Enerjy News

Gauging the Code Quality of Your Development Team
Development managers need a better way to gauge the code quality of their teams' deliverables. They need to rely on objective data in order to identify processes and continually improve them. Unfortunately, the tools and systems currently available have their own unique goals and reporting requirements.

Sifting through the data from these disparate sources is an enormous challenge. Development managers need an automated process to pull data from these sources into a single repository, providing concrete metrics on:

• Number of coding standards being violated, tracked by developer
• Amount of code developers are writing, editing, deleting
• Amount of code being tested/unit test coverage
• Number of tests being written
• Number of tests passing/failing

Development managers need to be able to correlate file ownership with adherence to coding standards so that they can analyze trends; quantify the number of test cases, test runs, failures and errors to facilitate improvement; and graph code coverage over time, per developer, as it relates to improving code quality.

Armed with this type of information, development managers can help their team improve both skills and attitudes. They will know who to reward and who needs additional training. They can track overall code quality as a project progresses, and know exactly who to go to for any problems with the code. Managers will have real data for management reports that highlights code quality improvements over time-along with decreased system outages, application failures and in control schedules and budgets.

With the right data in the right hands, not only is a development manager's job a whole lot easier, but developers will also gain recognition for a job well done. The quality of a team's output can't help but improve in this type of environment, which goes a long way toward improving code quality with a result of software integrity.

Precision Team Management^SM: for Code Quality Management
The key to ensuring quality during a development project involves monitoring, measuring and modifying the behaviors of individual developers, a process collectively known as Precision Team Management. Precision Team Management brings this new process into the development cycle and enables development managers to identify which individual developers are adhering to testing, coverage and quality standards. In addition, Precision Team Management involves monitoring key performance indicators and continuously correcting the course of an application development project. Developers can also self-audit and correct their own code issues prior to managerial review. (see Figure 1)

The three steps of Precision Team Management are:

• Discovery: Collects and measures data to discover code quality, testing and coverage issues.
• Analysis: Identifies problems in real time and tracks them back to individual developers.
• Action: Provides actionable steps to help modify behaviors, enforce standards and correct errors.

Enerjy's Solution: Enerjy CQ2™
Enerjy CQ2 leverages Precision Team Management to deliver a powerful code quality management application for development managers seeking to meet rollout deadlines, reduce reports of problems in the field and increase the overall quality of developers' coding efforts.

Using a combination of patent-pending technology, Enerjy CQ2 helps development managers take the guesswork out of ensuring the quality of Java code by employing Precision Team Management processes.

Featuring a central console that reveals the real-time status of a development project, Enerjy CQ2 presents significant events that require action and tracks testing, coverage and code analysis. Enerjy CQ2 uniquely connects quality metrics to individuals, enabling the development manager to take immediate corrective action and coach developers who are violating coding standards and falling short of testing and production requirements.

Who Is Enerjy Software
Enerjy develops Java™ software integrity solutions for development managers to continuously improve the quality of their application development projects. Enerjy CQ2 is a turnkey solution that includes a full suite of services from installation to training to ensure the system is fully operationally and customized for each development manager's unique needs.

Development managers can now monitor and modify the behaviors of individual developers, thereby boosting the performance and productivity of the entire team, improving the quality of the code, and correcting the course of the overall application development project. Enerjy Software is a division of Teamstudio, Inc. With headquarters in Beverly, Massachusetts, Teamstudio also has offices in the UK, France, and Japan. To learn more about software integrity solutions designed to improve application quality and enhance developer productivity, please visit Enerjy's Web site at: www.enerjy.com.

Resources

1. "Why Software Fails," Spectrum Online, Robert N. Charette, August 2005