[cas-dev] Welcome CAS4 developers

[Scott Battaglia]

Dave,

Thanks for taking on this task of doing a first draft of the developer
guidelines.  It will be an invaluable part of the CAS4 development, and give
us a starting point for presentation to the CAS developers, community and
steering committee for their approval.

One of the first things I would recommend is taking a look at the existing
documentation in our wiki, which is relatively "light-weight".  The CAS
project consists of people who's institutional needs currently align with
that of the CAS4 roadmap (mostly because it was their input into the
roadmap) and thus the structure is rather fluid.  We do need some relatively
strict guidelines about documentation and code quality, but otherwise the
process is relatively loose to reflect the fact that people will be meeting
their institutional goals.

Some areas that may be important to focus on:
1. Recommendations for the sandboxing of code, including access to core
components of the CAS Server, and how to manage peripheral modules and
add-ons.
2. Recommendations for JIRA issue, including things like distributed code
reviews, JIRA issue in commit messages, time estimates, etc.
3. Recommendations for documentation guidelines, including what MOST be
documented (i.e. each class, each feature), what SHOULD be documented (i.e.,
all methods) and what isn't necessary (i.e. standard getters and setters).
4. Recommendations for the build system (i.e. continuous, nightly, how to
handle regression testing, etc.)

I think those are probably some of the most important areas for the moment.
Our interest in development rules should focus on making sure we meet
documentation standards, transparency goals, and metrics to make sure we're
meeting our core requirements and roadmap.  We're not looking so much for a
strict process that must be followed, more the metrics we can compare
against to ensure that we're having consistant standards and quality goals.

I would recommend and insist that all development discussion happen on the
CAS Developers mailing list, because this way the community can be engaged
as well as potential new development members.  In that light, I have CCed
the CAS Developers Mailing list on this email.

Thanks for your help.
-Scott

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 1:38 PM, David Whitehurst <dlwhitehurst at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hello, Konichi wa, Bon jour', Hola', Ni Hao
>
> I've started some documentation in Confluence to provide documentation
> guidelines for us first and then the text product that we leave for
> the public.
>
> http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/CAS/Documentation+Guidelines
>
> I wanted to ask everyone to start thinking about what makes you tick
> workwise, i.e. how do you work best?  E.g. I work best after lots of
> discussion and then I just go work in isolation and then come back for
> the next task.  Some folks are paralyzed without excellent written
> instructions.  Some people are afraid to ask for work.  Others can't
> assign work to team members.  I'm shameless and you'll find that I
> exhibit all bad traits.
>
> What I do well is facilitate.  And, I want us to be productive and
> successful.  I'm a stickler for good process but very liberal as how
> any group develops or evolves into a good process.  And, I think that
> we should share each other's story so to speak and get to know each
> other.  And, then we should discuss the work that we're going to do
> and how we best do it.
>
> Please continue this thread, each of you, and let's build a team.
> You've now been "empowered" to introduce yourself.  :-)
>
> P.S. Scott, can you make us an email as CAS4 developers?




>
> Thanks,
>
> David
>
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