Manage SVN accounts through an user-friendly GUI

• Sector:Subversion (SVN) Management
  
• Challenge: A systematic approach to manage, track, and communication of SVN account management.
• Dev manager used to use the "walk-down-the-hall-to-talk" method to ask Build Manager for changes of the SVN account status. It is hard to track and the status is blind to all parties.
  
• Build Manager used to manually modify the password file on SVN server for the change. It is time consuming. And when Build Manager was busy, sometimes he will even forget to do it or forget to notify. And once that was happening, it caused another round of task/resource spending on it again.
  
• Developers was notified by either another "walk-to-talk" type of communication or Build Manager/Dev manager needs to manually write separate email to notify the developer of the change.
  
• Client: Development Manager, Developers, VP of Deploy & Quality Control
  
• Solution: A Process and a HTA program was created to streamline the task.
• Developers will send a request email to Dev manager and copy Build manager
• Dev manager will approve or reject the request by replying the email so Build Manager is also notified at the same time.
• Build Manager then change the account status from the GUI and the tool will do the work behind the scene automatically including modify the password file, write a log, and send emails.
• A notification email will be sent to the account owner, developer manager, Build Manager, and VP of Deploy & Quality control. And the email recipient list is configurable and coming from a central source ( See Integrate all ID systems to a central location post for more details).
• Agile: SCRUM
• The development of the software tool is on-the-go when all the status changes kept happening and people walking around with the old fashion way. Developers kept sending emails regarding the status of the account along with other regular and irregular code psuh and questions.
• Status changes, GUI, notification, and procedures being scrummed out eventually.
• Scripting: HTA - Select HTA as it has user-friendly GUI and easy to migrate to all web-based interface in the long run.
• VBScript:
• How to check a certain button is On or Off?
• Read delimited data from a text file and parse them
  
• Send email using CDO object
• Make re-usable modules in VBScript with WSF file
• Connect & retrieve Database through VBScript
  
• Business Intelligence:
• Account status log will be log into a Database table then eventually deploy to the Build Manager Datawarehouse cube for analysis
• KPI:
  
• Turnaround time for account status changes
• Approval rate
• Success rate for each commit/developer...when combine it with other data
• Effectiveness of the changes, ie. numbers of TTS advanced by this change
  
• Results:
  
• All parties have a standard procedure to follow. One more step to improve the quality.
  
• Improve 90% of the efficiency and correctness of SVN account management. Another candidate for cost reduction and revenue generating task.
  
• Automatic email notification make it possible and easy to track. Prepare for a larger and more complex team and project.
  
• Lessons: We are building the empire state building one brick at a time. This is the first step of the whole automation and effectiveness improving plan. Since it saves 90% of the time, I consider it as a quadrant-2 (important-but-not urgent) project. Glad I made the right decision on taking this automation.