The Person Month Revisited

I was walking down the street and noticed a few people were picking up trash in the road, thought to myself "hey, I bet with one or two more they get done real quick!"

Of course, then my thoughts turned to Software and then in some weird connection I jumped into the Man Month Myth, renamed the Person Month to be more gender neutral, and it occurred to me that yes it still happens and yes in some circumstance it may work.  Though those are slight, and slim.  It of course depends.

Let's look at some examples:

Street Cleaners: the more the merrier!  It doesn't take much domain knowledge to pick up trash on a street, or rake leaves from a yard.  All you need is some coordination and a slight understanding of tools.  Of course, coordination with those tools will make the job faster, a group of 4 or 5 teens could do well, if those are the only resources we have available.  It's like after a party at a house, or a bbq, the more people taking little tasks and doing them, the quicker the whole task get's done.  I don't want to be demeaning but at it's core there is not a lot of skill involved in cleaning up, using a broom is fairly simple as is carrying a bag to put trash in - at this point the main skill is knowing what is trash.  So at this point the skill level is not high, and the tool usage ability is low.

Too many cooks spoil the soup: yes, that adage does have some relevance.  The reason you want one cook is because he understands how this dish should taste, everyone is slightly different and the more you have the more additions you get until the soup is a mess.  Also, hardly tasty.  Not everyone has the same taste or background to know what a particular dish should be, the best restaurants do well because every dish they have has consistency but this is due to long hours of training and knowledge transfer.  So we have a medium skill level and a tool usage ability is getting higher, but now we have an added knowledge transfer quotient to add in as there is a lot to know about making good soup.

Software: it depends on the domain knowledge and skill set.  The high up the domain tree you go the more it requires a specific fit.  Sure you could add one or two more Engineers to your project BUT those Engineers had better be really familiar with the project, specs, and domain or you do more harm than good.  The specs have been discussed, meetings have been held to discuss code and flow and design, there may be a lot of documents, depending on your environment but there is also a lot of knowledge transfer.  There is a high skill level, a high usage requirement for tools and a lot of knowledge transfer.

So, can you add more people and get more done?  Yes, but only in specific situations.  If people have the skills, tool and domain knowledge then adding them in is not an impediment, but this is rarely the case.  Although if you have an environment with lots of switching between teams then some of this may be in place but you have to know.  If you don't analyze the situation first you will just make a mess of it.  Like the soup.

Sauce Connect Script

I am currently working with Sauce Labs and using their Cloud Based testing to work with some automation, what I wanted first was an easy way to handle starting up the tunnel to Sauce Labs.  This was a jar file so I tried a few other methods to set the environment up the way I want, but considering that most environments I am working with are Windows I figured may as well use the old stand by of PowerShell.

Here is my current version of the script, this just checks to see that the environment is set up so I can output the log files in the places I want, and checks if a job is running then just continues on and uses the existing one - for now.  I heavily comment code when I first write it, so it should be enough to answer most questions, if not comment here and let me know!

----

# Sauce Labs Connect script
# Description:
# This script checks and sees if there is an existing Job that has an open tunnel
# to Sauce Labs in the current session; because of the way PowerShell works you
# cannot easily detect what is running in another session.  Basically this script
# was intended to generate the necessary Tunnel and run the test scripts with
# fewer keystrokes
# Author: Michael Furmaniuk
# Last Updated: April 16, 2014

# Command line values, so there is no reliance on the Username and Access Key
# being set in the environment or in the configuration files (although if they already are...)
param([string]$u, [string]$k)
Set-StrictMode -v 2

#######################################
# Check and make sure some of the specific needs are met
# Sauce Connect
[string]$jobName = "sauceConn"
[string]$rootPath = ""
[string]$sauceLog = "sauceLog.log"
[string]$sauceReady = "sauceReady.log"
[string]$sauceJar = "C:\Sauce-Connect-jar\Sauce-Connect.jar"
# If necessary the following could be completed to make this easier to run, otherwise these are
# command line arguments given as $u $k
# [string]$u = ""
# [string] $k = ""

