Pramatr Blog

The BBC reported on Tuesday that the recent disruptions caused by the heavy snowfall could cost UK businesses about £1bn (or $1.4bn as of 05/02/2009). It was also estimated that about 20% of the UK’s working population, or 6.4 million people, were absent from work. The bad weather has continued this week and is forecast to continue into the weekend. With the huge potential loses to the economy how can technology help?

Currently the roads are covered in snow, buses, trains and planes are cancelled and I’m stuck at home, and I’m costing my employer money. Some employers might expect you to turn up regardless of the weather. Some employers might take the “snow day” out of of next months wages. Some employers provide the means to let their employees work from home. It is obviously not logistically possible for every business to allow working from home, but what about the ones that can? In a quote from the BBC report, Keith Tilley said;

“Employers need to do everything they can to allow staff to work from home and ensure that those that do manage to travel to work are well looked after, with overnight accommodation if necessary.”

Many businesses are turning to technology to allow their employees to not only work from home during periods of bad weather but also during peak demand. These virtual call centres are proving extremely popular with more businesses turning to this technology to provide a more permanent solution. Many businesses could benefit from this approach but lack the technology to actually make it possible. Is this technology too expensive, too complicated or is there simply a lack of knowledge about it’s usage?

A quick search in Google yields a range of solutions that can make working from home very possible, one of the best is a VPN. At one end of the spectrum is OpenVPN which retails at £0 (or $0). It’s open source; download it, install it, configure it and you’re ready to go. There is obviously an associated learning curve, but for most people with a technological persuasion it should be quite straight forward. If you don’t want to have to install and maintain software, another top result is Barracuda SSL VPN which starts to retail at £1250 (or $1800). It’s an appliance; turn it on, configure it and you’re ready to go. Both solutions provide the means to be virtually on the network without having to be physically in the office. Access can be provided to email, file servers, internal Web sites and office workstations. As a developer I can access CVS, SVN, our Maven repository, Hudson build system and any other resource I use during my normal working day. I can be just as productive (often more so) as if I’m really in the office.

There are a whole range of products that allow employees to work from home, but there really should be something to suit every businesses budget. Some businesses worry about letting employees work from home, but even if the technology is only used for extreme or emergency purposes, at least a business can suffer near zero downtime. Even if the technology is only used once or twice a year, it can still provide a return on investment for the smallest of companies. We currently have six team members connected to our SSL VPN, our business is counting the cost of the bad weather, but fortunately for us it should be somewhere near £0 ($0).

In a recent post I postulated that given the current recession and turbulent economic state, the good developers are staying in their current role rather than interviewing for a new position. This was only really guess work however, so I thought it would be useful to conduct a little market research. I decided to have a few conversations with companies looking to hire and recruitment agents to collate some information.

We recently produced quite a basic job specification with pretty standard requirements, a competitive wage with benefits and asked for several years of relevant experience. Having looked at all of the various job postings I would have thought there would be a wealth of talent looking for an opportunity like this. We were looking for around ten resumes to sift through as a starting point.

The number of available candidates and skills is a very difficult ask at the moment. There are simply not a huge number of candidates available with the required skill set. There isn’t just one problem; the number of candidates and skills are both big problems at the moment, there isn’t enough of either.

Our first thought was that wage might be an issue, so what if we were will to increase the wage offering?

Wages aren’t really the issue. It’s quite a general problem that people are unwilling to move jobs right now. The economic state is not conducive towards it. People just don’t know if the company is going to be around next month, or if they’ll be forced to cut costs. If Microsoft and Sun are having to do it, then who will be next?

But surely if there are scores of people being made redundant there should be talent available for hire.

Typically, most of the people being made redundant on the news aren’t highly skilled technical types. Some of them are but the majority are unskilled. Of those technical staff looking for work, many of them are contract staff who haven’t reach the point of really having to work yet. Some of them need to work, but many of them can “play it cool” for a while yet.

So is the industry really in crisis, or is it actually faring quite well at the moment? Are there tens of thousands of skilled developers out there struggling to find work, or just a few more than usual? I’m sure there must be a large number of skilled people who have recently lost their job, but if so where are they and why don’t they seem to be looking for work?

Hiring new staff can be a long and drawn out process, at the end of which you hope you’ve found the right candidate. Vetting resumes, collating a list of potential candidates, telephone screening and then eventually bringing them in for an interview…….. so what’s the plan? This is the most important decision you’re going to make about your interview process; do you give them the list of technical questions, some example code or should you include the the rubik’s approach?

The List of Technical Questions

The candidate is presented with a list of technical questions that start with basic questions and slowly move towards more difficult ones. These could be about language specifics, API’s they claim to know or anything technical that is related to their potential position. Anyone with a basic knowledge of development principles stands a good chance of getting a reasonable score with the basic questions. Most people can memorise answers to the general technical questions, but does that really give you an insight into their ability?

