The benefits to “check in early and often”

I am a huge advocate of checking in early and often. I’ve seen many a project get burnt by the developer who saves 3 weeks of work for a single “glorious” check-in.

I favor frequent check-ins because it’s:

1. Cheaper integration. Someone once said “Integration is pay me now or pay me later”, and I find it much easier to pay now. Especially with automated builds and continuous integration, it’s much easier to check in 10 little changes than 1 big change (Sometimes I think of it like being easier to hold my breath for 30 seconds, ten times, as opposed to holding it for 5 minutes straight). Why? Because with bigger changes, you inevitably get farther out of sync – especially on critical shared files – and there’s more to forget.
2. More objective measure of what you really have: Code that isn’t checked in, that just works on a developer’s machine, doesn’t really exist. They might as well say “it works in my head”. Once you actually get the code past a build server’s policy, then we can see what’s really there.
3. Earlier Detection: We all know it’s cheaper to fix a bug or redesign the sooner you catch it. I’d rather developers check in code early so we can quick detect things (“why is there 5000 lines but no tests?”)
4. More Modular: Checking in 10 chunks of code, where each one works, implies more granular and modular code. I.e. code that can at least be split into multiple check-ins is more modular than code that can’t be split at all.

Of course there’s always exceptions (you do a massive refactoring, etc…), but those should be the exception, not the rule.

Most of the time, in my experience, large check-ins by developers means something bad – spaghetti code, tightly-coupled code, code that was trying to hide under the radar until right before the deadline and then the developer says “oops, I just don’t have time to change it”, or something like that. Think of it like this: there is zero benefit to you to have to wait one month before seeing what a developer is doing, but there is benefit to early detection of code, so risk-reward wise it’s better to check-in early.

Note that for these purposes, a shelve set is not the same as a check-in. Shelvesets are private, and hence deliberately avoid the benefits listed above (which some say is a feature). For example, you mostly likely don’t have builds on a private shelfset. For a developer to say “I put my 20,000 lines in a shelveset” is misguided– use a branch instead if you need to.

So how to encourage check-in early and often?

You could write a whole chapter on this, but here's a short answer: You can explain the benefits so some developers are internally motivated, or you can make it official policy so that other developers are externally “motivated”. You can leverage the TFS Code Churn tables to automatically monitor activity, or even just view check-ins in Team Explorer, to see how often a developer checks in and how much code has changed. If a developer or contractor insists that they need to wait 1 month to check-in their code when “it’s ready”, you’ve got problems, much like if a developer insisted they didn’t need to follow any other policy or good practice.

Is development for sissies?

I was reading the book "Tales to make boys out of men" (I have 2 young ferocious gorillas boys). It was filled with adventurous stories of courage and valor who fought battles in the jungle or trekked through the frost-bitten Antarctic. Then here am I, a software engineer, essentially doing a "desk job" in an air-conditioned office with free coffee.

Sometimes I see people who have two categories: "tough-guy" jobs like fighter pilot, football player, or astronaut,  and "sissy" jobs like software engineer sitting behind a desk. What do I tell my impressionable kids?

I see it like this. "Tough-guy" jobs are honorable, and you certainly need them. But don't dismiss a "desk job" as being a sissy. Many IT engineers need to work with the most ferocious, dangerous, lethal, destructive animal on the planet – other people.  People inevitably have competing demands and interests, there are ruthless sharks out there, and any job that must constantly deal with people cannot, by definition, be a sissy job.

Second, developers also must work with the most uncaring and cold-hearted beast ever to exist – the compiler. The compiler doesn't care if you've had a bad day, if your code should work, or if you've spent a hundred hours on a 5 minute task. It has no grace. Such an inhuman vacuum is not the field of sissies.

Furthermore, other people are depending on the IT engineer's work. You could have a million customers using your financial application, or a billion dollars of revenue flowing through your processing system. Hackers attack your system every day. And the system has got to work. To have that sort of responsibility is not sissy-like.

Lastly, software engineering is so complex that you inevitably make mistakes (sometimes really big ones) – and then need to own up to them. That takes courage.

Ok, it's still not Rambo, but software engineering is not for the weak.

10 Reasons why the build works locally but fails on the build server

This is a braindump:

1.       Developer did not check all the files in, or developer doesn't have the latest files (sometimes TFS hiccups getting latest dlls files).

2.       Different modes (release vs. debug). Either #if DEBUG, or project is unmarked in configuration manager.

3.       Different bin structure - each project gets its own (Default for visual studio), vs. single shared bin for all (default for TFS). This is especially common when different versions of the same assembly is referenced in multiple projects in the same solution.

4.       Different platform/configuration

5.       The build is running other steps (perhaps a packaging or command-line unit tests)

6.       Different bitness, say developer workstation is 64-bit, but build server is 32-bit, and some extra step breaks because of this.

7.       Rebuild-vs-build. Developer not running a rebuild. Hence there's an error in creating a dll, but it already exists on dev machine due to some other process, but build server fails.

8.       Workspace mapping is incorrect – TFS not getting all the files it needs

9.       Unit test code coverage – visual studio (at least 2008) can be very brittle running command line unit tests and code coverage.

10.   Treat warnings as compile errors – depending on your process, the build server may fail on these, but Visual studio may only flag you with a warning (which dev ignores)

Why I'm liking Pluralsight

My department had scheduled to send each of us to training. We had different training classes, and the specific vendor for my class needed to cancel. That left me short notice to squeeze in different training by year end. So, being creative, I got an online subscription to Pluralsight instead of the traditional training.

