Policies
We don’t have a lot of policies, but the few we have are very important to maintaining a high level of efficiency.
Project Acquisitions
Our group’s focus lies on 5 different project types:
- New projects (internal or external)
- Bug fixes for existing applications
- Enhancement requests for existing applications
- Distribution of existing projects
- External project contributions
Prioritization Meetings
On the first Wednesday of every month at 2:00 PM, our group has a meeting to determine priorities for the next month. These are based on the published priorities.
Revision Release Time
Production releases will not be pushed out after close of business on Thursdays, unless the group decides that a critical bug or security fix must be released.
Filling Bugs and Enhancement Requests
Bugs and Enhancement Requests for existing applications must be filled through our system to be considered. Requesting service through other avenues means that the communication doesn’t go to all members of the group and has a high likelihood of being overlooked.
Points of Contact
Every project we take on has to have at least one responsible point of contact.
Browser Support
We strive to support as many browsers with our web applications as possible. More than likely, our applications will work in most browsers. Officially, we support Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.x for Windows XP, Firefox 3.x for Windows and Mac OS X, and Safari for OS X.
Accessibility Standards
Our group meets or exceeds the accessibility standards set forth by NC State University. A copy of these standards can be found at http://www.ncsu.edu/it/access/webaccess/
Procedures
These procedures are guidelines when we are developing new projects.
Version Control
Every project we do must be under version control. We use Subversion as our version control system.
Model-View-Controller Paradigm
Unless there is a specific exception, each project we work on will take advantage of a Model-View-Controller (MVC) programming paradigm. This allows us to be very flexible and keep our application and view logic separate.
Templates
We use Smarty as our templating system. All views must be written in Smarty for an application we work on.
Zend Framework
We use the Zend Framework for all PHP development work.
Coding Standard
Our group subscribes to the coding standard accompanying the Zend Framework. Documentation for this standard can be found here.