The Example Code Test

The candidate is asked to write some general purpose code or possibly something resembling code they might be expected to work on. Anything general should be quite straight forward for the candidate, but anything that expects them to write code to specific API’s could produce undesirable results. If the candidate has claimed to have a good working knowledge of an API they have no excuse, but if they didn’t use the API yesterday, last month or ever, should that really sway your hiring decision? Is this candidate really better or worse than the one before?

A Different Way?

Joel Spolsky keeps his criteria for hiring staff quite simple; smart, and gets things done. If we approach hiring with such simple criteria; development is about solving problems and a good developer needs to excel at this regardless of their chosen language. They need a natural aptitude to understand a problem, break it down and arrive at a a solution. Presenting a candidate with technical questions or example code rarely tests those natural problem solving abilities in any great deal.

Rubik’s Research

A recent batch of company branded merchandise contained a single rubik’s cube. Over the course of a couple of months, the rubik’s cube was passed around the office, each member of the team having differing degrees of success. One team member was a rubik’s cube wizard, spinning and flicking the squares around to complete the puzzle in what seemed like seconds. This team member also happens to be exceptional at their job and has amazing problem solving skills. This team member is not a developer, but I have no doubt that if they decided to turn their hand to it, they would be an exceptionally productive one.

Some of the other team members just couldn’t break the problem down and struggled to find the patterns that advanced the puzzle. Even after training from the rubik’s cube wizard and written instructions on how to solve the puzzle, some team members still couldn’t progress from the jumbled mess. Some of these individuals could be classified as average (not exceptional, but not bad) developers and this puzzle really seemed to highlight the distinction.

The rubik’s cube is only one example of a problem solving challenge (some would argue one of the hardest), but even when supplied with the answers it still provides a good challenge. Fan’s of the classic game show Krypton Factor might already have an idea of the kind of challenges a candidate could undertake; from the impossible to the absurd. The idea here is simply that by augmenting a normal interview with a puzzle element, it may add some insight into the candidates puzzle solving approach.

Conclusion

The difference between average, good and excellent developers can often be traced back to their aptitude to solve basic problems. If team members are given the solution to problems but still can’t progress further, does this give us an insight into their general analytical approach? Problem solving skills can be taught to some degree, but does the rest just come naturally, is there only so much you can teach? Typical interviews often only touch on this ability and don’t look at it from a pure approach.

Puzzles like the rubik’s cube are a great way to test an individuals problem solving abilities, potentially putting them on a level playing field. These kind of puzzles force individuals to look for patterns, understand the process and apply it; after all isn’t that what development is all about? Next time you have a candidate in for an interview, should you include the the rubik’s approach?

Note: I have tried to find more information on this subject but as yet I’ve found very little real research. I’d be interested to hear about the links between problem solving and programming ability.

Reviews are a widely used technique to analyse code for the presence of defects and potential improvements. Many successful teams continually review code to try to ensure a high level of quality and to constantly improve a developers ability to write good code. The arguments for and against code reviews have been made on many occasions, but one common unknown factor for many teams is the frequency at which they should take place.

Infrequent Reviews

Many teams operate on a feature complete code review. At the end of the cycle of work, several developers sit down together with the author critiquing the delivered work. What often transpires here is that due to the huge mass of code delivered, the chances of a thorough review are rendered utterly impossible. The plethora of code makes it difficult to find a starting point and thus potentially problematic code isn’t allocated the time it necessarily deserves. Any potential recommendations that come out of this kind of code may never see the light of day given the pressing work schedule (if the code was complete why are the changes necessary?). Most importantly for the team, reviewing code so infrequently can lead to demoralisation of its members.

Code reviews may pick apart the authors code; code that they have potentially sweat and cried over (ok maybe not) and worked hard to complete. Does it really make sense to save up all the potential criticism and deliver it in one skull crushing blow? Even if the criticism is perfectly valid, nobody likes to feel good about something only for it to be completely torn apart. Developers complain when customers only let them know what they actually want when they see what they don’t, is the same really acceptable for the code? If infrequent code reviews aren’t the answer, how often can code be successfully reviewed?

Email Reviews

Some teams never let the author of the code commit it to the repository. Instead, they email the code (typically in patch form) to the code owner or one of the principal reviewers. The idea behind this approach is the patches are always reviewed prior to them being committed, and the developers can work productively only focusing on the task in hand. This process has the ability to ensure that every change is scrutinised and verified to maintain the high quality standards that are set down. Having had to work with a system like this in the past, I can honestly say that it was fraught with problems and was one of the most frustrating I’ve ever worked with (I was one of the principal reviewers).

The person applying the patch quickly becomes a bottleneck in the process, how long can people really wait for the patch to be applied? What should the patch reviewer actually do with the patch, make the recommendations themselves or send an email back to the original author to apply the required changes. If multiple people are working on the code base, the chances of conflicts increase. If the patches are applied in the wrong order or peoples timing is just plain unlucky, the person applying the patch has a multitude of problems to deal with. The version control system is full of only one persons name, thus making it incredibly difficult to track down the original owner of the change. Lastly should the worst happen and the build fail………………….. guess who’s change it was that broke it?

