SDLC

In most cases software implementation projects start off with a clear vision of the various macro-level influences, constraints and directives that define the shape of the project at the outset. During the initiation stage the clear, consensus view on the project principles influences fully the micro-level decisions taken in terms of architecture, solution design, resourcing, scope, prioritisation, schedule and so on. The challenge for many projects is maintaining the purity of the vision across the course of the project in light of variations in uncontrollable factors such as the business context, risks becoming reality, project resources and so forth.

An effective tool to mitigate this loss of identity and direction, and the consequential impact this can have on confidence and productivity, is the definition of an unambiguous, concise set of guiding principles that are communicated early and frequently. Additional to the benefits related to a clear and strongly defined direction, principles support increased productivity through empowerment; if low level decisions align with the principles then action can be taken without time-expensive consultation.

Corporates do this, why not projects?
This approach is well established in business, with many corporates defining an aspirational, future state vision and set of guiding principles that underpin the delivery of the vision through applied influence to all activities undertaken and decisions made. Guiding principles can be very effective particularly where a culture is established that prioritises all actions taken in relation to their conformance to the principles. This level of application requires absolute confidence across the business that the principles are current, meaningful, complete and beneficial to all parties. The value of this approach at a business level can apply equally to a project.

Key Points
No more than 7. The primary value of guiding principles is the strength of the message, achieved through brevity. Telephone numbers were originally set at 7 digits as this was believed to be the most people could be expected to remember. 7 therefore seems a reasonable limit in this context.

Revisit during retrospectives. Stale principles will damage the integrity of the approach. Agility should be paramount such that principles are current and enable changes in the direction of travel whilst the project is in flight (excuse the metaphors here).

Communicate frequently. All project artefact (slides, documents etc.) should state the guiding principles and relate the content to the relevant principles, noting deviations.

All design decisions should relate to one or more principles. See above point.

Prioritisation. A simple prioritisation scheme (high, medium, low; 1,2,3 .. n) can be effective in resolving conflicts between principles.

Buy in. All project stakeholders must approve the principles and accept the impact. Without complete buy in the integrity of the approach is diminished.

Principles can be goals. Principles are often directive in nature, goals are an interesting extension to this.

Use Work.com. The Goals functionality of Work.com can provide a useful tool to manage, communicate, collaborate and report on the principles. This functionality also enables user-level goals to be mapped to the higher level goals.

Alternatives
Vision statements can be difficult to articulate, particularly where there are multiple unconnected concerns.

Project charters can be too cumbersome to be a realistic communication tool. It’s human nature to read once and subsequently ignore any project documentation that requires a time investment.

In both cases above, guiding principles can provide a complementary abbreviated formatting.

Examples
Maintainability of the solution by client administrator.

Future extensibility without technical resource.

Sales productivity improvement is the key objective.

Declarative build over technical solution options.

Quality over expediency.

Technical excellence.

Buy over build.

Alpha 1 bug count must be less than 100.

The solution will be productised internationally.

The project delivery date must be achieved.

Release early and iterate.

Business utility to be delivered every 2 weeks.

Only user-accepted features to be released.

User stories estimated at 5 days or more to be split.

A very common challenge addressed by architects working with Salesforce is the definition of an appropriate release methodology. By this I mean the identification of the Salesforce orgs required to support the project delivery whether serial or concurrent in nature, the role and purpose of each org and critically, the means by which change is managed and synchronised across environments. With this latter point, a clear definition of the path-to-production is imperative.

In the large-scale, complex project case there is typically time and expertise available to define a bespoke methodology, with build automation, source code control system integration and so forth tailored to the specifics of the programme environment. There’s an abundance of best-practice information available online to help guide the definition of a release methodology for complex projects. For less complex projects, such as those employing the declarative build model only, there is less information available, in such cases what is typically required is a standardised, best-practice approach that can be adopted as-is.

The remainder of this post provides an outline view of an exemplar release methodology for small-to-medium scale, configuration-centric projects (i.e. no Apex code or technical complexities). This information is provided for reference purposes only.

Environment Strategy
The following diagram outlines the environments and their purpose, the defined release steps and a basic approach to change management.

