Beware Of Coder

There are two things that are killing my productivity right now in my current job (actually, there are thousands, but I will limit this entry to the two that are giving me time to write this entry). Waiting for data to move across the network in the form of database back ups, and complete lack of standards for tracking bugs and their fixes.

I spend probably 3-4 hours a day just setting up backup databases from clients in order to reproduce/test/fix bugs they're having. Given how the system is setup, it is almost impossible to test most bugs from a simple test DB setup. The reason for this, if anyone is interested, is that we allow dynamic forms to be built, and they all behave slightly differently based upon the configuration. So, to reproduce most of these bugs, I need the specific data which triggered it. Because of HIPAA standards, though, I can't just reach over and dig through their databases. I have to request a backup from IT, which may or may not be encrypted, and load it locally to play with.

The general setup goes along these lines:
I send an email to IT requesting the backup.
I get a response from IT that it is copying to my shared folder.
The database is copied, so I take it from my share onto my local machine (SQL Server Management Studio won't browse network drives that I've found.)
Once it is local, I can restore it. Unless it is encrypted, then I have to copy it to yet another server where encryption is running.
Once it is up, I have to run multiple scripts on it to setup permissions to give myself access.
Finally, I set a permissions file for PHP to tell it where to access it.

The above takes anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours. Per database. It kills my productivity. I can't continue my work until I get the database, so I end up reading around on the internet a lot, which makes me feel like a slacker, which I don't like. But I've been unable to come up with a solution to the problem. I've suggested to IT to give us a server in which we can pull our own databases, where everything can be done locally without the need for copying these things all over the place.

The other speed hit is that Im running on a gigabit NIC, yet somewhere in the router chain to all of the other machines I need to copy to/from, there is a 10mbps switch, which "dumbs-down" the entire process. This too, drives me nuts.

That's one threat to my productivity. The other is how my company is tracking bugs. Right now, they're using two individual systems (they are trying to merge to one, but it's a slow process). They are using SalesForce primarily, and are currently working to prepare an installation of Sugar to use instead. The problem is, updating each entry for bug tracking is currently being done half-assed. So when I tell $boss2 that I need more work to do, she hands me a list of bugs from SalesForce, half of which are invariably already assigned to someone else, or already in QA for testing, or something. Worse, the customer service people are typically the ones opening tickets. They are in the habit of copying and pasting emails directly from clients, which forces me to do their jobs, which is actually finding out if a bug exists. The ticket should not be crossing my desk until the bug is identified and the solution decided on. Because of all of this, I spend more time trying to figure if there actually is a problem, instead of fixing them.

Once I do prepare a fix to a bug, even though we have CVS and SVN servers running, the code doesn't go into those ... it goes into an email to QA, where they do $deity-only-knows what with them. So once it leaves my computer, I never see it again until its time to roll out a release. Now, I may have my facts wrong about how CVS is supposed to work, but I was under the impression that when you check-in, you keep old versions so that each iteration can be "un-done". This would keep us from having to build whole major versions from multiple sets of code fixes each time we want to put out a patch, or make it easy to revert a change if we didn't like it. It would also ensure we have the latest bug fixes each time we pull code to work on. But like I said, I may have my facts wrong.

Im not sure how to fix these problems, as I don't have a lot of control over the process before it gets into my hands. But they frustrate the living hell out of me, and cause me to waste untold amounts of time.