Continuous Integration Build Metrics

Continuous Integration Build Metrics provide insight into the Build Optimization aspects, Health of the Source Code, Health of the Test Code, System Size. These indicators can greatly help in taking certain corrective and preventive action based on the continuous integration build results. Below are some of the key metrics indicators that can be obtained from CI -

1) Number of Source Lines of Code (SLOC) - This indicates the total software or system size in LOC. (Unit of Measurement - LOC)

2) Number of Test Code Lines of Code -This indicates the total test code size in LOC. (Unit of Measurement - LOC)

3) Compilation Time -Total Compilation time taken by the build. (Unit of Measurement - Hours / Minutes/ Seconds)

4) Total Test Execution -Time Total time taken to execute the Unit Test, Functional Test, Non Functional Test. (Unit of Measurement - Hours / Minutes/ Seconds )

5) Total Inspection -Time Total Time taken to execute the inspection tools. (Unit of Measurement - Hours / Minutes/ Seconds )

6) Total Deployment -Time Total Time taken to deploy the product / software into the target environment from the continuous integration machine. (Unit of Measurement - Hours / Minutes/ Seconds )

7) Total Build Time --Indicates the total time taken to run all the builds (including inspection , functional, non functional build) . (Unit of Measurement - Hours / Minutes/ Seconds )

8)Successful Build Rate -It is the division of the total number of successful build by the total builds at a give time interval. (Unit of Measurement - Percentage (%) )

9) Build Repair Rate -It indicates the time taken to repair a failed build. (Unit of Measurement - Hours / Minutes/ Seconds)

10) Version Control System Load Time -Indicates the time taken to check out/ update the project from the continuous integration build. It gives pointers about the network bandwidth, processor, memory, disk drive sufficiency and the peak time load of the version control system. (Unit of Measurement - Hours / Minutes/ Seconds )

11) Number of Errors open in the Source Code -Total Numbers of Static Tool Errors open in the test code of the Latest Build . The number of rules can be configured in the rules file of the tool. (Example- PC Lint, Checkstyle, PMD, Findbugs etc). (Unit of Measurement - Number )

12) Number of Errors open in the Test Code-Total Numbers of Static Tool Errors open in the source code of the Latest Build . The number of rules can be configured in the rules file of the tool. (Example- PC Lint, Checkstyle, PMD, Findbugs etc). (Unit of Measurement - Number )

13) Unit Testing Line Coverage -Indicates the total lines of source code covered through the unit testing. (Unit of Measurement - Percentage (%))

14) Unit Testing Function Coverage -Indicates whether the function (or subroutine) in the program been called through the unit testing. (Unit of Measurement - Percentage (%) )

15) Unit Testing Branch Coverage -Indicates the branch coverage through unit testing. (Unit of Measurement - Percentage (%) )

16) Functional Testing Line Coverage -Indicates the total lines of source code covered through the functional testing.(Unit of Measurement - Percentage (%))

17) Functional Testing Function Coverage -Indicates whether the function (or subroutine) in the program been called through the functional testing. (Unit of Measurement - Percentage (%))

18) Functional Testing Branch Coverage -Indicates the branch coverage through functional testing. (Unit of Measurement - Percentage (%) )

19) % of Duplicate Code Duplicate Code -Threshold can be set for block of code and Tools like Simian checks the duplication in percentage for the block of code set as threshold. It Ignores whitespace, curly braces, comments, imports, includes, package declarations, etc. (Unit of Measurement - Percentage (%)" )

20) Average Code Complexity -Indicates the average code complexity value of all the functions. (Unit of Measurement - Number)

21) Max Code Complexity -Indicates the maximum code complexity value among all the functions. (Unit of Measurement - Number )

Continuous Integration Build Duration or Time

The important point while running the CI build is to provide feedback as soon as possible. A good rule of thumb is to keep the integration build no more than 10 minutes. The next question would be - what all test cases and inspections tools should we run in the integration build. Well, the 10 minute build need not run all type of test and inspection tools. The key aspect is whatever test cases that could be run as soon as possible and that gives maximum confidence about the system can be run. For Example the Overall Build be separated into stages to get faster feedback. In the Stage 1 only the Unit Test Cases and the Smoke test cases can be run , In the Stage 2 the Functional test cases can be run and in the Stage 3 the non functional test cases can be run. The build is considered PASS from end to end perspective only when Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3 is Pass.Some Rule of Thumb for reference:

