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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Given the nature of the business environment today, organizations that want to build value-added enterprise PHP applications need a team of PHP people rather than an individual. You've got a team! What next? Customizing such applications to meet with organizational objectives and maintaining these applications over time can be quite a tedious task for your team with so many people involved.
In this book, you will explore how you can break up complex PHP projects into simple sub-parts that multiple team members can work on. The book highlights the use of the MVC pattern for separating concerns in the application and agile principles to deliver code that works. You will learn to blend the simplicity and power of PHP with evolving software engineering principles and tools to easily develop code that is easy to maintain. With this book in hand, you know how to avoid getting muddled up while working in a team and achieve success on your project with effective team work.
Organizations choose PHP as the preferred language for complex web applications because it is battle tested, hardened over time, and proven to work. Thus, chances of the software project you are involved with being PHP-based, are very high. Soon, you will need to explore the technical as well as non-technical aspects that are important to achieve success in PHP team projects of this kind. This book starts by explaining the need for teams working on complex software projects. You learn how you can divide the complexity of PHP projects with the help of the MVC pattern and the use of frameworks. It then discusses the need for a process and how you can choose the right process. It teaches you how to use agile principles to deliver working software for customers, and how to make sure that the team collaborates effectively. Towards the end, the book emphasizes continuous improvement in process and product as well as the people involved. You learn how to ensure that your team is open to change and user feedback, and has the right mindset about quality and other project-related aspects.
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Seitenzahl: 299
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009
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Table of Contents
PHP Team Development
Samisa Abeysinghe
PHP Team Development
Copyright © 2009 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: September 2009
Production Reference: 1240809
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847195-06-7
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Ed Maclean (<[email protected]>)
Credits
Author
Samisa Abeysinghe
Reviewers
Deepak Vohra
Garvin Hicking
Acquisition Editor
Sarah Cullington
Development Editor
Dilip Venkatesh
Technical Editors
Mehul Shetty
Akash Johari
Copy Editor
Leonard D'Silva
Indexer
Monica Ajmera
Editorial Team Leader
Akshara Aware
Project Team Leader
Lata Basantani
Project Coordinator
Rajashree Hamine
Proofreader
Joel T. Johnson
Production Coordinator
Adline Swetha Jesuthas
Cover Work
Adline Swetha Jesuthas
Drawing Coordinator
Nilesh R. Mohite
About the Author
Samisa Abeysinghe has nearly ten years of industrial experience with various software projects. He has been an Apache committer for many years and has worked for software product companies as well as software services companies.
Samisa was the project leader for WSO2 Web services Framework for PHP projects for a couple of years and has an in-depth understanding on the enterprise use of PHP. He has been involved in helping many project teams use WSO2 WSF/PHP for enterprise projects.
As director of engineering at WSO2, Samisa now looks after multiple teams working on various projects on a daily basis and gets involved with defining and fine-tuning processes and practices to ensure a project's success.
Samisa is also the author of the book RESTful PHP Web Services.
I would like to thank all the people who have worked with me on software projects from the day I started working in the software industry. All those people have greatly helped me in understanding this complex domain.
I would like to mention the WSO2 team, including Sanjiva Weerewarana-CEO, and Paul Fremantle-CTO, all the members of the engineering leadership, as well as all the engineers. While it has been a pleasure to work with such a skilled team, it has also helped me to understand the software engineering realities better in practice.
I would also like to mention the great helping hands rendered by the technical reviewers of this book as well as the project coordinator of this book.
About the Reviewers
Deepak Vohra is a consultant and a principal member of the NuBean.com software company. He is a Sun Certified Java Programmer and Web Component Developer, and has worked in the fields of XML, Java programming and J2EE for over five years. He is the co-author of the Apress book Pro XML Development with Java Technology and was the technical reviewer for the O'Reilly book WebLogic: The Definitive Guide. He was also the technical reviewer for the Course Technology PTR book Ruby Programming for the Absolute Beginner, and the technical editor for the Manning Publications book Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action. Deepak is also the author of the Packt Publishing books JDBC 4.0 and Oracle JDeveloper for J2EE Development, and Processing XML Documents with Oracle JDeveloper 11g.
