Development Practices

Work according to a Definition of Done (DoD)

Each team has a different definition of what “done” means, but it is important to have one and ensure that a story meets the defined criteria before being accepted.

Some criteria that are commonly specified by teams include:

Without a well-defined DoD, it is easy to end up in a situation where many things are halfway done and nothing is truly complete.

Define and adhere to coding and formatting conventions

Things like indentation levels and white space may not seem important, but having properly formatted code goes a long way towards readability and maintainability. Conventions should be discussed and agreed to as a team and then followed in the code.

Aim for high test coverage

As a project implementation grows in size, so does the amount of time that is required to test it. Without good test coverage, the testing team cannot scale and the developers eventually become buried in bugs.

Developers should practice Test Driven Development (TDD), writing failing unit tests before the production code that fulfills their requirements. QA should create an automated set of acceptance tests to ensure that the system works as expected from a high level.

There are custom frameworks available, such as Jackalope and Prosper, to make mocking of JCR APIs simpler to ensure productivity of developers while writing unit tests.