ÉnKép - takacsot

First, a little history to how the big nasty project starts!  A huge software development project is dreamed up to solve some complex problem.  Great, that's what software is all about!  But things start going bad right on day one!  How?Well, the managers and executives decide that they are going to plan every detail of the software project to the most minute detail.  They then assign a project manager to manage all the developers and let them start building each piece independently one-by-one.  A few weeks before shipping, the project managers try and combine everything, and all is well right?  Wrong... Disaster!  The project is delayed!  Days pass, weeks, months, years!  What the *beep* just happened here! What to do?

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How is a skyscraper built?  First lay the foundation, then put in floors, with the elevator shafts, then build floor after floor, then the interior, etc.  Could you imagine what would happen if every piece was built in a different site, and then later everything was dropped off at the construction site to be assembled?  Even if you had the best plan to assemble everything together, you would have problems!  Things wouldn't fit and would have to be re-done, architects would change their minds, pieces would be missing, and the building would look like a bunch of match sticks!

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1. Source Control
2. Continuous Integration
3. Bug Tracking System
4. Patching System. I'm not going to get into installer issues here, but you need a patching system.  You do not want to deploy installs upon installs to your testers
   
5. Disable Untested Features, Turn off every feature in your application that has not been completely bug tested and approved by your users.  If your project is in trouble, you have hundreds of features implemented at 80%, and you probably think they are at 90% - 95%, but they aren't.
6. List Major Features
7. List Top 20% of Major Features
8. Detail Out Top 20%
9. Plan The Week
10. Create Branch
11. Build Release for Testers
12. Testers Take Flight
13. Software Developers Work on Trunk
14. Approve Patch
15. Continue Steps 9 to 14. Continue your efforts over and over until you get the 20% done, hopefully this is not as far away as you think!

Your goal is to focus on small features, get them done, and send out a release for testers. 

Your team will be extremely motivated to be releasing workable software every week!

When testers find bugs, your developers will fix them faster because the code they wrote is fresh in their minds! 

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