Everybody can subscribe to alerts
• Produces reports that are integrated into the
  build report page
• Unit tests and CAT outputs
• Metrics
• SVN repository modifications
• Access to past build reports
• Feedback
• Rapid feedback of build status after every build
• Depending on the total build time
• Runs the same build that can be run in the
  developers PC

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CruiseControl

• Extensibility
• Custom reports and artefacts
• Can run any Ant build script
• Multiplatform and behaves similarly on each
• Java, .NET, Ruby,
• No vendor tie-in
• Most of the configuration is coded in XSLT and
  Ant XML

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CruiseControl

• Cons
• Can be difficult to setup and configure
• Seems slower than building locally
• Sometime incongruence between platform versions
• Interface can be a bit clunky

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Selenium

• Runs in the browser
• Accurate feedback
• Support multiple browsers on multiple OS
• 3 modes of running
• Selenium IDE
• Selenium on Rails
• Selenium Remote Control

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Selenium IDE

• Easy to automate tests
• Record/playback
• Not complete automation
• Firefox only
• Limited to just testing stuff in the browser
• Difficult to maintain tests

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Selenium-on-Rails

• Visible test results
• Test results published
• Complete automation (depending on what you have
  to test)
• Works out of the box
• Must be using Rails
• Limited to just testing stuff in the browser (or
  awkward workarounds)
• Immediate feedback
• Easily automatically run from the build
• Can run on developers workstation
• Difficult to trace cause of failing test

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Selenium Remote Control

• Visible test results
• Results can be published
• Complete automation
• Run automatically from the build, supports
  multiple languages
• Can test other things outside of the browser
• Immediate feedback
• Easily automatically run from the build
• Can run on developers workstation

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What else is in the toolbox

• Fitnesse
• Wiki
• TiddlyWiki, Confluence
• Communication
• BT MeetMe
• MS LiveMeeting
• MS Communicator
• Webcams
• Entertainment
• Coffee maker
• Vending machine
• MS XBox
• Foosball

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Conclusions

• Tools
• Eclipse
• ScrumWorks
• CruiseControl
• Selenium
• Practices
• Project Status Visibility
• Complete Automation
• Immediate Feedback
• It works for us
• Always evolving and changing

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• Questions and Answers
• ?
• (please come and talk to us at our poster, too)

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