php: programming as a team

[edal11]

How do you handle team programming?

I´m working with a team of programmers to develop php scripts but we are having a lot of trouble in working together as a team.

Do you have any suggestions? How can we organise?
Where can I find information on managing php team projects? Is there a guide, online book, pdf, anything that can be helpful.

Thanks in advance

[planetsim]

Well basically i wouldnt call programming a team effort but more as a group..

There would have to be some kinda supervisor.
So someone that is gonna over look what is being done. So checking up on people.

Another thing is. The supervisor must set people little tasks to do. Eventually the supervisor/person in charge can get all the scripts to work together. Now its not the conventional way to do it and it does have it ups and downs. But could help you a lot.

Another way is to do one file at a time with each person contributing a small amount.

[sarahk]

I don't think php has much to do with it.

The last (paid) project I was on involved 12+ programmers in 2 locations over 6 months.

We used winCVS to hold all our files and share between us. In order to unit test we had to have all the checked in code - not just our little bits. We each took responsibility for a section of the functionality and "owned" it. Any queries on that got passed to that person. The code was complex, frequently changing so it was useful to have someone who knew it inside out. We've used that division of labour on several projects with several different programming "systems" and it's worked well every time. Much better than saying you do server side, you do client side, you do the pretty layout stuff.

The code was OO but even then we had some functionality written 3 different ways for 3 different areas and at the end we pulled bits out and used the different classes to ensure future work was easier.

Then we had the huge task of culling the obsolete code!

If the functionality is well defined it should be possible (not the same as easy) to split it out and pass it around. You need strong project management and technical leadership.

[OctoberAsh]

Adding on what SarahK said (well put, btw), you also want to make sure all programmers understand and use basic standards for their code. Using standard naming conventions, consolidating common function calls, includes, etc. can make a huge difference in the way people's codebits work together.

Set expectations about communication among team members as well. If it's daily meetings on ICQ for a few programmers working on common issues, or face-to-face weekly meetings of the entire team, make sure it happens, and make sure it's meaningful. The one thing I've seen doom a project is that everyone gets their assignments, and they all scurry into their corners, working until the project's done without any support or communication. You end up with a lot of nice code that doesn't fit together into a solid, workable solution, and then the culling begins.

I got an idea from an actor friend of mine who told me how actors get together and do a 'read-through' of a script before heading out to study their parts. Taking her description, I implemented a 'spec read-through' for the programmers I supervised, and was amazed at the questions and flow of ideas generated. I was also amazed at how some of them had never had this kind of meeting before.

Programmers got up and talked their ideas through using whiteboards with input from the others, and it really made a huge difference to the end product. It also helped me formulate all the questions I had for the spec writer. Once we started it, we kept it up through the entire project - the programmers remarked that it helped tremendously.

Also to emphasize another thing SarahK said - you need strong technical and project management. If you're the one tagged as "Project Manager", I highly recommend reading a few works on solid project management skills. If you're the Technical Lead for the project, talk through with the Project Manager what s/he expects of you (and vice versa). If you're in both roles, don't neglect the PM work in code crunch times. It can make a difference in your level of sanity at project's end, trust me.

Best of luck!