Garvin Hicking is a passionate web-developer, who is engaged in open source projects like Serendipity (Lead Developer) and phpMyAdmin. He works at the Internet agency Faktor E GmbH in Bonn (Germany). Being up-to-date, he has been involved in writing or reviewing several books about PHP, the most recent one being the official documentation of the PHP-Blog application Serendipity. Aside from his professional work, he and his girlfriend enjoy taking professional photographs.
Preface
This book is about ensuring project success for PHP teams. It explores technical as well as non technical aspects that matter when achieving project success. On the technical front, designing to divide complexity to conquer complex problems, keeping things simple in the design, choosing the right process, and monitoring and improving the process are important aspects. On the non technical front, making sure that they collaborate effectively, the team should be open to changes. The team should be open to user feedback. Having the right mindset about quality and other aspects related to project success are discussed.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Software is Complex, explains the complexities that we face while working with today's software projects. PHP projects, some years ago, used to be small projects involving one or two people. However, today, we need teams of people for PHP projects. This chapter explores the need for teams for PHP projects. It also discusses how software engineering principles help with PHP projects. There is an increasing need to use a process for PHP projects. The complexity of having a team is figuring out how to divide the project's problem among team members and solve it. This chapter discusses how to divide and conquer projects. We will discuss how patterns help the PHP project to cope with complexity. Finally, we will explore how to use tools to manage the development and collaboration within the PHP team.
Chapter 2, MVC and Software Teams, discusses the MVC pattern in depth and how MVC can help in a PHP project. It also explores how to use the MVC pattern as the guiding principle to break down the complexity of a project, and how to implement MVC with a team. It also discusses the integration challenges that are faced in putting together all the pieces of MVC that are developed by different team members.
Chapter 3, Dealing with Complexity, discusses in depth how we can make use of software design patterns to cope with complexities in a software project. We will also discuss how PHP MVC frameworks simplify the complexity of a project. When using a PHP framework, there are a bunch of expectations; we will explore what to expect and what to look for in a PHP framework. The mere use of a PHP framework would not guarantee project success. Hence, we will discuss how to achieve team success with PHP frameworks in this chapter. We will also look at some leading PHP frameworks. Moreover, we will also learn how to make things simple while using a PHP framework.
Chapter 4, The Process Matters, explains the relationship between the process and the product. We will discuss, in depth, the consequences of ignoring the process and why the process must be respected. We will learn how to move from no process to having a process. We will explore the motivation that is required for a process, how a process helps, and does not hinder a PHP project. We will also study a simple process model that can be used for PHP projects.
Chapter 5, Agile Works Best, will introduce agile philosophy, including agile values and agile principles. We will discuss common problems and fears that developers face when developing a product, and see how agility can help to overcome them. We will discuss extreme programming principles, and also learn the advantages of agile process models. Finally, we will explore how we can achieve team agility.
Chapter 6, Ways of Collaboration, discusses the challenges faced while working with teams, and we explore the implications of assumptions made by team members. Then we will learn collaboration techniques for ensuring seamless integration of the various components and layers developed by the team members. We will dig into the details of source control, bug control, and configuration management, and learn how those relate to effective team collaboration. Moreover, we will discuss some tools that we can use for communication and collaboration.
Chapter 7, Continuous Improvement, will explain how to deal with change in PHP applications. In order to make sure the software that we develop is useful, we have to make sure that we are willing to embrace change and also be ready to evolve the system, as we move along. We also have to ensue that the process being used is effective. We will discuss how we can evolve the PHP application and also measure the effectiveness of our process. People development is also another important aspect of continuous improvement when ensuring success with teams. We will learn the team management and people development aspect in this chapter.
What you need for this book
This book does not assume any prerequisites. If you have worked with a project team on a PHP application, it will make it easier to relate to your experiences. However, if you are a beginner, and want to learn what it takes to work with a team and be successful, this book will provide a wealth of knowledge.
Who this book is for
This book is for PHP developers who work in complex PHP projects. Those who want to know the secrets of success for PHP projects that meet the complex demands of today's enterprise can benefit from this book.
This book can also be useful for project managers who are looking to be successful with PHP projects.
Those who are acting as stakeholders of PHP projects, such as clients, or those who want to sponsor PHP projects, can also learn what to expect and how to deal with PHP project team with this book.
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Note
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Tip
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Chapter 1. Software is Complex
Useful software evolves over time in order to adapt to the ever changing environment and to cope with the ever increasing demands in the real world. Therefore, useful software becomes increasingly complex over time. This phenomenon applies to PHP applications as well.