Local Build / Private Build < 3 minutes
Stage 1 (Integration / Primary build )< 10 minutes
Stage 2 (Functional / Secondary Buid) <2-3 hours
Stage 3 (Non Functional Build ) - Depending about the type of test cases.
Inspection Build (Can be run in any stages depending on the time taken for each tool)

Typically the Stage 3 build are long running test cases for reliability, performance which has many combinations and it can also take 1 day - weeks depending on the type of test cases. For daily operations for development purpose, the Build till Stage 2 can be considered.

Private Build/ Local Build

Local Build comprises of process of compilation of the added source code and test code, running of the unit cases, running of the inspection tool especially the Static Code analyzer (Like PMD, Checkstyle, PCLint etc). We can also run functional test cases and more inspection tools like duplicate code detection tool like simian etc., but this may increase the time of feedback for the developer. So it is advisable to keep only the key aspects (compilation, unit testing, static code check) as part of private / local build.
Local Build process can be described in following steps :
Step 1- Developer finishes the task (coding, unit testing, integration and functional test)
Step 2: - Developer takes the latest code from the configuration management library which comprises of the latest code changes.
Step 3- Runs the Local / Private Build with the latest code.
Step 4- If the build passes, then commit is done to the configuration library. If the build fails then rework is done and step 1 onwards is repeated.

Below antscript shows how to run a Local or Private Build using Ant. This is just for reference. Actual Build Script need to be changed based on the project situation.

The Thumb Rule is that Local Build should be as fast as possible. It can be less than 3 minutes. The practice of Local Build can ensure that whenever the developer checks-in the code, he / she does not break the main-line build and always completes the work with good quality. Some of the commonly occuring anti patterns, which should be avoided while following the local build practice are as follows:

• Developer runs the functional / integration test cases (typically that takes long time) as part of the local build.


• Wrong understanding of Unit Testing. Test cases are categorized as unit test cases though it is not unit test cases. The key aspect of unit tests is having no dependency on outside aspects like databases, which increases the time it takes to setup and run tests.


• Some teams don't use good IDE that can support automated check-in from the IDE and taking the latest code from the configuration library.(Especially in C projects)


• Sometimes there is tendency to run all kind of test cases and also the inspection tools in the private build. This increases the execution time for local build.


• Not using the same directory structure as the configuration library due to which the environment and other aspects are not same. The typical directory structure for source code and test suite can be :
  
  
  This is also is one of the reason where the private build passes but the mainline build still fails.


• Developer Machine is not of good configuration and it takes long time to execute the local build.
  


• Taking Short-cuts. Lack of Discipline.

There is obviously no debate that Local Build Practice can bring lot of benefits to the team, if used effectively. It also compliments to the continuous integration practices. This practice can really ensure that the team is efficient and can deliver good quality with certainty.

Exploratory Testing in Agile Teams

Sometimes the Test Team has some doubts that when all the test cases are automated and when at each story level there is testing happening, "do we really need to exploratory testing?". "Is exploratory testing applicable in incremental and iterative testing".

The answer is "Yes".

Irrespective of how much automation we can bring in and how much planned testing we do, Exploratory testing has its own place and it must be done to ensure that there is no residual defects in the system. Exploratory Testing can be well planned. During the Iteration the Developer and the Tester and sit together and conduct the exploratory testing. Automation can be used to do test setup, data generation, repetitive tasks. In the exploratory testing , each tester / developer can use his / her own skills and knowledge of the system to find the inside defects of the system. Some of the tips for doing the exploratory testing systematically is mentioned below:

• Understand the critical features that the customer is going to use. Give focus to those modules first.
• As a Tester /Developer, the time for the overall exploratory testing is limited. Should have a test strategy in place comprising of the focused testing approach for the critical features, troubled features (explained in the end), how to generate the test data, Techniques usage (if any)- like equivalance partitioning, orthogonal array testing techniques, Boundary value analysis, error guessing mthod etc. This strategy can help you to use the limited time very effectively.
• Think about what the normal user would do and do those steps. Have an attitude of breaking the system and be sure that there are deep defects which are not unearthed and this is your chance to do it.
• Use some random approach to do the testing.
• Think about what the expert and a normal user would do.
• Look into the troubled features during the normal testing (means during the normal testing, there may be features on which more defects may have come). Target those features and conduct some exploratory testing.

