What?

Version control systems are a category of tools of software that help a software team to manage changes in the source code through time. The version control tool tracks all of the changes and modifications that the code suffers inside a special type of database. If a developer makes a mistake inside the code one can easily go back to an earlier version of the code where the changes that broke the code didn’t exists yet. You can compare the code that existed before and more easily find where the error might be located.

For almost every software project, the source code is like the jewel of a crown. They are very precious and valuable. The source code is an invaluable source of knowledge and understanding of the specific domain that the developers have studied and perfected. Version control tools ensures the integrity of the source code against human errors and accidental mistakes.

Furthermore, the source code is alive, always changing and being edited continuously by numerous members of a team. Version control tools help resolve conflicts between all of these changes. Some changes that a developer might be working may be incompatible with the changes being made by another developer. This situation should be detected and resolved without blocking other team members.

Advantages of version control systems.

• The first obvious advantage of using a vcs is a complete history of all the changes throughout time of all the files inside the project.
• Branches and pull requests. One can create a branch and create and modify code without blocking other team members. If any error occurs one can easily rollback to an earlier version of the code
• Tracking power. One can see who is responsible for the changes made inside a file. This is sometimes used to blame someone that broke the code.

Git

Git is probably the most common used vcs. The main difference between Git and any other VCS is the way that data is handled. Most of VCS store information as a list of file changes.

Git does no store information in this manner. Git stores a set of copies in a system of miniature files. Everytime you add a change or store the state of the git project, git takes a snapshot of how the files look in that point in time. And stores a reference for that snapshot. So git stores its data as a sequence of snapshots

Bibliography

https://www.atlassian.com/es/git/tutorials/what-is-version-control

Why?

There is a constant and growing concern from Software Companies to develop applications and systems that are of quality. Products that will satisfy the client’s needs. Companies will go the extra mile to meet these demands. That is why they spend large quantities of money into them.

Developers now have to deal with multiple teams working concurrently under tight schedules that are becoming even for stringent. The systems also have to work and communicate with a number of different systems and platforms. These circumstances make it really important to have protocols of quality assurance. Software Testing Environments become really important.

Optimal testing environments improve the efficiency in the testing phases. According to Gartner, the economic cost to fix bugs during the analysis phase is of around 70 USD, comparing this with fixing bugs in production there is a huge difference; 14,000 USD. Software testing environments play a big role mitigating these bugs in production and finding them during earlier phase of the development.

What?

There are two global tendencies that have started to emerge in the software world. These help us better understand how testing environments should be managed.

TEM (Test Environment Management):

This model proposes the creation of a unique centralized administration of testing environments, monitoring, maintaining and solving emerging situations, establishing a sole entity responsible inside the environment.

TDM (Test Data Management)

This model ensures that the testing environment databases contain all that is necessary to deliver good tests, ensuring speed, efficiency and the continuous deployment of the software.

What is it?

Peer review can be defined as the revision of code handled by another member of the team, different to the author of the original code. Its objective is to search defects and to propose and evaluate alternative solutions. Furthermore, peer review serves as a facilitator to spread knowledge across the team and if it’s the case, across the organization.

Where does it come from?

This technique can find its roots from the practice of publishing scientific articles where since the middle of the XX century takes prevalence in such process.

What things should I have in mind in a peer review session?

Peer review sessions look for the early detection of bugs, that’s why they should be performed in an incremental matter as more phases of the development life cycle are done. So it’s better to have many small peer review sessions throughout the development of the software than one big PR session at the end of the software life cycle.

The focus of a peer review session should always stay be the actual code at hand. The people around the code should not be the center of attention.

Starting from these principle it is possible to build systems more or less complex to peer review: basic systems where the revisions are made by a unique developer that takes the role of the reviewer, or where the review it’s made by a group of developers.

Focusing on the key elements

The value of peer review sessions lie on detecting the impact of new systems of development. That’s why, during peer review sessions one has to maintain the focus in the points that really matter.

• Are you following the principles of Object Oriented Programming?
• Are you correctly using the libraries and frameworks your are integrating, are you using one that is not standard?
• Can the code be refactored in a way that is more readable?
• Can one foresee issues with performance of memory leaks?
• Are we using correctly exceptions and logs?

What is it?

MoProSoft is a process reference model that encapsulates good practices and software management processes. These help companies that are in charge of the development and management of software. The goals are to improve their workflow, quality and competitiveness

The MoProSoft includes a set of integrated processes, with their workflows, roles and product that serve as a framework to companies that are in software engineering.

Characteristics

Ok so the first blog post for #TC3045 will start defining software quality.

In a software development project there will be numerous requirements, implicit and explicit. Software quality will be the degree of conformance that one sticks to these requirements. So one can be as strict as it is needed. This strictness will be defined mostly by the stakeholders but also by the clients and end users.

Of course there are multiple definitions of Software Quality by multiple people. The IEEE define SQ as the degree to which a system, component, or process meets specified requirements. The International Software Testing Qualifications Board definas SQ as the totality of functionality and features of a software product that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.

There are key aspects to talk about when discussing about Software Quality

• Good design. UI and UX have become extremely important for the user. One good way to think about it is for the end user, the Interface IS the system
• Reliability. Good software needs to function bug free.
• Durability. A quality piece of software will pass the test of time
• Consistency. One should expect a piece of software to behave in a matter that is predictable
• Maintainability. This is very important for the stakeholders. There is money that is going to be spent maintaining a piece of software. One should expect it to be maintainable for different programmers.

Software Quality Models

• McCall’s Quality Model
• Boehm quality model
• Dromey’s quality model

McCall’s Quality Model

This model tries to to maintain harmony between users and developers. This model has eleven factors that can be grouped like the image shown below