Overhead for source control, builds, etc

[Erick Thompson]

I'm putting together a budget for a new project that is starting from
scratch. One of the costs that I am unsure of is the technical overhead
percentage, and I'm hoping that you can help. By overhead, I mean how
much time do you spend on source control (care and feeding), build
systems, etc. I'm not talking about development, but all the non-IT
stuff that needs to be present for development to occur. This amount
would change with the complexity of the project and number of people
(probably O(nn)). I'm looking at about a 5-10 person team, all MS
technology (but we have free reign on tools). I was guess that it would
be about a 10% overhead, but that is a pure guess.

 

Any experiences would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Erick



This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed.  If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the NBR system manager.  If you are not the named addressee please notify the sender immediately by e-mail and please delete this e-mail from your system.  If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that disclosing, copying, distributing, or taking any action in reliance on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited.

Warning: Although having taken reasonable precautions to ensure no viruses are present in this e-mail, The National Bureau of Asian Research cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this e-mail or attachments.

[Greg-160]

SubVersion, Tortoise, Cruise Control, all configured correctly reduces this time to under an hour a week IMHO. I ran a team of 5-6 devs and after we got all of this configured correctly it ran smooth with little hands on needed.



--- In altdotnet@..., "Erick Thompson" <erickt@...> wrote:

>
> I'm putting together a budget for a new project that is starting from
> scratch. One of the costs that I am unsure of is the technical overhead
> percentage, and I'm hoping that you can help. By overhead, I mean how
> much time do you spend on source control (care and feeding), build
> systems, etc. I'm not talking about development, but all the non-IT
> stuff that needs to be present for development to occur. This amount
> would change with the complexity of the project and number of people
> (probably O(nn)). I'm looking at about a 5-10 person team, all MS
> technology (but we have free reign on tools). I was guess that it would
> be about a 10% overhead, but that is a pure guess.
>
>  
>
> Any experiences would be greatly appreciated.
>
>  
>
> Thanks,
>
> Erick
>
>
>
> This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed.  If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the NBR system manager.  If you are not the named addressee please notify the sender immediately by e-mail and please delete this e-mail from your system.  If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that disclosing, copying, distributing, or taking any action in reliance on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited.
>
> Warning: Although having taken reasonable precautions to ensure no viruses are present in this e-mail, The National Bureau of Asian Research cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this e-mail or attachments.
>

[Chris Brandsma]

Subversion (VisualSVN Server), Tortoise, AhnkSvn, TeamCity, Rake (if you
need something that MSBUILD doesn't do out of the box).

Subversion is a no brainer.  We spend very little time maintaining it.  Less
than an hour a week for the entire team.
TeamCity is also easy to setup, if you are a small shop, you could probably
do with the free version.  For getting started we just point it at our sln
files and go.

Rake, I like it better than Nant and MSBuild, Psake (powershell) is another
good one I've heard of people using.  But...custom build scripts are the
hardest part of the equation.  At first they can take very little time, but
they can quickly balloon into a time sink.  It all depends on what you want
the build to do for you (push to production, run unit tests, reset the
database, create installs, etc).  The last one I worked on nearly eat up an
full 8 hour day.

But, once complete, maintenance is very minimal for all the tools.



On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 5:34 PM, volkl96 <gregarobinson@...> wrote:

>
>
> SubVersion, Tortoise, Cruise Control, all configured correctly reduces this
> time to under an hour a week IMHO. I ran a team of 5-6 devs and after we got
> all of this configured correctly it ran smooth with little hands on needed.
>
> --- In altdotnet@... <altdotnet%40yahoogroups.com>, "Erick
> Thompson" <erickt@...> wrote:
> >
> > I'm putting together a budget for a new project that is starting from
> > scratch. One of the costs that I am unsure of is the technical overhead
> > percentage, and I'm hoping that you can help. By overhead, I mean how
> > much time do you spend on source control (care and feeding), build
> > systems, etc. I'm not talking about development, but all the non-IT
> > stuff that needs to be present for development to occur. This amount
> > would change with the complexity of the project and number of people
> > (probably O(nn)). I'm looking at about a 5-10 person team, all MS
> > technology (but we have free reign on tools). I was guess that it would
> > be about a 10% overhead, but that is a pure guess.
> >
> >
> >
> > Any experiences would be greatly appreciated.
> >
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Erick
> >
> >
> >
> > This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and
> intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are
> addressed. If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the NBR
> system manager. If you are not the named addressee please notify the sender
> immediately by e-mail and please delete this e-mail from your system. If you
> are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that disclosing,
> copying, distributing, or taking any action in reliance on the contents of
> this information is strictly prohibited.
> >
> > Warning: Although having taken reasonable precautions to ensure no
> viruses are present in this e-mail, The National Bureau of Asian Research
> cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of
> this e-mail or attachments.
> >
>
>  
>

--
--------------------------------
Christopher Brandsma
http://www.ChrisBrandsma.com
http://www.ElegantCode.com

[alberto-40]

It's not overhead. I use them because they save me time.

