How can I convince my department to implement a version control system?

Question

I recently joined the IT department of a big insurance company. Although the department\'s title is \"IT\", a lot of code gets written here; Java, JSP, JavaScript, COBOL and eve

Answer 1

You don't necessarily need their permission.

Install svn on your machine, start using it, and then start convincing your fellow team members to use it too.

Then watch and see what happens.

Edits

• The basic idea of this is that it's easier to show than to tell.
• It's a great idea to support your ideas with a working implementation/solution.
• Of course, if you succeed, and they want the system used department/company wide, you must be prepared to support the transition, know how the software is to be installed and used.
• Going ahead and using something accepted in the industry is faster than having discussions on what system should be used.
• There is a good change that this will get you noticed. You may also get your peers respect and support.

As suggested, the same approach can be made on other areas:

• issue/bug tracking systems
• quality tools
• time tracking
• continuous integration
• a wiki for knowledge base, HOWTO's, guidelines, tutorials, presentations, screencasts
• different IDEs and tools
• build tools
• automated deployment
• various scripts that would save your team time

.. any item that will visibly add quality to your work, but doesn't (yet) disrupt existing methodologies and practices.

Answer 2

Management? I will put bold the expressions and words you should use:

Your should display some examples how a VCS will prevent losing money to the company if some error/bugs or disaster happens. It will be faster to solve all problems, so maintaning the systens won't be so lazy and people become more productive.

You should also mention that implementing a VCS has no costs.

VCS will also give advantages for backup all the existing code. So, all the code will be safe.

Answer 3

As Joel points out on one of his articles, start using your own one man version control system and market its benefit on every opportunity you get. Show them the benefits of traceability, granular backups etc from your single instance. People will start realizing its benefits irrespective of their age.

Answer 4

I agree with the answer that are referring to the Joel Guerrilla article.

1. Install/Use some thing with a low overhead. Hg (Mercurial) is easy in a mixed eniroment and is good because you can bail out and use something else in an easy way.
2. You must share your things without making a fuzz about it. When someone needs your code, export it and use the "standard" corporate method (shared folder or whatever)
3. When you get code, always import it into a repos, if you think it is a new commit of a repos you already have, try to get it into that one.
4. Sooner or later you will have a code for several project and hopefully some commits on some repos. Then you can expose those with the mercurials webserver interface (hg serve -p XXXX).
5. When the times comes when someone don't know why something suddenly don't works as it should be and is trying to figure out why becase it was working last monday ... and you know that you have that code in a repos step up and ask if you can be of any assistance. Get the falty code, commit it into your repos and expose with hg serve. Look at it in the browser.

My point is that you must prove with real cases to your colleges that this stuff has a value. If the haven't figured it out by themselves after some many years you have a mountain to climb but it can be done. You must be patience though. It could very well take a year to convert one man (old dog). If you have any younger coworkers try to do this together, the more code you can get hold on the better.

Answer 5

Look for another job.

Seriously.

There are way better jobs out there that don't require you to teach the existing staff.
Ones where you could go into work and just, y'know, work.

Also, keep in mind that 30 isn't far off. That's the age at which most people
stop suffering fools gladly.

Just a heads up.

EDIT

It's been suggested that quitting a bad job is for quitters.

Maybe so, and down-vote if you like, but keep in mind that you're supposed to
put your employer to the Joel test before you accept the job, not after.

Answer 6

Remember, there are plenty of version control systems that are absolutely free. And the amount of time spent installing and maintaining a version control system should be somewhere near 0 (they shouldn't require any maintenance). There isn't even a space penalty for most systems, as they can compress things internally.

You have listed some advantages, and there are others. But more importantly, I can't think of a single disadvantage.