On Sat, 2012-06-02 at 20:46 +0530, Arun Khan wrote: > On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 4:49 PM, kenneth gonsalves > <law...@thenilgiris.com> wrote: > > ... snip ... > > I will share my experience at a prop. software shop (Bell Labs). > > > 3. The design is then sent to production. The job is parceled out to > > several teams, each team working in isolation from the other teams. > I > > will not go into how these teams operate, but the general atmosphere > is > > - if it works, it is fine and peer review and criticism of another's > > code is seen as a deadly insult. > > Every developer had to write a high level design document (interfaces, > db, real time requirements etc.) which got broken into Design Units > (Code). The DU doc had pseudo code and/or flow charts showing how each > C function would work. > > Each document was reviewed by peers and senior members. The document > would not be accepted until major/severe bugs were resolved. Ditto > with DU - Code could not deviate from that mentioned in the DU docwent > through inspection and walk through by peers and module owners. > Again, code not be submitted for integration until all errors were > resolved. This does not mean that the entire system was bug free but > the philosophy was to catch as many bugs before they crept into the > system.
I personally feel that too much design and specs strangle a project, but admittedly my experiences is in end user applications - not the kind of thing Bell labs does. Further, Bell labs is Bell labs. > > > Obviously a lot of the code is > > duplicated as no team knows what the other teams are doing, and, no > one > > will anyway admit that another person's solution is better than his. > > Note that the teams do not have any contact with the clients. When > the > > teams finish their assignments, most of the members move on to other > > projects leaving a skeleton team to cope with the next stage. > > Every developer had access to *all* the code in *all* the sub systems > - no code duplication. Peers suggested code improvements during the > inspection stage (I learnt a few tricks in C from peers this way). this is crucial - I would not call this proprietary development model though -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
