On 04/25/2010 07:36 AM, Ryan Hill wrote:
People make mistakes.
Agreed - at work I've often found a quality mindset that is 100% focused on preventing mistakes, and I've found that these kinds of systems are almost equally as focused on preventing them from being fixed (three minutes to fix a bug, three weeks to document and release the fix - then we wonder why the system has hundreds of trivial open bugs with no ROI for fixing them).
A good quality system isn't just about preventing mistakes - it needs to be about fixing them too. The system that prevents typos from getting into the tree shouldn't get in the way of those typos being fixed. There needs to be a balance.
Scripts running on repository servers don't have a sense of balance, so they aren't the answer. Nor is cutting off hands any time a dev messes up unless it becomes a pattern or there is malicious intent.
However, a systematic review process is probably a good thing most of the time, and published policies supporting this are a good thing.
Rich
