[dba-VB] SCRUM: Northwind .NET Product BackLog Planning Game...

Salakhetdinov Shamil mcp2004 at mail.ru
Wed Mar 18 07:49:04 CDT 2009


Hello Mark,

Yes, source code control is important and very desirable but when resources are limited, and especially when there are many other tasks to solve to release final product then I suppose that automated source code control can be postponed. I personaly have experience of working in distributed team on several projects withoput automated source control - and that worked OK, and all code was available when needed etc.... 

The first project is small, and all code coordination can be done manually without that much overhead I suppose...

Yes, this was my initiative yesterday to start talking on SCCS expecting that maybe somebody will come with ready to use solution/experience but my current proposal (because we do not have such experience as a team) is to postpone source code control for now, and to introduce it if we will make the project quicker than we will plan to do it. For now for this small project we can just split it into separate parts (source files within one solution) and have somebody to play the role of SCCS manually.

In my opinion good candidates for distributed SCCS seems to be:

CodePlex (http://www.codeplex.com/) and
Bazaar (http://bazaar-vcs.org/ , https://launchpad.net/)

Here is how CodePlex can be used:
http://codeplexclient.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Workflow&referringTitle=Home

still I'd postpone trying to do introduce SCCS in the very beginning of our project if only somebody of the team wouldn't want to invest their free time into that trial and to make a short instruction for everybody how to have our project seemslessly published and kept on CodePlex...

Mark, I'm playing the role of SCRUMMaster and what I'm doing now (commenting here the issue of SCCS) is in fact shouldn't be my responsibility as I shoudln't influence team members solution to use or not to use SCCS...
...but you're a ProductOwner and according to this role asking to use SCCS by the team is also unusual practice - ProductOwner cares about product features and products releases and all the rest is not interesting to the ProductOwner usually, even "forbidden" to mention accoridng to SCRUM process as far as I understand it...

But that's OK I suppose you and myself are currently talking about SCCS because here we currently have to have a kind of mixture of roles but when proposing/telling something we have to be very constructive and goal oriented  to not fall into lengthy discussions on "best practices" etc. without developing and delivering real software customers are waiting for - if we can live without SCCS for some time let it be so?

I think that our main customers are Access-D(dba-VB) memebers and you as a ProductOwner - would you like to see us (SCRUMMaster and team members) building robust SCCS and spending most of the time on that activity or you wanted us to have NorthWind.NET implemented for you to play with an see how it is done?

Recap:

- let's postpone SCCS usage in our environment if only somebody (Mark Breen?) will not come with ready to use and free solution for every team member to start using in fifteen minutes/half-an hour?

- let's keep collecting info on available SCCS options to try them in the end of our projects if we will have enough time left.

Thank you.

--
Shamil




 
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Breen <marklbreen at gmail.com>
To: dba-vb at databaseadvisors.com
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:43:20 +0000
Subject: Re: [dba-VB] SCRUM: Northwind .NET Product BackLog Planning Game...

> Hello Shamil,
> As a member of a four person team a couple of years ago, we had some issues
> with source control.  At the time, there was pressure to start work on the
> project so we neglected the issue of centralized source control.   It became
> a major issue to the project and was one of the reasons why the project was
> only a limited success.  Four years later, it still remains difficult to get
> access to the code on that project.
> 
> If we can iron on the centralized source control now, and make it seamless,
> I believe that it would be the best choice.
> 
> FYI.  We tried three different systems / storage locations, what we found on
> our project was that some aspects worked better for some sites, (we had US,
> Ireland and Germany).  The German guys really loved their solution but of
> course they had LAN access to the server.  The US guys were happy enough
> with the German solution but it was slow.  But the Irish guys had some
> routing problems that meant that it took 30 mins to check out a small
> solution.  ----  The point being here that the chosen solution must work
> well for all team members.
> 
> My personal opinion is also that if source control is quick and fast, it
> becomes second nature and is not an obstacle to smooth work, what ever
> architecture we choose should be practiced a few times by all team members
> so that we can all check in and out quickly and without fear in our hearts.
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 2009/3/17 Salakhetdinov Shamil <mcp2004 at mail.ru>- Hide quoted text -
> 
> 
> > Hi Mike and SCRUM team,
> >
> > If BAZAAR needs Python interpreter I'd not use it (at least now as we all
> > need to learn a lot of new stuff) - on first glance I understood BAZZAR can
> > be used locally by running command line utilites  but for those utilities
> > simple batch files should be possible to create (e.g. I used CVS this way),
> > and if used via Lauchpad then somehow via web interface with upload/download
> > and again coordinate locally using command line utils via .bat files...
> >
> > Let's not tie ourselves with Python if BAZAAR needs it? Although if Python
> > interpreter and Bazaar installation is as simple as unzipping some files and
> > setting some runtime environment variables then why not try to use them?
> >
> > Source control is desirable as it sets some boundaries to keep code well
> > organized but in fact I suppose we can work without any source control
> > system for this first project as there shoudln't be that much source files
> > in it to share...
> >
> > Thank you.
> >
> > --
> > Shamil
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: "Mike Mattys" <mmattys at rochester.rr.com>
> > To: "Salakhetdinov Shamil" <mcp2004 at mail.ru>,"Discussion concerning Visual
> > Basic and related programming issues." <dba-vb at databaseadvisors.com>
> > Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:01:46 -0400
> > Subject: Re: [dba-VB]SCRUM: Northwind .NET Product BackLog Planning Game...
> >
> > > Hmm, Python. Heard a lot, never tried.
> > > I'll have to download it and see if it runs.
> >
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