From "almost" to the official release--The birth of Sina Weibo winphone UWP Edition

This article gives a rough account of the UWP team's process of taking over Sina Weibo projects to release the first version. This article is not a technical sticker, but a review of "software engineering cycle out of control is a kind of experience."

Take over the new project: Pick up a big bargain

In January 2016, the UWP team took over the Sina Weibo project. The last employee of the previous research and development team is planning to leave the project team at the end of January, and we need to complete the technical handover before this. After several rounds of discussion, the project's status quickly became clear: things had been done "almost" and a few basic questions could be released. We immediately have a kind of pick up a big cheap feeling: Others hard to do products, incredibly left me to publish!

With the excitement of picking up the cheap, we soon entered the state. According to the boss's request: a research and development staff within 1 months to submit the first edition. We created a new code branch January 19, then familiar with the code, the compilation process, installation and debugging environment, according to the suggestions of former colleagues to improve, perfect, and then go home for the Spring Festival ...

During this period mainly to the software startup did a performance optimization, we deliberately found a poorly configured mobile phone (engineering machine) to test the Debug version of the start time, after a series of optimizations, The start-up time was reduced from 14.64 seconds on January 25 to 7.97 seconds on February 19. (April 25 release version on 950XL starts at 2.35 seconds)

Attached: January 25 Debug version Startup time (engineering machine)

Attached: February 19 Debug version Startup time (engineering machine)

First Test: embarrassing to lose home

Spring Festival is back in mid-February, we put the previous team suggested a few "unfinished" after the completion of the February 23 package to submit the test, the date of the survey than the boss's request a few days later. We are constantly familiar with the code and the entire product while waiting for the test results. The test team submitted a partial test report March 2, saying that the product did not meet the release status. After a toss-up, the Test team March 4 to provide a complete test report: The test found 44 bugs, A, B, C (must fix) a total of 19 bugs.

This result confirms the boss left before the Spring Festival of the wise words (the boss said finished to the United States): Do not be happy too early, if it is "almost", why the previous team did not do more than a few days to send out the version to flash again. The Weibo UWP has never been fully tested on the phone, and there must be a lot of problems.

Lesson 1: Research and Development says that "No problem has been found so far" does not mean that there is no problem, probably just because you have not run full test.

See the test report at the moment, the first to pick up a cheap mood instantly disappeared, and replaced by a shame. As a software engineer at Microsoft, it's a shame to submit the semi-finished product with so many bugs (which proves much more than that) to the Test team. Even more embarrassing is that one-third of the bugs we don't know what to say, because the project time is too short, before the majority of the time spent on the known need to improve a few issues, have not time to familiarize with the entire product, so that some bugs mentioned in the feature page can not be found.

Lesson 2: For newly-taken projects, don't be complacent about the release plan until you are fully familiar with the product and the code, otherwise be prepared to be beaten.

Attached: The first time to test the bug list

Call back to redo: shame and brave

Ashamed to be ashamed, things still have to continue to do. Because before using Sina Weibo just look at the homepage and the message page, rarely switch to other pages, not to mention the level two, Level three page. Now that the small repair can not solve the problem, before the big change to understand the entire client product:

• First of all, apply for a two full time research and development, and apply for project extension;
• We have a detailed understanding of each page, and the page corresponding to the logic;
• Discover how to get them out of the page you can't find.
• Get an in-depth look at each of the functional modules and familiarize yourself with each of the operating details.

After some exploration, it is found that the content of the microblogging client is quite many, and there are quite a few of them have not been developed. Having reached this conclusion, we had to give up the idea of "releasing a release to WinPhone10 users as soon as possible" and making Sina Weibo a long-term project. On the basis of "almost", 1 people sent out the first version 1 months later, and after adjusting the plan, 3 people were postponed for two months before the first edition was sent out.

Lesson 3: The function "almost" is not equal to the product "almost". It takes you 4 months to do 80% of the functions, and that doesn't mean you can release it in 1 months. The remaining 20% of development and product improvement work may be another 4 months.

After constantly familiar with the Sina Weibo client process, in addition to solve the test report in the 44 bugs, we also found a lot of hidden bugs, which have recorded 50 or so, no record of small problems more. After all, we solved more than 100 bugs before reaching the state we thought was more satisfying.

Attached: Part of the research group self-test bug list

Second Test: Twists

After resolving more than 100 bugs and two rounds of self-test, we submitted a release package to the test team for the second time on March 29. April 15, the test team completed the test and submitted a test report, which does not have a, B class Bug,c class Bug7. By this time we have the bottom of the heart: This is really "almost".

Lesson 4: If research and development say "almost", you'll think he didn't say anything. The test report says "Almost" is really about the same.

The development team quickly resolved all C-type bugs and submitted a new installation package on the next business day (Monday, April 18). In a new round of tests, we found some strange problems that we had never encountered before. One of the most complex of these is a bug in the private messages page:

1) before the handover of the project, the private messages page is loaded more, some of the private messages will be repeated;

2) on February 19, the development team resolved the issues mentioned in 1, and after a long time did not find the problem of duplication of private messages;

3) March 4, the test group submitted a test report in the attached 44 bugs, there is no mention of "private messages list duplication" problem;

4) April 15, the test group's second Test report submitted 7 C-level bugs mentioned in the issue of private messages duplication

5) April 15, the Research and Development group debugging when found on the private Message page pull, the first 20 messages infinite loop loading;

6) on the night of April 15, the research group solved the problem of infinite cyclic loading of the private messages mentioned in the 5.

7) on April 17, the issue of a private messages loop loading reappears, disappears after reinstalling the new version, does not have time to confirm the regularity of the private messages repetition, and cannot confirm that the version of the recurrence problem is the version of fix or after fix.

8) April 18, repeated testing of the new version of the private messages list did not find anomalies, the research group again submitted the test;

9) April 19, the test feedback received by the test group mentioned that "the private message list is still repeated";

10) April 19 around 19:30, the research and development team found a new private message repeat mode in self-test: The first 20 private messages repeat loading two times, the other parts are normal;

11) April 19 around 20:00, the developers back to the company start debugging Environment found 9) the problems mentioned in their own disappearance, repeated attempts are still unable to reproduce, and can not be debugged.

believe that all research and development will have a headache for difficult to reproduce problems. Based on previous experience, we suspect that this bug is related to the server (most of the time is working properly. In the event of a problem, all mobile phone clients will find the same issue). Finally we decided: in the development environment to test every strange bug, once found the problem immediately after debugging and solve the problem, if the continuous test 12 hours is still unable to reproduce, we think that the problem has little impact on the actual user, does not affect the release version.

During the iterative testing process, some bugs are reproduced and resolved in the development environment. Other problems can not be reproduced after repeated testing, reduced priority and left to be resolved later.

Official release: Flowers and Eggs

April 25, Sina Weibo winphone UWP client was finally submitted to the store. Received a lot of positive feedback, of course, there are a bunch of scold, here is not the map.

Next version

When we took over the project, we were instructed to "do not add new features, as soon as possible to improve the existing features after the release." However, in the actual development process, we found that the existing version also missing a lot of important features: such as search function, video of the horizontal screen mode, night mode and so on. These are already included in the next version of the development plan, please be patient and wait for the next release (will be soon).

In addition, you have any functional requirements can be directly in the comment area message, we will periodically review and filter some requirements to add to the next version of the development plan.

From "almost" to the official release--The birth of Sina Weibo winphone UWP Edition