PluralSight is a set of online .Net videos created by industry experts.  Each video seems 2-4 hours' worth of power point slides and code demos. It's worked out very well. What I'm liking so far:

·         Different medium - After 10 linear feet of books, I like the different medium. Hearing someone's voice seems to trigger a different part of the brain for remembering, and seeing the demo from end-to-end has obvious benefits over isolated screenshots in a book or article.

·         It's on-demand – It's hard to make it to physical events. I like the inherent benefit of on-demand training, where I can listen on my schedule (by which I mean everyone else's schedule - my kid's sleeping schedule, my company's work schedule, etc…)

·         Professional content - There are tons of free videos online, but these are often like reactionary scraps. To break the ice with a new technology, it helps to have a systematic 2-hour block that goes from end-to-end.

·         Track progress – Some personality types won't care about this, but I like how it tracks completion progress through courses. It's almost like finishing levels of a video game.

·         Coordinated – I don't need 10 videos all telling different or rehashed angles of the same thing (which is often what I'd find in a google search) – rather I need one good video that nails it, or a collection of videos that each explains their specific part well.

·         Continually Improving – They seem to come out with a few new "courses" every week.

It's getting to the point where rather than watch my favorite sitcom, I watch the next Pluralsight video.

Measure what you actually care about

Our three kids are currently 2, 4, and 6. We are starting to potty train the youngest. She's a cute thing, but you can imagine it's always a trying experience. Because I'm very anti-ivory-tower, and think the best developers are the ones grounded in the practically of everyday life (such as potty-training a two-year old), I can't help but think how this relates to software engineering.

Here's how: we found ourselves rewarding our daughter every time she successfully went potty. It sounded reasonable, but we remembered that it's actually misleading – we're rewarding the wrong thing. What we really want is not a two-year old that goes potty every 20 minutes in order to earn her chocolate-chip, but rather a two-year old that remains dry. Even two-year olds can figure out how to game the system.

This sort of misguided measurement is what often occurs in demoralized IT shops. For example, the main compensation is based on the number of bugs fixed or number of UI screens created (because it's easy to measure), but what they actually care about is increased functionality or quality. The irony is that this often encourages the exact opposite of what the boss really wants. Just like I don't want  a two-year old going "tinkle" every 20 minutes, I don't want developers gaming the system by fixing large quantities of irrelevant or duplicate bugs.

The blog post doesn't have a quick answer, I mainly just wanted to write about my daughter's potty-training adventures while she was taking a nap. But a quick approach is to focus on what you actually care about (say quality), and then work backwards thinking "what would high quality look like", such as less production complaints, les support time, less application down time, less developer time spent fixing bugs, etc… Then focus how to measure those things.

Whatever requirements we're given tomorrow, we got to get that done

I've seen a thousand hacks justified with "We got to get it done". You know the drill – copy and paste 200 lines of code, hard-code data that should be configurable, skip any automated testing, etc… Such hacks come at the expense of future flexibility (i.e. good design).

However, ironically, given the continual feature change, scope creep, and unknowns in software development, the real question becomes "Whatever requirements we're given tomorrow, we got to get that done."

This second question, the more realistic one for long-term departments, brings completely opposite connotations than the first. Instead of cranking out a feature now with no concern for maintenance costs or flexibility tomorrow, developers need to prepare – i.e. ensure they have automation, builds, reuse, etc…

Besides technical debt, the other problem I have with the "just get it done now" crowd is the false sense of nobility. Often these devs insist that they're doing a good thing (putting out a fire), but really it's just punting the problem down the road for someone else to pay while they boast how quickly they've solved it.

Why you’re in trouble if you rely on 30-page SOPs

Every organization wants to have its development processes documented into Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for the obvious reasons – faster onboarding, standardization, auditing, etc… The Holy Grail is the potential to hire a bunch of contractors (or outsource), tell them to read a novel worth of documentation, and then they’re fully up to speed a week later. SOPs also imply that the team knows what it is doing and has a plan, which is one indicator of a mature organization. SOPs are also a prerequisite for outsourcing, an appealing option for large organizations.

While documentation has its benefits, you can’t rely solely on large documents to communicate process and onboard new people. Here are at least four common problems, and it will result in a frustrated and confused team:

1. The doc itself will be wrong (or outdated), such as skipping steps or assuming institutional knowledge. This is especially common if you hire outside consultants (with no institutional knowledge of your systems) to document your process.
2. It’s easier to bluff a doc – a busy tech writer will hurry the doc, thinking it looks done ("I’ve written 50 pages!"), but the content won’t be correct or specific enough.
3. Screens will vary (example: the software is upgraded or the OS doesn’t match).
4. People simply won’t read the docs, they’re skim and miss details.

Several ways to communicate an SOP instead of just 30-page MSWord docs:

• Favor automation over documentation where possible. The best document is an automated script. A script is usually kept up to date (compared to a doc) because developers need the script to work. It’s also much faster (and less error-prone) for a new guy to kick off the script than to tediously step through 20 pages of instructions.
• Lower the cost of documenting by leveraging a wiki. Developers are far more likely to update or correct a wiki then a big MSWord doc on SharePoint.
• Favor simplifying the process so the doc itself is simpler.