Surviving at the Software Industry (9) - Caravan your way out of problems.

It's not a secret that I admire Damien Chazelle a lot. He is the youngest movie director of all times. Today we'll be talking his first big hit "Whiplash" on the context of quality. If you haven't watched this film I recommend you to watch it because it is gorgeous.

In the film, we have an abusive professor on a jazz school called Fletcher. This professor is obsessed with perfection and he aims to get the best students on his group to perform difficult jazz songs and to become a great school jazz band.

The chapter nine from the book talks about quality. What is good, the consequences of doing the job right and doing it wrong. It also helps you to see the big picture, and to identify all what is around of the making of a good project.

If we don't ensure good quality, we can end like Carl Tanner and being kicked out of the band. Sometimes the project wont be quite the client's tempo and they will need you to give them support on the project AFTER you deliver it. All of these problem are solvable on the early stages of the project. We just need a Quality Assurance Plan, or QAP, a fancy nickname I invented for it.

So, what should we have on our plan? The book gives us a list of concepts that we should be aware of when doing our document. Look at Andrew. He had to rehearse every single day and go over all his flaws to achieve his teacher's expectations.

• Defect Tracking: You can't just think that all your problems are gonna be solved by looking at them. You have to keep a record of them, if not, you are going to forget you have them and you won't solve them. Andrew went over the same 15 seconds of Caravan over and over until his hands stopped working.
• Unit Testing: You have to test. This step shouldn't be a secret by now. You have to join your drums with the rest of the band and to see how you're all doing.
• Source-Code Tracing: Going through all the lines of code on a debugger. If you do that you can see how everything functions, step by step.
• Technical Reviews: Go with co-workers and other people so they can give you reviews, and you can do the same with their parts of the projects. It is always good to have the insight from anothe human being, and then you won't be a loner drumer without a social life.
• Integration Testing: Mix all the code together, new and old, and be sure everything is working fine.
• System Testing: Now you can play Caravan right. You can start to play all together to refine the final touches.

As soon as you can master that you will be ready to play not only Caravan, but Whiplash and any other jazz song easily!