Key Principles
1. Isolate development from testing activities. This is the golden rule. Testing requires a stable environment unaffected by ongoing development. Development shouldn’t grind to a halt while system testing and acceptance testing processes are applied.
2. Utilise the minimum number of sandboxes as possible. Synchronisation of change is time expensive and error prone, avoid this wherever possible. Preparation of standing data post sandbox refresh can also take time, as can the communication required to establish that a refresh can proceed.
3. Don’t over specify the sandbox type. Sandboxes are an expensive asset, especially full-copy and partial-data sandboxes. Calculate the required storage capacity and map to either Developer or Developer Pro. Retain full-copy sandboxes for purposes that do actually require the copied data.
4. Maintain a Change Control Log in the production org to record all changes (at a reasonably high-level) against applied environments.
5. Use the production org for implementation project collaboration. It can also be a useful adoption tool to create Chatter groups such as “Salesforce: Marketing”, “Salesforce: Finance” where collaboration can occur directly with the business users whilst the project is in flight.
6. Accept that change will inevitably be applied to the production org first; record such changes and apply to development and testing sandboxes asap.
7. Always verify the Change Control Log against the Setup Audit Trail before deployments.
8. Use Change Sets for deployment wherever possible.
9. Encourage a development process where Change Sets are updated continually, rather than retrospectively.
10. Always verify the Change Control Log against the list of Change Set support components.
11. On larger projects a Change Set partitioning strategy may be required; along functional lines, by team or by component type etc.
12. Ensure releases to production are documented and approved. A simple Deployment Request Form (DRF) template should be defined and used to gain approval. This process is key to communication and governance but also helps the team consider fully the pre- and post- deployment steps, risks and rollback strategy.
13. Post-release. Communicate how business processes have been mapped to Salesforce concepts, and the permissions model. Understanding how things work in simple terms can help avoid end-user frustration with a new system. This can also reduce the support burden as end-users can often self diagnose the cause of a problem.

The org strategy diagram above presents an appropriate approach for a serial-release model, i.e. one project or one sprint at a time is being developed, tested then released. In the concurrent-release model, where multiple parallel projects are converging into a single production org, isolated develop and test sandboxes will be duplicated per project with an integration (or pre-production) org providing a synchronisation point where the combined state is validated prior to deployment to production.

Updated – 2014-11-18

This post follows on from my last post on Custom Settings and provides coverage of the wider set of naming conventions I apply across the various component types of the declarative build environment. The list isn’t exhaustive or necessarily better than any other set of standards. Having a set of conventions applied consistently across the build is key, the specifics of those conventions can be subjective. A key principle applied is that of consistency with established standard conventions wherever possible. For example, standard objects and fields don’t have underscores in the API names and follow simple patterns in terms of naming, there’s no good reason to deviate from this for custom objects and fields. Naming conventions shouldn’t be considered an area for creative thinking, instead creative energy should be focused on the functional and technical design, the conventions applied should be mundane and predictable.

Convention A – Custom Object

[Object name]. Singular, Pascal Case (upper camel case) and no underscores.
e.g. Data Source -> DataSource__c

Consistent use of the default naming style, i.e. with underscores is acceptable also. it can be difficult to avoid this approach in a team environment.
e.g. Data Source -> Data_Source__c

Note – the Description attribute for Custom Objects must always be populated appropriately. A self describing configuration is key to future maintenance.

Convention B – Custom Field

[Field name]. Pascal Case (upper camel case) and no underscores.

e.g. Date of Birth -> DateOfBirth__c

Consistent use of the default naming style, i.e. with underscores is acceptable also. it can be difficult to avoid this approach in a team environment.
e.g. Date of Birth -> Date_Of_Birth__c

In the scenario where an implementation is comprised of distinct functional domains, with custom fields relating specifically (and exclusively) to one single domain, the following convention should be applied.

Each functional domain has a defined field name Prefix. e.g. HR, FINANCE, SALES etc.
Fields exclusive to one domain have their API name prefixed with the domain prefix.
e.g. Payroll Number -> FINANCE_PayrollNumber__c
e.g. Industry Segment -> SALES_IndustrySegment__c

This convention allows a logical structure to be applied in isolating fields specific to a single functional domain.

Note – the Description attribute for Custom Fields must always be populated appropriately. A self describing configuration is key to future maintenance.

Note – the Help Text attribute for Custom Fields must always be populated appropriately. Inline user assistance can improve the end user experience greatly and reduce ongoing support.

