Re: OT: Development Process (was Re: Uninitialized values?)
On 2008-04-23 14:47:19 -0400, Andy Champ <no.way@nospam.com> said:
James Kanze wrote:
I'm seriously telling you that any bug which occurred downstream
from development was investigated, and the process modified so
that it wouldn't reoccur. This process was initially instigated
because we more or less had to: we were delivering a turn-key
system with contractual penalties for downtime---every minute
the system wasn't available, the customer billed us. What we
found out was that this process also reduced our development
costs: it's actually cheaper to produce quality software than it
is to produce junk. (I suspect that this is only true up to a
point, and that at one error per 100KLoc, we hadn't reached that
point.)
James,
If most people posted this up I'd think it was BS - but I've seen
enough from you to be pretty sure it isn't. We've had all sorts of
people in to advise us on processes, and none of them has come up with
anything that would be a real change from the way we've always written
software:
Engage brain, double check it, then test it to death. About the only
thing that's changed is a formal code review - and I know that does
miss things.
I'd be fascinated to know what you are doing. Is it documented anywhere?
Take a look at "Quality is Free", by Philip Crosby. His core analogy is
an automobile assembly line. If a car comes off the line without
headlights, you put headlights on it. But you don't stop there: you go
to the station where headlights are installed and figure out why that
car didn't get headlights.
--
Pete
Roundhouse Consulting, Ltd. (www.versatilecoding.com) Author of "The
Standard C++ Library Extensions: a Tutorial and Reference
(www.petebecker.com/tr1book)