Frequent Reviews

People like to know what and how they are doing with their work. If infrequent code reviews lead to a big bang delivery approach, then frequent code reviews take the inverse approach of small nudges in the right direction. By applying these frequent reviews, developers can deal with smaller suggestions and recommendations early in their development. Instead of developers feeling they have completed something only to be told it’s all wrong, they can be guided along the process to ensure they arrive at a right answer. The most difficult question here is; how frequent is frequent? This is a very developer specific metric.

Some developers require frequent attention and when I say frequent I mean every few hours (or more!). As developers become more experienced, this frequency typically reduces until the reviewed eventually becomes the reviewer. Depending on the type of project however, it’s still quite common for very experienced developers to like frequent code reviews. If frequent reviews become very frequent reviews, you might have unwittingly found yourself participating in quasi pair programming.

Pair Programming

Pair programming is not only a great way to develop but also to implicitly review code. A second developer sitting at the keyboard provides instantaneous reviewing of code. The second developer not only reviews the code, but also looks for potential problems and improvements to the evolving code. The second developer isn’t always necessarily the reviewer, and roles can switch between either developer during the exercise.

Having someone take over the keyboard encourages the development to be of higher quality and a second set of eyes prompts the coders to produce good code (obviously given a good pairing of developers). This instant review and feedback can actually reduce the number of bugs introduced into the system. As several developers produced the code, it also means that the team is never reliant on a single developer to address a given area of code. Pair programming is an excellent way of developing an reviewing code, but it’s not without it’s problems with some people finding the feedback is just too often.

Summary

By reducing the time between code reviews, teams can provide better guidance about the eventual quality of code and prevent storing up potential problems. The less frequent the code reviews are the more problems (especially with less experienced staff) that occur. Developers want to feel like that are doing a good job and as such then need small bits of constructive criticism often instead of lots of criticism delivered all at once. Reviewing code is best addressed frequently, providing quicker feedback, and reducing the amount of rework involved. As a developers ability increases, these issues typically subside and they become active in reviewing other peoples code.

If infrequent code reviews are problematic, are frequent code reviews the key to success?

Whenever I receive an angry email from Hudson, I start to have very mixed feelings. My first emotions are pride and relief that we work with a build that catches problems and allows us to be troubled by them early in our process. My second emotions are torment and disappointment when I drill into the failure and see what has actually broken the build.

Everyone breaks the build, that’s just a fact of life. Anyone who has never broken a build; doesn’t write code, has never committed any code, works on a project without any tests, doesn’t write tests for their code or is just a phenomenal developer the likes of which many of us have never or will never see. The frustrating thing about build failures however, are the ones that are so easy to avoid. The thing that is even more frustrating than these build failures are the reasons given by the developer who caused the failure in the first place;

• It was only a small change
• Another developer had reviewed the code for me
• Someone was harassing me to check the code in
• The build is fixed now isn’t it
• Everyone else breaks the build
• I didn’t have time to run the tests
• I’m not sure what tests I’m supposed to run
• Nobody else runs the tests

The common thread through all of these statements is the lack of ownership and respect for the other developers. If you are checking in code on a regular basis that you don’t have confidence in or haven’t run tests against, what does that really say about your relationship with the other developers. Is this a team or just a bunch of developers that happen to work together?

If you broke the build, you broke the build. There are no excuses, reasons or justifications required. The only thing that needs to be done is the build needs to be fixed; not in a minute, not in an hour, but now. Everyone breaks the build, but everyone must also ensure they fix the build as well. Collective code ownership applies to every part of the project and nobody should be exempt from having to clean up their own mess.

If failing builds are continually a problem, many teams adopt punishments for developers that break the build. In the past I have found most of these punishments to actually be counter productive. Developers are not stupid, if there is a way to get around the punishment or to make it work in their favour they surely will. Things that punish developers can actually ensure that they commit code less frequently, push them away from the other team members or just be down right illegal. I am pretty sure nobody agreed to public humiliation when they signed their employment contracts. The aim is to change developer’s behavior without introducing more negative problems.

The most effective treatment I have found in the past is to make the build failures more of a team game. This used to be managed manually, but recently one of our team found a Hudson plug in called the Continuous Integration Game which takes a very similar approach (and we really thought our approach was original). Team members receive points for successful commits as well as losing points for failing ones (although we actually use different weightings for the points given). This provides real incentive to change habits, there is nothing like a measurable quality to make people sit up and take notice.

At the end of our two week sprint of work, the developer that loses the game buys cookies for the rest of the team. It’s only a small gesture (around £2 for the whole team) but a symbolic one none the less. The team really do like cookies and they sure don’t want to be the developer that has to buy them for everyone else (nobody likes to lose). When the next sprint starts, the game is reset and everyone looks forward to the cookies at the end of the sprint.

This game has actually injected a healthy attitude into the development team with everyone trying to avoid that failing build. Developers still regularly commit code, but the build failures aren’t as frequent as they once were. But should the worst happen and you receive that angry email, don’t forget to remind your team, every time a build fails a fairy dies!