Passing The Joel Test In The PHP World

Passing the Joel Test in the PHP World

Who am I?
Lorna Mitchell
PHP Developer at Ibuildings
Personal site http://lornajane.net
European Rep for phpwomen.org
PHPNW organiser
Twitter: @lornajane

Who is Joel?
Joel Spolsky
Founder of Fog Creek Software
Blogs at http://joelonsoftware.com
Author of numerous books, particularly Best Software Writing
Co-founder of http://stackoverflow.com

What is the Joel Test?
12 questions about your organisation
"... a highly irresponsible, sloppy test to rate the quality of a software team"
Rule-of-thumb for best practice
How does it apply to PHP?

The Joel Test (1-6)
Do you use source control?
Can you make a build in one step?
Do you make daily builds?
Do you have a bug database?
Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
Do you have an up-to-date schedule?

The Joel Test (7-12)
Do you have a spec?
Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
Do you use the best tools money can buy?
Do you have testers?
Do new candidates write code during their interview?
Do you do hallway usability testing?

What is the Joel Test For?
Scoring your current organisation
Improving your current organisation
Scoring your next organisation
http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com

Comparison Scores
Microsoft: 12/12
Ibuildings: 8 or 9
eZ Components: 8 or 9
Red Embedded: 10
Your organisation … ?

Source Control
Central storage
Change history
Enables collaboration
Manage multiple versions

Source Control Solutions
CVS
http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/
Subversion (svn)
http://subversion.tigris.org/
Git
http://git.or.cz/
Bazaar (bzr)
http://www.bazaar-vcs.org/

Traditional Source Control user repo user user user

Distributed Source Control repo repo repo repo repo

Distributed Source Control
Local machine has repository
Has full history
Commit locally
Commit globally later

Recommendations subversion Developers using command line IDE plugins git-svn, bzr-svn bridges Designers using TortoiseSVN Managers using WebSVN

Resources
git-svn
http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-svn.html
bzr-svn
http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrForeignBranches/Subversion
WebSVN
http://www.websvn.info/
TortoiseSVN
http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

Ask Me This In The Bar
Branching
Tagging
Versions

PHP is Interpreted
So do we care about builds?

What's in a Build?
Code compilation
Document generation
Test suite execution and feedback
Application deployment
Packaging

Deployment Scripts
Rollback
Databases

Sounds like Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration
A running process
Responds to commit (and/or hooks)
Performs tasks
Gives feedback

Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration Solutions
Hudson https://hudson.dev.java.net/
phpUnderControl http://phpundercontrol.org/
Xinc http://sourceforge.net/projects/xinc/

COMPULSORY

I have a personal bug tracker

Bug Trackers
Capture features/tasks
Who does what?
Progress for each task, keep updated
Can reallocate items

Bug Tracker Solutions
Trac http://trac.edgewall.org/
Mantis http://www.mantisbt.org/
Jira http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/
Eventum http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/Eventum/
Hosted Options
github
sourceforge

Joel Says
Keep bugs near to zero
Cannot estimate bug fix time
Minimise unknowns

Capturing Bugs
As a minimum, record bug
Buggy behaviour
Expected behaviour
Smallest possible replication case

How to Report a Bug
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
it's not worth reporting that the program generated an error unless you can also report what the error message was. if a computer does anything unexpected, freeze Some of the worst bug reports I've ever seen come from programmers Try to remember as much detail as you can about what you were doing to it when it did fall over, and if you see any patterns, mention them. Anything you can provide has to be some help.

Scheduling Workflow collect requirements write specification separate into discrete tasks estimate task duration

Who Estimates?
Ideally the do-er
At least someone who could do it
Never cut estimates

Schedule
What each person is doing
When it is due to finish
Can record progress/actions
What is next

Specification
Holds the information needed for each task
May include acceptance criteria
More detail means fewer misunderstandings
mockups/pictures
form fields

Agile and Timings
Agile development is reactive
Always on time at start of sprint
Estimates and spec detail can be prepared per sprint

Burndown Charts
List of tasks
Tasks have estimates
Sprint is as many tasks as you have man-hours

Burndown Example

Burndown Example (Mon)

Burndown Example (Tue)

Burndown Example (Wed)

Burndown Example (Thu)

Burndown Example (Fri)

Interruptions Meetings Phone Email

Tools
Software
Hardware
Resources
All cost money (or time, or effort)

Software
IDE
Zend Studio (£250)
Visual Studio (£200)
many free alternatives
Graphics
Photoshop (£450)
Paint Shop Pro (£400)
free alternatives

Hardware

Resources
Magazines
php|architect (£25 / year)
Site memberships
Experts' Exchange (pay per question)
Safari (£155 / year)
Books

Free resources
How to train your employer

Assessing Candidate Code
During interview
As part of recruitment process
Ibuildings uses this
The coding task makes a big impression on the candidate

Testers are not developers Developers are not testers

Tools for Testing in PHP
Unit Testing
PHPUnit
SimpleTest
phpt
Browser Testing
Selenium

Points Missing from Joel's Test?

Do you use test-driven development?

Do you avoid reinventing the wheel?

Do you help your employees to develop themselves professionally?

http://joind.in/612

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Passing The Joel Test In The PHP World

by Lorna Mitchell

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