Talk given at the PHP Benelux conference in Antwerp, examining the points in the Joel Test and looking at how these suggested best practices apply to web development today

1. Passing the Joel Test
in the PHP World

2. Who am I?
●
Lorna Mitchell
●
PHP Developer at Ibuildings
●
Editor at http://techportal.ibuildings.com
●
Host at DPC 2010
●
Personal site http://lornajane.net
●
Twitter: @lornajane

3. 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

4. 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?

5. 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?

6. 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?

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

9. Source Control
●
Central storage
●
Change history
●
Enables collaboration
●
Manage multiple versions

10. 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/

11. Centralised Source Control
repo
user
user
user
user

12. Distributed Source Control
repo
repo
repo
repo
repo

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

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

15. 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/

18. PHP is Interpreted
●
So do we care about builds?

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

20. Sounds like ...
Continuous Integration
and Deployment

21. Deployment
●
Automated deployment
●
upload code
●
apply database patches
●
handle uploaded files and existing database
●
populate caches
●
switch over to new version
●
Automated rollback

22. Continuous Integration
●
A running process
●
Responds to commit (and/or hooks)
●
Performs tasks
●
No "forgetting" to run the tests
●
Gives feedback

23. Continuous Integration

24. Continuous Integration

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

26. ● COMPULSORY

27. I have a personal bug tracker

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

29. Bug Tracker Solutions
●
Trac http://trac.edgewall.org/
●
Mantis http://www.mantisbt.org/
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Jira http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/
●
Eventum http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/Eventum/
●
RedMine http://www.redmine.org
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Arbit http://arbittracker.org
●
Mtrack http://bitbucket.org/wez/mtrack/

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

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

33. How to Report a Bug
http://tinyurl.com/8vx3s
●
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
if a computer does anything unexpected, freeze
Try to remember as much detail as
it's not worth reporting that the you can about what you were doing to
program generated an error it when it did fall over, and if you see
unless you can also report what any patterns, mention them. Anything
the error message was. you can provide has to be some help.
Some of the worst bug reports I've ever
seen come from programmers

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

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

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

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

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

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

42. Burndown Example

43. Burndown Example
Task Est im at e M on Tue Wed Thu Fr i
Assemble pre-built frame 2 2 2 2 2 2
Paint exterior 2 2 2 2 2 2
Paint windowframes 1 1 1 1 1 1
Decorate bedrooms 8 8 8 8 8 8
Decorate kitchen 7 7 7 7 7 7
Decorate bathroom 5 5 5 5 5 5
Decorate reception rooms 7 7 7 7 7 7
Fit carpets 5 5 5 5 5 5
Add furniture 1 1 1 1 1 1

44. Burndown Example

45. Burndown Example
Task Est im at e M on Tue Wed Thu Fr i
Assemble pre-built frame 2 0 0 0 0 0
Paint exterior 2 0 0 0 0 0
Paint windowframes 1 1 1 1 1 1
Decorate bedrooms 8 8 8 8 8 8
Decorate kitchen 7 5 5 5 5 5
Decorate bathroom 5 5 5 5 5 5
Decorate reception rooms 7 7 7 7 7 7
Fit carpets 5 5 5 5 5 5
Add furniture 1 1 1 1 1 1

46. Burndown Example

47. Burndown Example

48. Burndown Example

50. Interruptions
Meetings
Email
Phone

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

53. Software
●
IDE
●
Zend Studio
●
Visual Studio
●
many free alternatives
●
Graphics
●
Photoshop
●
Paint Shop Pro
●
free alternatives

54. Hardware

59. Resources
●
Magazines
●
php|architect
●
Site memberships
●
Experts' Exchange (pay per question)
●
Safari
●
Books
●
Conferences/Events

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

64. Testers are not
developers
Developers are not
testers

65. Tools for Testing in PHP
●
Unit Testing
●
PHPUnit http://phpunit.de
●
SimpleTest http://simpletest.org
●
phpt http://qa.php.net/write-test.php
●
Browser Testing
●
Selenium http://seleniumhq.org/

66. That was the Joel Test
... what's missing?

67. Do you use test-driven
development?

68. Do you avoid reinventing
the wheel?

69. Do you support the
professional development
of your employees?

70. And?

71. ?
Questions?
http://joind.in/1249