Question: Code quality/review , Tests, Team work and deployment .. ?

[Cyber_Monkey]

Hello to all !

I've became responsible for a number of developers, and I wanted to keep track of code quality (Writing proper comments / tests for each possible case) and so on.

 

To be honest, I never wrote a unit test in my life as a PHP developer, which is the case with the vast majority of us. We weren't/aren't taught to do that simply.

 

We are also shipping projects to different offshore clients of various experience, with the most of them have very little knowledge about the process.

 

My questions are:

(for team work)

1- How can I monitor my team as it progresses , review their code and perhaps approve it for some team members who are new ?

2- What tools can I use to automate PHP building (Maven / Ant / Phing ? ) I read about them , but never used any of them.

3- We will be using attlasian , which has Bambo build facility , or we better use hudson/jenkins?

4- How to prototype / plan projects once I first accept a project to work on?

 

(for clients)

1- How to keep clients updated frequently about what we are working on ?

2- How to deploy our code / database setting up automatically from the our code that passed build tests?

 

This is so important to me to know, and I guess will help many people who care about quality but do not know where to start or have no clue how this would benefit them.

 

Please assume no prior knowledge or experience when you answer. As I mentioned, I have no experience at all.

 

 

Regards.

[trq]

1) Use Github. This allows devs to send pull requests of there work, these can then be reviewed before merging into the main branch. (Considering your using Atlassian, they have a product called stash that does similar)

2) http://travis.ci is my prefered tool.

3) See above.

4) Massive question. I would have assumed being in your position this would be one of your existing skillsets.

 

1) Client don't usually need to know the technical side of what your working on.

2) Git & Composer are great tools, you might find a simple solution is best.