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 11:57 PM, Erick Thompson <erickt@...> wrote:

>
>
>  I'm putting together a budget for a new project that is starting from
> scratch. One of the costs that I am unsure of is the technical overhead
> percentage, and I'm hoping that you can help. By overhead, I mean how much
> time do you spend on source control (care and feeding), build systems, etc.
> I'm not talking about development, but all the non-IT stuff that needs to be
> present for development to occur. This amount would change with the
> complexity of the project and number of people (probably O(nn)). I'm
> looking at about a 5-10 person team, all MS technology (but we have free
> reign on tools). I was guess that it would be about a 10% overhead, but that
> is a pure guess.
>
>
>
> Any experiences would be greatly appreciated.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Erick
>
>
> *
>
> This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended
> solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed.
> If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the NBR system
> manager. If you are not the named addressee please notify the sender
> immediately by e-mail and please delete this e-mail from your system. If you
> are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that disclosing,
> copying, distributing, or taking any action in reliance on the contents of
> this information is strictly prohibited.
>
> Warning: Although having taken reasonable precautions to ensure no viruses
> are present in this e-mail, The National Bureau of Asian Research cannot
> accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this
> e-mail or attachments.
> *
>
>

[Torbjörn Gyllebring]

Calling source control and CI "overhead" is about as meaningfull as asking
"what is the time overhead of me taking the car 40km to work instead of
walking?"

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 11:57 PM, Erick Thompson <erickt@...> wrote:

>
>
>  I'm putting together a budget for a new project that is starting from
> scratch. One of the costs that I am unsure of is the technical overhead
> percentage, and I'm hoping that you can help. By overhead, I mean how much
> time do you spend on source control (care and feeding), build systems, etc.
> I'm not talking about development, but all the non-IT stuff that needs to be
> present for development to occur. This amount would change with the
> complexity of the project and number of people (probably O(nn)). I'm
> looking at about a 5-10 person team, all MS technology (but we have free
> reign on tools). I was guess that it would be about a 10% overhead, but that
> is a pure guess.
>
>
>
> Any experiences would be greatly appreciated.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Erick
>
>
> *
>
> This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended
> solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed.
> If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the NBR system
> manager. If you are not the named addressee please notify the sender
> immediately by e-mail and please delete this e-mail from your system. If you
> are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that disclosing,
> copying, distributing, or taking any action in reliance on the contents of
> this information is strictly prohibited.
>
> Warning: Although having taken reasonable precautions to ensure no viruses
> are present in this e-mail, The National Bureau of Asian Research cannot
> accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this
> e-mail or attachments.
> *
>
>  
>

[Johnathon Wright-2]

+1 ... professionals use these tools.


On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 2:31 AM, alberto <alberto.email@...> wrote:

>
>
> It's not overhead. I use them because they save me time.
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 11:57 PM, Erick Thompson <erickt@...> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>  I'm putting together a budget for a new project that is starting from
>> scratch. One of the costs that I am unsure of is the technical overhead
>> percentage, and I'm hoping that you can help. By overhead, I mean how much
>> time do you spend on source control (care and feeding), build systems, etc.
>> I'm not talking about development, but all the non-IT stuff that needs to be
>> present for development to occur. This amount would change with the
>> complexity of the project and number of people (probably O(nn)). I'm
>> looking at about a 5-10 person team, all MS technology (but we have free
>> reign on tools). I was guess that it would be about a 10% overhead, but that
>> is a pure guess.
>>
>>
>>
>> Any experiences would be greatly appreciated.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Erick
>>
>>
>> *
>>
>> This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and
>> intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are
>> addressed. If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the NBR
>> system manager. If you are not the named addressee please notify the sender
>> immediately by e-mail and please delete this e-mail from your system. If you
>> are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that disclosing,
>> copying, distributing, or taking any action in reliance on the contents of
>> this information is strictly prohibited.
>>
>> Warning: Although having taken reasonable precautions to ensure no viruses
>> are present in this e-mail, The National Bureau of Asian Research cannot
>> accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this
>> e-mail or attachments.
>> *
>>
>>
>  
>

[Erick Thompson]

The build/deployment process is what scares me. I've had projects where
it has eaten weeks of time. It was a solution that did a build, test,
and push to test server, and then the same process to production. It was
very fragile. Change one path/server, and you need to debug the
build/deploy scripts.

