Version Tracking

[mello2]

I'm not a full time developer but a network administrator that has taken VB and do plan to get into development. But in the mean time I've been given the task to keep track of all of the changes made to special apps our company uses. This is a very small teleconferencing company that has about 12 home grown apps written by a local developer, actually a one man shop. These apps are asked to do quite a bit, and are constantly evolving.

Before I was given the task, when someone reported a bug, the developer would just fix it and not even make any revision notes or anything that anyone could use to keep track of the app.

What I would like to ask you, are there any standard written rules or documented procedures for the development life cycle, including, revisions, bug fixes etc? Or if you could point me to a place where I might be able to find the information I need to write some guidelines that would help us keep track of the applications that our company is using. Something that could be said to be an industry standard or best practices

All help and any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Melvin

[Clearcode]

Firstly you MUST have source control.
If you have the full version of VB you get "Visual SourceSafe" with it free.
Installing this and using it properly gives you a fairly comprehensive source tracking system which will meet your needs.
(As an aside, when installing it make sure it has an entire disk partition to itself.)

Then create a directory structure on a shared drive something along the lines:
\app1\
\release01
\release02
\release03
\app2\
etc.
and have a spreadsheet in each one with each bug reported, who worked on it, which modules/scripts they changed etc. Then when you make a release this can form the basis for a test plan and you can use the sheet from previous releases for regression testing.

I also recommend the book "Code complete" from Microsoft press...and maybe the presentation I put up on http:\\members.tripod.co.uk\clearcode\clearcode.htm may be of some use.

HTH,
Duncan

[mello2]

Duncan,

Thanks for the help, this is really good. I will look into implementing this. Another book was recommended too, "Rapid Development and Code
Complete by Steve McConnel".

Kind Regards,

Melvin