Exploratory testing may provide good insight into any of the defects which were not found during the normal testing. Always plan for exploratory testing in all the agile projects irrespective of the time availability. Plan for exploratory testing as an activity during the release and iteration planning time. It always gives good results and gives more confidence about the system.

References-

Continuous Integration - What is Staged Build / Staging of Build

The main purpose of Staging of the Build is to get faster feedback from the Continuous Integration System. A programmer cannot wait for more than 2 hours to get feedback about the check-in. So the Build is distributed in various stages to ensure faster and step by step feedback. This is applicable for typical teams maintaining (or going to maintain) larger code and test code base.  Following are the various Stages.

• Once the programmer checks-in the code, the Inspection and the Commit Build can be parallely triggered. In the Inspection Build, the tools related to Code Complexity of Code and Test Code, Static Tools and other Inspection Tools like Design Validation , Architecture Validation etc. can be run. Commit Build should give feedback in less than 10 minutes. If teams can get feedback in less than 5 minutes then it is great result. The important point is- teams should try all possible means to get faster feedback from the commit build.

• If the Commit Build is Pass, then the Stage 2- Secondary Build is triggered. In this Build , the Longer running Integration, Component and System Level Test Cases are run. Typically the thumb rule is to get the result from the secondary build in less than 2-3 hours. To get this result we can run the Build in a Cluster Setup as shown in the Figure above.The inspection build may take longer time based on  the different tools being run. Teams can decide to fail the build based on analysis of the report.s For example if the Static Code errors are introduced in the new build then immediately the secondary build can be stopped.

• Once the Secondary Build is Pass, the Non Functional Test Build can be triggered. This comprises of Reliability, Availability, Volume, Stress, Performance Related Test Cases. These test cases takes much longer time and it depends upon the kind of System under Test and the related Test Cases that are being executed.

• Further Stages can be added depending upon the need and also based on the kind of system.

References:

http://martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html

     

References for Continuous Integration Tools

In this post, I have tried to bring the various Continuous Integration tools which are available in the industry. Also, below is the link in which all the detailed features of continuous integration tool has been compared. This is a good reference to teams which are planning to choose a CI tool for the development purpose. http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CC/CI+Feature+Matrix

An important point while selecting the CI tool is to check if the CI tool supports all the tools related to Continuous Inspection (Static Code related tools, Code Coverage, Design Validation , Architecture validation etc), Continuous Testing ( Functional, Memory leak , volume, stress related test tools), support for the various plugins. This is very important as team can really focus on the core development work rather than focusing on integration of tools to CI which may not be a priority work at the time of core development. With the right tool selection, teams can really improve the productivity.

List of Tools which are available

Bamboo
http://www.atlassian.com/software/bamboo/

CruiseControl
http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CCNET/Welcome+to+CruiseControl.NET

LuntBuild
http://luntbuild.javaforge.com/

ParaBuild
http://www.viewtier.com/products/parabuild/index.htm

Sin
http://sin.tigris.org/

TeamCity
http://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/

Tinderbox
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Tinderbox

Pulse
http://zutubi.com/products/pulse/

Bitten
http://bitten.edgewall.org/

BuildBot
http://trac.buildbot.net/

Gump
http://gump.apace.com/

BuildForge
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/buildforge/enterprise/

References

Agile Story Card Writing - Some Facts

"How to write User Stories in Agile Projects"- I am very sure that this question would have a very different answer from different business analyst, product owners, technical community. Story Card should should follow the INVEST characterstics [ I- Independent, N- Negotiable, V- Valuable, E- Estimatable, S- Small, T- Testable]
You may refer to the following article by Bill Wake where he describes about the details of good Story
http://xp123.com/articles/invest-in-good-stories-and-smart-tasks/

In this post I would give a different perspective of the issues teams faces while writing user stories. Writing User Stories from the Customer's perspective and the usage by Developers is relatively easy in Application Development based projects. But in case of embedded , operating system domain teams face issues of vertically slicing the story card and usage by the development and test team.
In my opinion there are following kind of issues. For each kind of issues, I have tried to provide some solutions:

Issue 1- Lack of enough competency where the Business Analyst can really slice the stories effectively cutting across the multi layer (presentation layer, logic layer, persistance layer etc). In some teams the technical members play the role of Business Analyst. And there is no training given to these members. Sometimes it is default assumed that all the members who are technically very good can write good user stories. There is less authentic references available in industry about writing user stories in each domain. User story writing is specific to the domain. It is important that good training be provided to the members involved in writing user story.