 

Erick

 

From: altdotnet@... [mailto:altdotnet@...] On
Behalf Of Chris Brandsma
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 7:18 PM
To: altdotnet@...
Subject: Re: [altdotnet] Re: Overhead for source control, builds, etc

 

 

Subversion (VisualSVN Server), Tortoise, AhnkSvn, TeamCity, Rake (if you
need something that MSBUILD doesn't do out of the box).

Subversion is a no brainer.  We spend very little time maintaining it.
Less than an hour a week for the entire team.
TeamCity is also easy to setup, if you are a small shop, you could
probably do with the free version.  For getting started we just point it
at our sln files and go.  

Rake, I like it better than Nant and MSBuild, Psake (powershell) is
another good one I've heard of people using.  But...custom build scripts
are the hardest part of the equation.  At first they can take very
little time, but they can quickly balloon into a time sink.  It all
depends on what you want the build to do for you (push to production,
run unit tests, reset the database, create installs, etc).  The last one
I worked on nearly eat up an full 8 hour day.

But, once complete, maintenance is very minimal for all the tools.




On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 5:34 PM, volkl96 <gregarobinson@...> wrote:

 

SubVersion, Tortoise, Cruise Control, all configured correctly reduces
this time to under an hour a week IMHO. I ran a team of 5-6 devs and
after we got all of this configured correctly it ran smooth with little
hands on needed.


--- In altdotnet@... <mailto:altdotnet%40yahoogroups.com> ,
"Erick Thompson" <erickt@...> wrote:
>
> I'm putting together a budget for a new project that is starting from
> scratch. One of the costs that I am unsure of is the technical
overhead
> percentage, and I'm hoping that you can help. By overhead, I mean how
> much time do you spend on source control (care and feeding), build
> systems, etc. I'm not talking about development, but all the non-IT
> stuff that needs to be present for development to occur. This amount
> would change with the complexity of the project and number of people
> (probably O(nn)). I'm looking at about a 5-10 person team, all MS
> technology (but we have free reign on tools). I was guess that it
would

> be about a 10% overhead, but that is a pure guess.
>
>
>
> Any experiences would be greatly appreciated.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Erick
>
>
>
> This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and

intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are
addressed. If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the
NBR system manager. If you are not the named addressee please notify the
sender immediately by e-mail and please delete this e-mail from your
system. If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified
that disclosing, copying, distributing, or taking any action in reliance
on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited.
>
> Warning: Although having taken reasonable precautions to ensure no
viruses are present in this e-mail, The National Bureau of Asian
Research cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising
from the use of this e-mail or attachments.
>




--
--------------------------------
Christopher Brandsma
http://www.ChrisBrandsma.com
http://www.ElegantCode.com

[Erick Thompson]

Perhaps overhead isn't the correct term, as it implies that it doesn't
add value. These all add value, without question, but nonetheless they
don't directly contribute the project, instead, it's an indirect
benefit. This is why I wanted to get an idea of how much of time I
should allocate for making sure that these tools are not an
afterthought, but instead fully accounted for. I've seen too many
projects where the estimates are all about the code/tests, and the tools
get left out, leading to bad numbers.

 

Erick

 

From: altdotnet@... [mailto:altdotnet@...] On
Behalf Of Johnathon Wright
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 6:09 AM
To: altdotnet@...
Subject: Re: [altdotnet] Overhead for source control, builds, etc

 

 

+1 ... professionals use these tools.

 

 

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 2:31 AM, alberto <alberto.email@...> wrote:

 

It's not overhead. I use them because they save me time.

 

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 11:57 PM, Erick Thompson <erickt@...> wrote:

 

I'm putting together a budget for a new project that is starting from
scratch. One of the costs that I am unsure of is the technical overhead
percentage, and I'm hoping that you can help. By overhead, I mean how
much time do you spend on source control (care and feeding), build
systems, etc. I'm not talking about development, but all the non-IT
stuff that needs to be present for development to occur. This amount
would change with the complexity of the project and number of people
(probably O(nn)). I'm looking at about a 5-10 person team, all MS
technology (but we have free reign on tools). I was guess that it would
be about a 10% overhead, but that is a pure guess.

 

Any experiences would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Erick

 

This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and
intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are
addressed. If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the
NBR system manager. If you are not the named addressee please notify the
sender immediately by e-mail and please delete this e-mail from your
system. If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified
that disclosing, copying, distributing, or taking any action in reliance
on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited.

Warning: Although having taken reasonable precautions to ensure no
viruses are present in this e-mail, The National Bureau of Asian
Research cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising
from the use of this e-mail or attachments.

 

 

 

[Johnathon Wright-2]

IMHO, the best way to avoid this situation is to release every week to a
staging server. That way, when it's time to release to production, the
release process is integrated into the team's proces. Once releases become
ordinary, they become less problematic.