isabella232 / pair-distribution-app

Automated pair generation for pair programming

Pair Distribution Application

The pair-distribution-app supports teams which do pair programming and operations in pairing mode (DevOps). It is a CloudFoundry application which can generate pair combinations based on different strategies. Currently, supported use cases for pair programming are:

• One team from one company which does development
• One team from one company which does development and operations
• Multiple teams from different companies developing together
• Multiple teams from different companies developing together and some of the companies do operations
• Multiple teams from different companies developing together and some of the companies do operations and company specific projects

There are different strategies for pair generation. Currently, supported strategies are:

• For development
  • rotate every day or every two days
  • block rotation for one day
  • the developer with more days in the track rotates out
  • new pair combinations are generated based on the pair weights. Based on its history the pair-distribution-app computes for each pair combination, a weight which represents how often a pair worked together and how often a developer from the pair was in a track. Pair generation takes the pair with the smallest weight for a track. In case that more than one combination have the same weight then a random one is choosen.
• For operations
  • rotate in the same way as development or weekly
  • for each company which do operations one operations pair is generated. The operations pairs are developers from the same company and have a card title <company-name>-ops/interrupt
  • the rest of the rules are the same like for development
• In case of multiple companies with company specific projects
  • for each company with company specific projects one pair is generated. The pairs are built with developers from the same company and have a card title <company-name>-<company-project>
  • the rest of the rules are the same as for development

REST APIs

• For two day rotation use: /pairs/trello
• For every day rotation use: /pairs/trello?everyday=true
• For testing pairs/test/trello?days=<days-in-the-future

Requirements

• MVN CLI
• Java 8
• CloudFoundry enviroment with MongoDB service
• CloudFoundry Command Line Interface (CLI) to interact with CloudFoundry
• Trello account

Download & Installation

• Clone this repository locally
• Log in to your CloudFoundry account with the CF CLI
• Build the application and deploy it to CloudFundry. The application configuration has to be completed before deploying it.
  • Windows:

  $ cd <project-root-folder>
  
  # build and execute unit tests
  $ mvn clean install
  
  # deploy the application to CloudFoundry
  $ cf push
  

  • Mac OS or Linux:

  $ cd <project-root-folder>
  # execute the script
  $ ./deploy.sh
  

• Trigger the pair generation by executing a get request to http(s)://<application-root>/pairs/trello. This call will generate a pair combination in Trello

Configuration

Configure Application and Trello Access

First, you will need to generate credentials for your Trello account. You will need also the Id of your Trello board. Use the Trello sandbox to get the Id. With your API key you can execute samples in the sandbox. Execute the Get Boards sample to find out the Id of your board. The Trello api.key, api.token and board.id have to be added to the application.properties file.

$ cd <project-root-folder>
$ cp deploy/application.properties.template src/main/resources/application.properties
$ cp deploy/manifest.yml.template manifest.yml

Edit both files and replace all place holders <...> inside.

Trello Account Preparation

The pair-distribution-app accesses information about developers, tracks and companies via Trello-APIs, uses its history and generates the new pairs for the day which is a Trello list.

• Create a list called Devs.
  • create a card called Devs and add all developers of your team as members to this card. The application will use this information for pair generation.
  • if operations pair is required create a card called DevOps: <company-name>. This will automatically generate an operations pair for the <company-name>. Default behavoir here is to rotate like the dev pairs. For weekly roation change the configuration to DevOps: <company-name>-weekly.
  • create a card called New. This card is for all new developer. The members of this card will not be considered for the operations pair.
  • create a card <company-name> for each company and add all developers of a <company-name> as members of their company card.
• create a list called Tracks.
  • create a card for each track prioritized from the top to the bottom.
  • for company specific projects create a card with title <company-name>-<project-name>
• by adding the red label to the latest card of a pair you can block the rotation for this pair for the next rotation

Prepare Persistence

Create the MongoDB service instance required for the application. E.g. with follwoing command:

cf cs mongodb <service-plan> pairsdb

Limitations

Trello use

The use of the Trello APIs and Trello service are subject to applicable Trello agreements.

How to obtain support

Please create a new issue if you find any problems.