Staying consequent when working with large scale projects.

Question

Hi there folks. Probably a bit off topic question, but it's something I'm really interested in getting to know from other people with different experience and backgrounds.

How do you keep track of your huge projects? Do you use subversion? EER-models? Do you write notes? Does all your faith lie in phpdoc? Which framework do you use, and which design pattern do you follow? A lot of questions, I know, and I don't expect you to answer ALL of them, just summarize whatever you want to emphasize the most.

Personally, I use subversion for source control, phpdoc, writing down personal notes for each model/controller etc and I'm almost always following the MVC-pattern.

Have a fantastic and automagic day! ;-)

Answer 1

I would recommend on using the tools that work best for the people that you have, and the parts that are likely to be the most difficult to manage.

If you have a lot of requirements, use a tool which tracks requirements well.

If you have a lot of simple one-off projects, maybe simple project tracking works well.

Answer 2

A great way to document your project (especially the high level stuff) is to have a wiki. The success of that obviously depends entirely on your teammates. If they hate writing prose then the whole idea is basically doomed from the start. But given the right people it can really pay off. A few wiki pages with a couple of diagrams can go a long way and oftentimes be way more expressive than any UML diagram and what-have-you (of course, the combination of both is even better :-) If you can get your testers and other people to join in, you're off to a good start. The more, the merrier.

One thing you forgot to mention in your post is a bug tracker. That is an absolute must-have, I am sure Joel has some good tips on which is the best software choice there ;)

Answer 3

You should a bug tracking software to record how each issue was resolve and tie it to your Subversion Repository so that you can see the issue that generated the check-in and the vice-versa. We use Fogbugz ourselves.