Issue 2- There may be some stories that need some background preparation as Spike Stories so that the solution is ready. These strories can also be said as Infrastructure readiness stories. Sometimes these stories are not ready and team members get the stories which are vertically sliced across the layers. In this case the team faces issues related to the technical solution. The solution to such kind of issue is that anytime before the actual development starts, the Business Analyst or the Technical member need to check if the Spike Stories need to be played before the actual story execution. Accordingly, the actions should be taken.

Issue 3- Team members are very junior or dont have enough expertise. In such case stories may need to contain more details and in some cases, solution artefact. There may be also cases where at implementation level, the key algorithm / solution for the similiar implementation can be generalized. Such cases the Designer and the Technical Person need to provide some technical solution so that the implementation is effectively done. This issue may not be there in teams where there are senior members working or where the team size is small.


The important point is that there is no one stop solution for writing story cards. The requirement documentation process needs to be customized based on the situation and domain. If teams face issues with vertical story slicing then team can taken minimum marketable feature based approach and implement the customer requirements. What best fits to the context need to be taken. Story Card has many advantages: if the stories are vertically sliced, it can be developed faster, it gives an end to end value to the customer, customer can give feedback easily, it also helps in other agile practices like continous integration where, faster feedback can be given. However if teams have there own constraints like complexity of the domain (due to which slicing is very difficult), lack of enough competency etc., team can use Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF) approach. The team that use the feature based approach is also as much as Agile as teams using the story card based approach.

References:
http://xp123.com/articles/invest-in-good-stories-and-smart-tasks/
 

How to Plan in Agile

Planning is an essential activity for anything and when it comes to project execution, a good plan gives right direction for the execution of the work. Some questions that comes to me when teams follow agile approach:
" How much planning to do", "Should we do estimation in agile", "Should we assign work to the team member level", "Who all should get involved in the planning" etc.
In my opinion the focus in Agile team should be more towards value driven approach than a plan oriented approach. The focus and direction should be towards iterative and incremental development.

Following are some suggestions for doing overall planning in agile team. In this context I am considering a slightly bigger project (3000 person month). For smaller projects the context and the related activity can be decided accordingly. These need to be considered as only suggestions and not a prescription. During my Consultancy to various teams I have come across such similar questions, so this post. In this I would be only covering the steps and key activities.

Step 1- Project Charter and Vision : The overall vision and objective of the project is decided. Some of the activities which are conducted as part of this are as follows:
• The key features required for the customer is decided. Here the features may be at a very high level. It may not be at an implementation level.
• Some overall level estimation is done. Here the question comes that which estimation techniques can be used. The best is to use Team Velocity based approach. But I have seen that some team faces issues in deciding the team velocity due to reasons like either no historical information available, different team members, not able to identify the ideal story etc. It is even okay to estimate based on effort, lines of code, function point etc. The important point here is to be pragmatic and using a collaborative approach for estimation.
• Based on the work estimation the release dates are decided. In a typical project there can be more than 1 release. The Release Milestones are decided as part of this step.

