Documentation

Our team currently has a task to update our design documentation based on the changes we made when migrating to a new tool set. The amount of documentation change is small. Our goal was to ensure that functionality remained unchanged during our tools upgrade. We only had to modify one small part of report invocation. Unfortunately we found out that nobody knew the process to perform the update.

Part of the confusion stems from the fact that the software maintenance is being performed by a new company that recently won the contract. In addition, the customer decided to become more involved with the documentation management. This just adds complexity to an already complicated task. Previously the development team used to make design changes in Rational Rose. We would use Rational SoDA to extract design information from Rose to produce the design document. But SoDA has some problems which we were unable to resolve. So the process changed to involve SoDA generation with some additional markups by hand. Things got hectic when the previous company that did maintenance was wrapping up their contract. The SoDA generation was dropped and a Microsoft Word document was edited exclusively to incorporate design changes.

Currently one individual in our client organization is tasked with managing the latest version of all documents. This includes our large design documents. One would think that development could go to this individual to get the latest version of the design doc for update. But we have been cautioned that this individual sometimes gives out the wrong version of the document. Furthermore I do not think any of the procedures are documented. And if they are, the development team does not know about them. I sense a severe weakness in the maturity of the process here. This will most likely come out if we were to be audited.

I think somebody is working on these problems. This impacts the day to day work when a developer needs to document some design changes. In general, coders do not like to perform documentation tasks. So nobody is sweating this problem just yet. However we are embarking on the design for a number of new features requested by the client. Therefore things are about to get very hectic real quick in our documentation world. Good luck to us.

Duplicate Code

We have a suite of applications that we maintain for our customer. Each application has its own build script. This is pretty good since there is a code controlled way to generate a release. Any developer should be able to log into a configuration controlled machine and run the build script. Our project takes this further in that no programmers actually run the build. A separate configuration management team runs the build.

Recently we upgraded the tools we use for development. This has created the need to modify our build scripts to use the new tools to build the software. The script modification task has been distributed among a couple developers. It is strange that a number of the developers have asked me where exactly the build script code is located. These guys are not slackers. They did the work and searched our source code control system. The problem is that they found 3 separate copies of the build script code checked in.

Off the top of my head I did not know which of the 3 versions was the real build script code used for Production. Maybe this is written down somewhere. But it is definitely not documented in any well known location. I gave the developers my best guess as to where the build script code would be. But this has identified some break downs in our build process. The same code should not be duplicated in multiple locations within our source control system. And more importantly, the location of the code should be documented somewhere along with other details about the build process.

I truly do not know whether we will be correcting these process problems any time soon. It appears we are now in a rush to get the build scripts modified and working with the new tools. There is a schedule to keep that is critical. This reminds me of some similar problems in the actual code base of the applications. We have a number of functions that are duplicated in our code base. When the function is needed, one of the copies is called at run time. You can imagine the maintenance problems this will incur. If you fix a bug in one of the location, you need to know that the code is duplicated in many places, and track down and fix the code there as well. A lot of times this problem was created due to schedule constraints.

Releasing Software Fixes

My day job consists of performing software maintenance on a suite of software applications. That means I fix bugs. The customer is a government organization that we usually do not talk about. We have process controls to ensure that any changes to the software are controlled and managed. Today I thought I would go over the process of releasing bug fixes to give you an idea of what all is involved at my work.

Let's suppose that the customer has opened a trouble ticket on a problem in our software. To start with, our Help Desk team enters the information in our bug tracking tool. Then the Help Desk assigns the ticket to the team lead of one of our teams. The team lead often does a little analysis on the problem. Then the ticket is assigned to a developer on their team. These days I fill the team lead role for the application developers. But I am also a developer myself (sometimes I assign problems to myself).

While you are working on a trouble ticket, you are to enter your progress in our bug tracking tool. This allows the Help Desk to provide status to our customers. Let us suppose that I get lucky enough to figure out the problem and determine the code changes needed to correct it. Here are the steps I would take to get the software fix to our users:

• Document all code changes in a Microsoft Word document
• Generate a unit test plan to verify the fix
• Obtain a peer review of the code changes and unit tests
• Check the code changes into source code control
• Request a release number from the configuration management team
• Check the release number information into source control config files
• Label all files that are to be included in the release
• Generate the documentation that accompanies the release
• Submit a request ticket to the configuration management team to build the software
• Review the configuration management team work for technical problems
• Forward the software release to the internal test team

This is the list of steps that are taken for every single software change that corrects a bug in our system. Things get more complicated when there are more than one defect corrected in any given release. Other complications include the fact that some of our code is in a C++ client application, while some other code is in database stored procedures. The above list does not take into account all the additional steps that occur after the application development team is done their part in the release.

Hacking Software

I run a small informal software business on the side of my day job. Recently I have been writing small programs which perform tasks that Internet hackers might do. The programs have been released on my Black of Hat blog. The interesting thing about this effort is that I have employed very little process in developing my own software.

