Joel (from Joel on Software) had posted the Joel Test, or 12 Steps to Better Code. In there, he has listed 12 things that any software development team should be using. He feels that everyone should be shooting for a perfect 12, or 11 would be okay, but 10 and below means your group may have serious problems. The items he lists certainly have merit:

1. Do you use source control?
2. Can you make a build in one step?
3. Do you make daily builds?
4. Do you have a bug database?
5. Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
6. Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
7. Do you have a spec?
8. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
9. Do you use the best tools money can buy?
10. Do you have testers?
11. Do new candidates write code during their interview?
12. Do you do hallway usability testing?

A year ago, I'd say that our organization definitely fell into the "we have serious problems" category. I think we would have scored a zero. Perhaps a one, the schedule may have been up to date sometimes (#6).

As far as the web team is concerned, between last year and now, we've gotten a bug database, written some specs (though this needs to be vastly improved), have begun buying the tools we need (they're about to buy me a copy of VMWare so I can actually test web code using IE -- but generally, I find it hard to compete with X, Vim, Perl, and an Xterm), we have several folks who can test (though not fulltime), and candidates have been writing code in interviews. Bugs are fixed immediatly, always before new features are added.

Furthermore, today I just finished up the CVS repository for our web products, and we're preparing to move into a new area built just for the programming team.

So what's left? Builds made in one step, daily builds, and hallway usability testing. Something along the lines of daily builds would be good. We don't actually need to do a "build" for Perl code, but perhaps running it through a syntax checker (perl -c) in checkin would be useful. Building in one step, or in our case, moving from development to production, should be easily scriptable. As for Hallway Usability Testing, well, that'll be interesting. Most people aren't used to that around here, but they could learn :-)

Anyhow, we're not too far off now. Our products are generally web-based, and offered as a service, a convienence, to existing customers. We don't have the same level of funding for those shipping products as their main source of revenue. That doesn't mean we can't still do it well.