Convention C – Child Relationships

Singular, Pascal Case (upper camel case) and no underscores.
e.g. Account->AccountMetrics__c relationship = Account.AccountMetrics__r

Convention D – Page Layout

[[Function] | [Object]] Layout

e.g. Pricing Case Layout
e.g. Pricing Case Close Layout

Convention E – Custom Setting

Custom Setting Label – Pluralised in all cases (e.g. Data Sources). No “Setting[s]” suffix.

API Name – List Settings
– [Data entity that each list entry represents]ListSetting__c

Each record represents an individual entry and as such singular naming is applied, as per objects.

e.g. Analytic Views – AnalyticViewListSetting__c
e.g. Data Sources – DataSourceListSetting__c

API Name – Hierarchy Settings
– [Function of the settings]Settings__c

Each record represents the same set of settings applied at different levels. In concept this differs from objects and list settings, the plural naming reflects this.

e.g. Org Behaviour Settings – OrgBehaviourSettings__c
e.g. My App Settings – MyApplicationSettings__c

Convention F – Workflow Rule
Always separate the condition from the outcome when configuring workflow. The Workflow Rule is the condition, the associated Actions are the outcome. In many cases the 2 become entwined resulting in duplicated rules, or rules with actions unrelated to the stated purpose of the rule. A clear set of rules related to conditions promotes re-use.

[Object]: [Criteria Description i.e. Condition]

Convention G – Workflow Action

Field Update –
[Object]: Set [Field] to [Value]

Email Alert –
[Object]: Send [Template short description]

Task –
[Object]: [Task Subject]

Convention H – Sharing Rule

OBS: [Object] [From selection] to [To selection]
CBS: [Object] [Criteria] to [To selection]

Convention I – Custom Report Type

[Primary Object] with [Child object]s [and [Grandchild object]s]

Convention J – Custom Label

Define sensible categories for the labels. e.g. UI Button Label, UI Text, UI Error Message etc.

Name = [Category with underscores]_[Value with underscores] e.g. UI_Button_Label_Proceed
Category = [Category with underscores] e.g. UI_Button_Label
ShortDescription = [Category] [Value] e.g. UI Button Label Proceed
Value = [Value] e.g. Proceed

Convention K – Validation Rule

Single field :
[Field Label] [rule applied]
Mailing City Is Required
Start Date Must Be a Weekday

Multiple fields :
[Field grouping term] [rule applied]
Billing Address Must Be Complete

Cross object :
[Object Name] [Field Label] [rule applied]
Opportunity Stage Is Closed No Edit Of Opportunity Products

Convention L – Publisher Action

[Verb] [Noun]
New Invoice
Update Order
Alert Executive Team

Convention M – User Profile

[[Job Function] | [Department] | [Company]] [[User] | [System Administrator]]
Accounts Payable User
Marketing Executive User
Acme System Administrator

Convention N – Permission Set

Single Permissions :
Name must match the permission assigned.
Case Feed
Manage Dashboards
Manage Public List Views

Simple Combined Permissions :
[Verb] [Noun]
Manage Invoices

Combined Permissions :
[Feature Area Descriptor] [User Type]
Work.com Administrator
CloudInvoices User
Knowledge Contributor

Convention O – Public Group

[Grouping term] [[Users] | [Members]]

EU Users
Sales Users
HR Users
Project A Members

Convention P – Reports and Dashboard Folders

[Grouping term] Reports (adhoc reports related to a specific department, team, project etc.)
[Grouping term] Dashboard Reports (best practice to isolate dashboard reports in clear location)
[Grouping term] Dashboards

Finance Reports
HR Dashboards
HR Dashboard Reports

Note – the [Report Description] attribute for Reports must always be populated appropriately. A self describing configuration is key to future maintenance.

A Salesforce instance is a constrained environment where limits exist in respect to capacity and execution. Examples of capacity limits being data storage, number of active users, number of custom objects/custom fields/picklists etc. examples of execution limits being API calls per 24-hour period, SOQL queries executed within an Apex transaction, Viewstate size in Visualforce pages etc.. In both the capacity limit and execution limit case it is imperative that the existence and implications of the constraints are factored into the solution design from the outset. Each and every constrained resource must be treated as a precious asset and consumed in an optimised manner even on seemingly trivial implementation projects. From experience it is often the case that a Salesforce implementation grows (in terms of both use and breadth of functionality) at a rapid rate once it gains traction in an enterprise. If you’ve carelessly exhausted all the constrained resources in the first release, what happens next? Note, some soft limits can be increased by Salesforce on a discretional or paid-for basis, however this doesn’t negate the need to make responsible design decisions and at the very least the highlight the possible additional cost associated with a particular approach. Hard limits do exist in key areas, the Spanning Relationships Limit or cross-object reference limit as it also referred is a strong example of this.

