Question

How can multiple developers work on the same website (CSS, JavaScript, ASP.NET).
We use SVN as source control, but the problem is more in regards of testing and general workflow.
I know we could do unit tests and we have for our API, but I don’t see how we can do unit testing for our frontend?
We get a lot of problems in the frontend like:

1. Developer 1 changes CSS and it messes up CSS for developer 2.
2. Developer 1 changes JavaScript and components developer 2 made stops working.
3. Developer 1 removed an ID or a CSS class in C# (code behind) and CSS styling is lost or JavaScript stops working.

It’s basically things of that nature.
What we do now is manually test everything in all major browsers and we spend too much time on that.

Any good suggestions on how we can improve our way of working? Keep in mind that it’s a website and we are struggling with problems related to that.

Answer 1

This is a management issue rather than a workflow issue.

You need to be proactive at managing the situation and be tough.

You have a source control system in place, what you need to do is:-

1. Enforce day end (or more frequent if preferred) check ins.
2. Rollback work if it doesn’t work. You have to be tough on this point to ensure the developers understand that you mean it.
3. You need to actively communicate the above to your team to make sure they understand the new work procedures.

It’d only take a few weeks for it to sink in, after that you can relax the controls.