Step 2- Release Plan : The next step is to have the Release plan in place. A Release comprises of more than 1 Iteration. To come up with the Release Plan following are some of the important activities done:
• Release planning meeting is done where all the team members attend. Before the meeting the Business Analyst / Requirement Analyst provides overview of the User Stories that are going to be taken up. The attempt should be to ensure that all the members are at the same page for doing the feature estimation.
• The overall estimation is being done keeping following key activities in mind : requirement analysis, architecture design, design analysis (if any), coding, test coding, infrastructure preparation, automation infrastructure readiness, training , testing, customer level test etc.
• The Project manager or Scrum master should give enough importance for team training, readiness of the automation, continuous integration, and competency of team. Without good preparation in this direction it may be very difficult during actual project execution.
• Sometimes the project team needs to give commitment to the client about the release dates after the release planning meeting. There may be cases where some of the user stories are not clear. How to give commitment is a challenge which most of the teams faces. While there is no right answer to this, some suggestions - we can plan for some buffer based on our experience and past history. We can make the client intimated about buffer and we can deliver the project early if we are able to do so. Please note there is a difference between Buffer and Padding. Padding (giving some additional effort for each user story level without any basis and not making it known) is wrong and it should not be done. It is like Gold Plating. Buffer is planned to ensure that any risks can be handled due to wrong customer priority, not clear story / technical readiness etc and it is intimated to the customer in advance.
• Based on the amount of work planned, the dates of Iterations are planned. The thumb rule is to keep the iteration fixed for 2 weeks and put the prioritized user stories in each of the iterations.
• The prioritization of the stories are done based on the following (in the order of priority)- customer priority, technical readiness, internal project dynamics and others.
• SCRUM is a very good management framework that can be used for the team structure and following scrum and scrum of scrum teams. This gives very good way of the project management and governance.
• Release Retrospective shall be conducted at the end of each release.

Step 3- Iteration Plan and tracking : The next step is to have the Iteration plan in place. Iteration comprises of stories that are executed and each story has a list of key tasks that are performed to realize the user story. Following are some key aspects:
• Iteration Planning Meeting is conducted where there is an overview given by the business analyst about the user stories being taken up.
• Planning Poker Method can be used for estimation. Refer to book by Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn.
• If team is not comfortable with velocity based approach then either effort or LOC based approach can be used. It is always good to have a parallel usage of Velocity for the team transitioning into agile way of estimating and over a period we can make our estimation better by using only Velocity based approach.
• User Story level estimation is being done keeping following aspects in mind- story analysis, story design, coding, test coding, TDD approach, local build , continuous integration, testing, release etc.
• Ensuring the “Done “ criteria at each story level is very important. Teams can decide the common process or criteria how a story can be considered as “Done”
• Daily SCRUM meetings should be conducted for ensuring that all team members are in sync with each other’s work and there is a collective ownership.
• At the end of each Iteration Review / Sprint Review should be conducted and the feedback should be included to make the product better. It is always better that the customer or the customer representative is available during the review.
• Sprint retrospective is conducted at the end of each iteration.

Agile Project Management and the planning should be value based and the focus should be to remove the non valued added activities continuously and focus on the value that can be delivered to the customer ,always.

References:

Our Customer don't sit with us, Can we be Agile..

Have you heard these questions during the project execution:

• My customer don't sit with me, Can I go agile?
• What is the use of doing agile when customer cannot give feedback?
• I am doing daily standup everyday, Can I be called Agile?
• My team does Daily build , Is it Continuous Integration?, Is it Agile?
• We are doing Iteration but it is not timeboxed. But we are Agile.

I have given just a few questions that we may come across during our interactions with the team. Sometimes it looks like the focus is to be called agile by doing certain practices. Sometimes the team and the middle management dont want to change to any new process and puts across points to prove that Agile is not suitable given the dynamics.

It is loud and clear- Agile is something which we cannot do, we need to be Agile. Agilility can be practiced in every team, irrespective of whatever the constraints the team faces.

Teams must note that a collection of SCRUM , XP, Lean Software Development, Crystal, Kanban etc and the usage of these practices does not mean that a team is Agile. Agility comes from the team and individual who are working on the project. Agility is all about being sensitive and providing highest focus to customer, fast , pragmatic , practical , self organized, giving continuous attention to technical excellence, giving importance to the working software, being simple, having a constant rhythm and sustainable pace, having a motivated team, welcoming change, having mechanism of stopping and correcting. These are not some silver bullet points. These are the principles behind being Agile. Teams must understand that it is not to prove to somebody we need to go Agile. Similiarly it is not to show what environment is not available due to which Agile cannot be done. In my opinion these are some of the anti patterns which we as team members should watch for. If we see any such symptoms then we should immediatly stop and do some retrospection about the reason for being Agile.

