Process

What is Process?

Process is a set of rules, executable steps built from human mistakes, to mechanically minimize human mistakes.

 

(It's the mechanical part of human intelligence that runs the daily world; and the non-mechanical part creates art and ruins)

 

What is a GOOD Process?

A good process defines a minimum set of steps, each of them guards quality from a problem experienced before.

 

(In engineering world, anything you let slip away is going to bite you back, badly, painfully.)

 

What is Software Quality?

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality)

Completeness; Conciseness; Consistency; Effectiveness; Efficiency;  Maintainability; Reliability; Security; Structuredness; Testability; Traceability; Understandability; Usability...

 

 

How to pratice?

 

Section	Practice	Guards What
SCM	Source control	Data consistency
	Verbose check-in message	Communication effectiveness; traceability; maintainability
	Separated step to commit formatting changes	Maintainability
	Code branching	Maintainability
Documentation	Design spec	Understandability, traceability, maintainability
	Code comment	Understandability, traceability, maintainability
	Communication archive (Email, IM/Conf call recap)	Data completeness, effectiveness/efficiency of decision making; traceability
Development	Unit test	Testability, reliability, efficiency, security
	Code review	Conciseness; consistency;  Structuredness;  Reliability;  Efficiency;  Security; understandability
	Naming convension	Understandability
Management	Risk	Reliability
	Requirement	Consistency, traceability
	Resource (estimate, planning, time tracking, bug reports filtered by PL)	Productivity, efficiency
	Release	Reliability, understandability
QA	Regression against each build	Consistency, reliability
	Well formatted bug report	Understandability, efficiency, traceability
	Cross ref between bug & chgset	Traceability
	RCA	Traceability, understandability

 

 

Common Questions

 

Question	Answer	Reason
Do we have to apply every step of a whole process from the beginning?	No	Depends on the team's engineering maturity level, comfort zone, and the team lead's confidence of process execution. Improve your team's engineering maturity iteratively, gradually - If your team doesn't even have source control before, let's start from the very basic thing - as the team gets comfortable with new practices, you can start trying/introducing more practices.
Are there any guaranties that by executing every step of a process will eliminate all quality issues?	No	It only guaranties the same mistakes won't be made again. As long as we are human, we tend to make new mistakes while the complexity increases, we'd better keep our minds open to learn new lessons and define new processes.