Designing for scale simply requires an intelligent consumption of such resources and appropriate solution design decisions in a limited number of areas. The proliferation of Apex and Visualforce related execution limits don’t necessarily impact the scalability of the implementation, the impact is isolated to the micro level. The selected limits listed below however apply at the org level (Salesforce instance) and can constrain the scalability of an implementation (in functional terms). This list is not exhaustive, for a complete picture refer to the Salesforce Limits Quick Reference Guide.

Limits Primarily Influenced by User License Model

Asynchronous Apex Method Executions :
This limit includes @futures, Batch Apex (start, execute and finish method invocations and Scheduled Apex (execute method invocations). Future method calls made from Apex Triggers can be a risk in relation to this limit. For example, Apex Triggers which fire on record updates which make callouts via @futures can cause scalability issues as data volumes grow. In this example it may become necessary to bulk process the modifications via Batch Apex, assuming a batch style of integration is acceptable. What if near real-time (NRT) is necessary?

The calculated limit is the higher number of 250K or (200 * user license count), where the applicable licenses to this calculation are full Salesforce and Force.com App Subscription only.

Total API Request Limit :
Enterprise Edition = 1,000 per Salesforce and Salesforce platform license, 200 for Force.com App subscription license
Unlimited/Performance Edition = 5,000 per Salesforce and Salesforce platform license, 200 per Force.com app subscription license

Note, sandboxes have a flat limit of 5M which can give a false impression of the limits applied in production.

All inbound API traffic counts towards this limit, including Outlook plug-ins, Data Loader etc. For implementations with limited Standard users this limit can be restrictive, and it is reasonably common for extension packs to be purchased to mitigate this. In all cases consumption must optimised by batching updates and use of the Bulk API where possible.

Limits Primarily Influenced by Salesforce Edition

Workflow Time Triggers Per Hour :
Enterprise Edition = 500
Unlimited/Performance Edition = 1000

This limit can be an issue for implementations with high volume transaction processing throughputs, where time-based workflow is employed to send reminder emails etc. If the hourly limit is exceeded triggers are processed in the next hour and so on. This may cause issue if the actions are time critical.

Workflow Emails Per Day :
1,000 per standard Salesforce license, capped at 2 million.

Apex Emails Per Day:
1,000 in total. The maximum message count per send is limited per edition.
Enterprise Edition = 500
Unlimited/Production Edition = 1000

An unlimited number of emails can be sent per day to Users by using the SingleEmailmessage.setTargetObjectId() and MassEmailmessage.setTargetobjsctIds() methods. This includes customer and partner portal users and even high volume portal users.

This limit is critical to understand and to mitigate in a scalable solution design. In short don’t use Apex to send email unless the recipient is a User. In portal cases use the User Id and not the Contact Id. Prefer Workflow based email sending, as the limits Are considerably higher, and perhaps use Apex script to set criteria picked up by a Workflow rule.

Additional Limits to Consider

Batch Apex (5 pending or active)
Scheduled Jobs (100 scheduled)
Apex Script Characters (3M)
Dynamic Apex Describes
Cross Object References

From a best practice perspective a Platform Limits Reference document should be maintained for all Salesforce implementations that lists the applicable limits and related consumption. This approach surfaces the existence of the limits and should provide design principles such as using Workflow to send customer emails in preference to Apex script. Without an ordered approach where limit consumption is proactively tracked it is highly likely that expensive refactoring exercises or multi-org strategies become necessary over time that could have been minimised,deferred or entirely avoided.