Now answer to my question "Our Customer don't sit with us, Can we be Agile..". Well the answer is "Of course, you can be". Agililty is all about following the principles. Even if customer dont sit with us, we can get iterative feedback through the 2 weeks sprint from our test team. It can also give feedback about the way the user stories are written from the development team. It can give feedback about the architecture. And so many other feedbacks. Of course, If the customer sits with an Agile Team, it has lot of advantages. The feedback can be much faster. If there is an option available, having the customer with the project team will really help in being agile and successful. But looking into the diverse projects and situation in which different projects are executed, sometimes the customer is not available directly. In this case we can be Agile by following the iterative and incremental delivery model & related practices and improve the delivery every iteration.

References:
a) The Art of Agile Development- James Shore and Shane Warden
b) The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility- Michele Sliger and Stacia Broderick

Build Optimization for effective CI

In this post I would like to bring some of my observation and perspective of Build Optimization to have a very effective and good Continuous Integration System.

Build Script is all about automating the tasks required for the system development.
I have noticed that Build Scripts are not given enough priority in teams as compared to production code. In fact on a lighter note, it is seen that in the context of priority the order of priority is on these lines , production code first, test code second and build script may be last. "-:)
Some of the most commonly used build script language is Ant, Maven, Make.

The way the build is organized should depend on the following factors:
a) Module Organization
b) Where (Which Operating System ) and how it should compile, test
c) Packaging Structure

Before the build script is written the member should understand the way the system is organized, how the modules are dependent to each other. This would help in really organizing the system appropriately.

Due care should be taken to ensure that there are no unnecessary steps added without any purpose. Sometimes I have seen that some build scripts perform tasks like zipping and sending the files to some other server, unzipping & compile and bring back the file to the root server and then do certain operations. When it is closely looked it was found that these operations were really not required. These tasks add to the time taken for the building the system. This is also one of the reason why Continuous Integration System in some teams takes more time to provide the overall results.

The important point is the Build Scripts should be reviewed carefully and members writing the scripts should be well trained on the system. If it is given less attention, later it effects the complete team's performance as time taken for completing the whole build through Continuous Integration System (includes compilte, inspection , test ) is very high. And later refactoring the build scripts is a mammoth task.

Reference
1)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_(software)

Antipatterns of Daily Standup Meeting

In this post I would list down some of the anti patterns of Daily Standup which I have noticed in various teams:

• Daily Standups continuing for more than 20 minute- Some Daily standup meeting continues very long. Some discussion goes for long and even the problem solving happens during the standup. The typical thumb rule can be that if the daily standup is taking more than 10 minutes then it can be abruptly closed. The abrubt closure is an indication to the team that they need to improve. The very reason it is a standup is because if members stands for more than 10 minutes the leg starts paining. :-) One of the way by which we can solve this issue is by logically separating the team based on the kind of work, provide trainings to the team members about the objective of the standup.


• Daily Standups being used as a project status review meeting- Some daily standups are used as project status review meeting where the project managers takes feedbacks from the team members about the status of progress of work.


• Members reporting to leader about the project- Leader centric - Daily standup being a reporting to the leader is also seen as common issue. Leader or the Scrummaster should take some actions like making the team conscious that standup should not be a reporting to the leader. Also the leader can show body language like removing the eye contact with the member who is only reporting the update to the leader.


• Not good body language of the members- One kind of issue is seen where the body language of team members shows that they are not very much interested towards the updates of others. They somehow want to give their update and go back to work. Agile is all about working collaboration and having a team which collectively owns the work and code. Scrummaster should be cautious of such issues.


• Daily Standup meeting is not attended by all the members- Sometimes all members of the team don't attend the standup . It is sometimes seen that on any given day any one / some person is always missing from the standup.


• Daily Standup meeting time and place enforced to team- It is imporant that Daily Standup time, location is decided by the team and team should collaborative works towards this. The standup time and place should not be enforced to the team.

The above are few of the anti patterns which is observed. It is important that Agile Team overcomes these issues and ensure that the Daily Standup is conducted with the real objective of having collaboration and better communication between the team members.

References

• Agile Adoption Patterns-By Elssamadisy Amr


• Agile project management with Scrum- Ken Schwaber