For example, my latest program "Crawl" is one that scans a web page and extracts the URL links. I thought about the problem for a couple days. Then I went directly into coding this morning and developed version 1 of the software. Late in the morning I built my release version of the application. Finally I posted this app on my blog.

So far my application appears to be working. I have received no reports abouts bugs in it or it not working on different systems. There was not rigorous process applied to this application. I did do some thinking before coding. But I did not write down and specifications or designs. I really did not perform any formal testing on the application. And the software was developed in record time with not many problems.

In retrospect, this may have been a special case of software development. The application was not very complex or large in scope. The development team was just one person. And the developer (me) was the same of the person who determined the requirements. Things get more complicated and may require process overhead when they scale up. However for my side software business, the real question is whether I would gain any benefit it an added layer of formal process was imposed on top. I am still mulling this question over in my head.

Perhaps I shall try adding a formal process to the next application I develop for my side business. I can track how much additional time I spend on the process part of development. And perhaps I can try to objectively rate the quality or amount of problems in a process controlled application release. The results are not some theory that will get documented in a paper. They will help decide how to run my own software business which I hope to succeed.

Disorganization

My company is trying to close out the project we are working on. This is due to the fact that we lost the contract to perform the work. There are a number of personnel still working on the project. If they are not busy on other tasks, they are supposed to be working on locating, organizing, and storing our documentation. I assigned our least busy developer to work full time on this task. I told him to go find out what needs to be done, and do it.

In retrospect, this may not have been the best direction to give. But I did not want to get bogged down in the details as I have other priorities to attend to. There is an individual who is assigned to the documentation task. And there are many people working on the task. But after working for a while, we had a meeting where it became clear to me that this task was in a state of chaos.

I directed a few key members to come meet me in my office. At this follow-on meeting, I declared that we needed to finalize and document a folder structure in which all our application team documents needed to go. The person who was in charge of the task said it was their responsibility to determine what needed to be done. I concurred. However I also pointed out that it was evident there was not method to the madness of the task. Later that afternoon, the task leader put together a document demonstrating a folder structure for organizing documents for each team. In addition, the actual goals of the task we finally articulated in writing.

Sometimes you need to sit down, figure out what you need to do, and document the plan. This is required when the task at hand requires more than one person, and absolutely needed when it involves more than one team. One would think that tasks such as document collection and organization are nothing like rocket science. But without a plan, and more importantly a documented plan, you have all the ingredients for utter chaos in the workplace. Why must we have to relearn these lessons year after year?

Document Organization

Let's suppose that you have actually documented the main processes used. How does one access this information? When I first came to my current project, you got handed a huge three ring binder full of information. This was good in that I could read up without even having a computer or access yet. However this got to be a pain when the documents needed to by updated. And as staff transitioned through the project, the binder and documents seemed to get lost.

More recently our application development team put together a small Microsoft Access database. This contained all kinds of information pertinent to our team. It was nice because you could search it based on keywords. Updated were easy. There was some trouble when two or more developers tried to update the same document at the same time. But this was an infrequent occurrence. Since this was a side project, the server where the database was hosted was not up 100% of the time. Still it was a useful project.

Over the last year or two, the project has tried to organize and assemble all documentation in a single place. The goal was to have a common structure for each team. This was a monumental task. A couple people have tried to accomplish the task. They have failed. Now we have a full team working on this. I do not want to be negative, but I am not expecting much from this. The scope is large. And you usually don't get your best people assigned to a task like this. Such a shame.

Process Matters

My team performs software maintenance on a legacy product. Basically we respond to software trouble tickets. These tickets are tracked closely by the customer. Our company's help desk team has been recently hounding us for "estimated resolution dates" for each ticket. So development has been figuring out, given what we know about the problems, what is the most likely date when we can produce a fix.

Something did not seem right about the Help Desk stating they were being hounded by the customer for estimated resolution dates. So I decided to participate in the next meeting with the customer. It was here that I found out what the customer was looking for. They wanted to know what was the date that we could expect a user to be able to experience the fix and verify that the trouble ticket had been resolved.

That about blew my mind. There is often a huge gap between the time we release a fix to our customer, and when the user actually experiences the fix. Our customer has a lengthy configuration management process. Our fixes go through their quality control first. Then somebody has to actually implement the fix. This can take time, especially when pushing workstation fixes out to the multitude of our users. There are also some processes which run once a week. Depending on the timing, users may not see the process run for up to a week.

I was glad when our project manager also expressed concern about the definition of estimated resolution date. We had to amend the way we accounted for the days that make up this metric. It seems we had been shooting ourselves in the foot by using the wrong definition of this date. You need the right process in place. And that process needs to be continually monitored to ensure it is still relevant and correct. Otherwise you are potentially marching down the path to doom.