#######################################
# Start the Sauce Jar
function start-SauceConnectJar()
{
<#
.Synopsis
This function starts the Sauce Connect Jar utilizing some known and command line parameters
.Description
This function starts the Sauce Connect Jar utilizing some known and command line parameters
#>
[CmdLetBinding()]
Param(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$sauceLog,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$sauceReady,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$sauceJar,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$u,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$k
) #end param
Process
{
# Let's check and see what drives and temp files we have
if (Test-Path "C:\TEMP") {
$rootPath = "C:\TEMP"
} elseif (Test-Path "D:\TEMP") {
$rootPath = "D:\TEMP"
} else {
Write-Host "I can't seem to detect any disk drives here with a TEMP directory, that is a problem.`n"
exit
}
# Build up the file paths
$sauceLog =  $rootPath + "\" + $sauceLog
$sauceReady = $rootPath + "\" + $sauceReady
# If these already exist we want to remove them
if (Test-Path $sauceLog) {
Remove-Item $sauceLog
}
# Note: if this call fails then there is an existing job in another session
# need to somehow handle this and fail gracefully: this is a TODO
if (Test-Path $sauceReady) {
Remove-Item $sauceReady
}
# Start Sauce Connect and see what is returned for the process
# Build up the latter part of the script block
$commandLineOption = "-l $sauceLog -f $sauceReady -d"
# Now for the full command line
$scriptblock = [scriptblock]::Create("java -jar $sauceJar $u $k $commandLineOption")

# Now let's start this as a Job, next line is for debugging
# Write-Host "Starting Sauce Connect with: $($scriptblock).`n"
# Should now be suppressing the start text
$output = Invoke-Expression "start-job -name $jobName -ScriptBlock { $scriptblock } 2>&1"

# Check for the Ready File
while (!(Test-Path $sauceReady)) {
Write-Host "Sauce Connect is still starting...`n"
sleep(10)
}
# Next statement is for debugging
# Since you only get a Tunnel ID when the connection is complete using this as a defining
# point to know the tunne is up, next statement was for debugging
# Write-Host "Sauce Connect should be up...getting the Tunnel ID.`n"
# Now acually getting the Endpoint/Tunnel ID as a verification step
get-SauceEndPoint $sauceLog
}
}

#######################################
# Get the endpoint ID from the log
function get-SauceEndPoint()
{
<#
.Synopsis
This function scans the initial Sauce Connect log file for the EndPoint ID to pass back
.Description
This function scans the initial Sauce Connect log file for the EndPoint ID to pass back
to the User through the console, so it can be used by the User to access the active Tunnel.
At some point this may be used for further automation
#>
[CmdLetBinding()]
Param(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$sauceLog
) #end param
Process {
# Now that the Connection is up, and the Ready File is in place
# read the log file to get the Tunnel ID or endpoint in the case of Java
$runningLog = Get-Content $sauceLog
# Run a regex to get the endpoint line, only one in the file at a time
# when this script runs, then print this out so it can be used (or saved for something else later)
$myMatch = $runningLog -match "endpoint ID:\s.*$" | %{$_ -split "ID:\s"}
# Next statement was a way to message that the Tunnel is up, if not needed comment out
Write-Host "Endpoint ID this time is: $($myMatch[1])"
}
}

#######################################
# The Sauce branch depending on what is running,
# I can either start a new Job or shut it down as/if necessary
$jobs = Get-Job 2>&1
if ($jobs) {
if ($jobs.State -eq "Running") {
# There is an existing Job, either we want to stop it and restart or drop out
# Right now going with using an existing Tunnel
Write-Host "An existing job is running, quitting for now."
Write-Host "...but getting the EndPoint ID to be useful."
get-SauceEndPoint $sauceLog
exit
}
elseif ($jobs.Name -eq $jobName -and $jobs.State -eq "Completed") {
Write-Host "Found $($jobs.Name) that was $($jobs.State) getting rid of it...`n"
Remove-Job $jobName
# Now that the previous one is gone, let's move on
Write-Host "Removed the old job, so starting a new Tunnel.`n"
start-SauceConnectJar $sauceLog $sauceReady $sauceJar $u $k
} else {
Write-Host "Weird, found a job but its not running, it's $($jobs.State).`n"
}
} else {
# Shouldn't be any other states to worry about at this point
# so just start the Jar file and move along
Write-Host "Nothing running, so starting the Tunnel.`n"
start-SauceConnectJar $sauceLog $sauceReady $sauceJar $u $k
}