During the early days of PHP, the systems written were fairly simple and straightforward. In fact, when Rasmus Lerdorf first developed PHP, the objective was very simple—'Make my life easy with dynamic web applications'. It was a one person effort to start with. Over a period of time, more and more individuals got interested in PHP and used it for their own web applications. Their applications were simple, hardly exceeding 100 PHP scripts and, more often than not, managed by a single person.
As more people gained interest in PHP, for its simplicity and ease of use, the number of use cases increased. This resulted in people wanting to do more with PHP, especially with the rise of the Internet and enterprises looking into using Internet for business applications. The Novel Applications of the Web 2.0 era also increased the demand for rich applications on the Web, along with the need for powerful programming options.
PHP, as a scripting language, has evolved remarkably to meet up to the new requirements. Therefore, as we all know, PHP became the language of choice for the majority of complex and interesting applications that are deployed on the Internet today.
If you look around the Web, some of the most used applications such as Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/) are PHP-based. Any web hosting solution that is found around the Web today provides support for PHP. Drupal (http://drupal.org/), Joomla (http://www.joomla.org/), and WordPress (http://wordpress.org/), the popular content management systems that are deployed by millions, are all PHP-based.
As the adoption of PHP becomes wider and the use becomes broader, the feature set and tools continue to expand. At the same time, organizations tend to choose PHP as the language of choice for complex web applications, because it is battle tested, hardened over time, and proven to work. Thus, the chances of the software project you are involved with being PHP-based is very high. Also, the number of organizations that use PHP-based tools is also high. The following image shows the popularity of the programming languages (Source: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html):
The leading programming languages, Java, C, and C++, are very different form PHP. Java and C++ are used to implement enterprise as well as desktop applications. Many people still use C to implement systems software such as operating systems. Even the PHP engine is implemented in C. On the other hand, PHP is popular in a very different domain, namely Web Programming. As you can see, PHP is the leader when it comes to web-based programming.
Be it that your software project is using PHP or a tool based on PHP, given the complexity of today's software, you need a team of people. In other words, the days when one person could handle the development of a platform are long gone. Today's web applications are much more complex compared to the private home pages. For example, the PHP-based web application platforms like Flickr are quite complex web applications that are completely written in PHP. We are also seeing that blogging web applications are replacing private web sites at a very fast rate, and the blogging platforms are completely implemented in PHP.
In this chapter, you will learn:
Need for teams
We need the help of a team of people to successfully implement a solution to a complex problem. When we are trying to implement a solution for some problem, one of the obvious questions would be whether to implement the solution on our own or to look for ready made solutions which are available out there. There are many hosted solutions that can be found on the Internet for individual use these days. For example, you could go to a web hosting site and deploy your web site based on WordPress. You can also use one of many blogging tools and make it your home page. So if the task is simple, there is no point having a team of PHP developers to do the job. If the problem that we are looking to solve is complex, and if there are no readymade solutions available out there, we need to form a team to help solve the problem. Sometimes, we'll be able to find open source projects that solve the problem that we have been looking to solve. However, most of the open source projects are looking to solve generic problems. Most of the enterprises would have unique business problems to be solved. Hence, we might need a team of developers to implement that custom solution for the enterprise.
Implementing a more customized, value added, enterprise applications requires a team of developers. This is required, especially, given today's competitive marketplace, and given that almost all organizations make use of information technology. It is not the mere existence of a software application that matters most today. Rather, the application should meet the expectations of the enterprise, by being agile, flexible, and designed to deal with the ever changing business environment. For example, take a developer portal; you can easily use a content management system such as Drupal or Joomla! for hosting it. However, to customize it to meet the organizational objectives and maintain it over time, you might need more than one PHP developer—and that is a team.
If you look into a more complex enterprise scenario, such as online trading or social networking, your team could consist of around 10 to 100 people, or even more. Many PHP-based dynamic web sites could be managed effectively with about two good PHP developers. However, the number of members that you need in a team is very much dependant on the nature of the PHP project at hand. Apart from the design and coding activities, we need to take into account the testing and documentation effort in a project. We might also need to take into account the effort required to maintain the software, providing bug fixes, and facilitating change requests.
So it is obvious that you need a team, and you might already be part of a team. Perhaps this is the reason why you are reading this book, or you might want to join on organization where there are teams.