I’m a big advocate of setting out the key elements of the development process succinctly but unambiguously at the start of a software development project, particularly in cases where I have no prior history of working with the development team. Such process elements typically cover environments, coding standards, technical design and review requirements, source-code control strategy etc. Perhaps the most valuable area to cover are the basic patterns of construction (or Design Patterns), without this developers are left to their own devices in naming technical components and structuring code, which can be a serious issue with maintainability and standardisation. It is incredibly time expensive and de-motivating to address this after the fact. Instead a clear picture provided upfront can provide the development team with a strong reference covering 80% of the cases, the remainder can be addressed individually during technical design. The example below provides an example of a basic construction pattern which covers naming conventions and structural concerns. Following such a pattern makes the technical implementation predictable and should improve maintainability, the latter being a obligation to take seriously on consulting projects. My rule of thumb is to try and leave the org in a state a future me would consider acceptable.

What is it?
In essence CI is an aggressive build strategy requiring the isolated work of project developers to be integrated immediately following code commits to a shared source-code control system. Regression tests are run automatically, surfacing build errors or code inconsistency at an early stage.

CI is viewed as an Agile practice and is typically characteristic of a mature development process, and experienced developers. There is a definite learning curve and mindset adjustment for developers to be considered.

The manual alternative, which I term staged integration (SI), involves periodic integration testing of the HEAD revision from the source code control (SCC) system. The difference being the immediacy of performing the integration tests, and therefore verifying the integrity of the current build status. With the manual approach it can be difficult to instil team discipline, minor changes can often be viewed as not warranting a build and test.

Basic tenets
1. Developers work on an isolated copy of the code (i.e. branch) to avoid contention on shared resources, utility classes etc.
2. Developers commit unit-tested code to the shared SCC repository – often many times per-day.
3. An automated build process is triggered by the commit which takes the HEAD revision, deploys to a dedicated org running the full suite of unit tests. Test failures are reported proactively, naming and shaming the individual responsible for the failing commit. It’s key to note that pre-commit the developer should merge the current HEAD revision into their local branch and resolve conflicts (GIT for example will enforce this).
4. The HEAD revision represents a consistent “code complete” status. Development will typically take place in a isolated branch, with the master branch holding the production ready code.

Typical steps
1. Code is committed, this triggers a deployment to the INT org with unit test execution during the deployment.
2. Once deployment completes successfully, functional acceptance tests are executed, possibly via a tool like Selenium where functional tests at the UI level can be scripted (perhaps to verify a particular user story).

Why do it?
1.Daily builds have long been an industry best-practice, continuous integration is an evolutionary improvement.
2.The more frequently code is integrated the less painful it is.
3.Build errors are surfaced early, while the developer is still “in the zone” and can resolve the problem expediently.
4.Builds trust within the development team and a sense of collective ownership.
5.Driver for technical excellence, a key agile principle.
6.Encourages quality unit tests (code coverage and test case).

Obstacles
1.Big unit test suites can often take hours to run. To mitigate this obstacle, a smoke test could be executed on commit (current sprint related unit tests only), followed by a full test scheduled every 1/2 day, or overnight. The Force.com Migration tool enables executing test classes to be defined by name – so this is a feasible option.
2.Unit tests are an afterthought. Switch the team to TDD – perhaps with some education first.
3.Unsupported Metadata Types. Certain salesforce configuration elements (metadata types) can’t be deployed via the Force.com Migration Tool. Such elements must be recorded in a audit log and manually applied to the target org, or for automation a Selenium script could be utilised.
4.Standing Data. New features may require standing data (custom settings etc.). Use the Apex Data Loader in command-line mode (CLI), and invoke data manipulation operations within the build file.

Tools and process
A CI implementation requires fit-for-purpose tooling, for Force.com development the following stack is typical:

SCC = Subversion or Git

Build Automation Server = Jenkins or Hudson

Scripting = ANT plus the Force.com Migration Tool (scriptable ANT task)

In simple terms CI works as follows. Within the build server (Jenkins for example) a job is defined that on each commit connects to the SCC repository and copies the HEAD revision to a working folder, then runs an ANT script. The script invokes a build.xml file which is held in SCC and therefore copied into the working folder. The build file runs whatever tasks are required including folder manipulation, static resource zipping, but ultimately (in context) the intent is to run the deploy target in the Force.com Migration Tool task, to deploy to a specific salesforce.com org. Connection details can be passed in via the job configuration or read from a build.properties file. A Jenkins plug-in can also be used to post build results to a Chatter post in a another org – very useful for notifications.

Exemplar Scenario – Single Project Org Strategy

Exemplar Scenario – Multiple Project Org Strategy

Related Concepts (for future posts)
TDD – Test Driven Development
Pair Programming
SCC Branching Strategy