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Kapila Narang's picture

What should be the ideal ratio of developer and QA to SCM strength in a company?

Is there is any study done which can state the ratio of  no. of SCM resources support to Dev+QA  resources in a company?

Kapila Narang's picture

Thanks Joe & Bob its well written. I am am suporting 200 developers with 1 person helping me in automation. Duties which i carry is from build & release management, automation of activities tools. New SCM Process . Start new process like Code Review, Sonar,Jenkins for continous builds, etc etc.

Times feel highly loaded:( but enjoy my work as i get great expsore. But seen many companies  dont take thsi role seriously unless they feel real need for it. Have been bringing new process but its okay if delayed by few months as they not mission critical to company on revenue with direct impact. Well that's how most companies think of. Where as Testers ratio is max times 2-4:1 is well maintained.

Should there be any such standards well documented & well accepted with across industry  to get best results out of SCM. Just a suggestion or is there any if yes please share.

Joe Townsend's picture

This is a tough one to answer and as Bob points out it really depends.  Not to one up Bob but as a tool administrator ande depending on your experience level and the simplicity of the tools one CM person should be able to support 1000 plus developers and users, if the tool is stablle and the network is as well.

From a CM perspective it depends on what the duties of the CM person.  If your doing builds or deploying releases as part of your duties, then it may be as low as 1 CM person to 5 developers if nothing is autmated and builds and rel;eases are frequent.  I have found 1 CM person to 20 developers to be a comfortable number.  It all depends on the level of hand holding you have to do as well.

Bob Aiello's picture

Hi Kapila,

it depends alot upon what the CM support staff is doing. But lets assume that you manage and support source code along with automating application build, package and deployment while maintaining a separation of duties (as in a bank or other SOX compliant organization).

I have heard some experts claim that a ratio of 1 support person per 25 developers is normal. I have supported upwards of 800+ developers with only a staff of three! (yeah that was hard)

 

Bob Aiello
Editor in Chief

3 Answers

Bob Aiello's picture

Hi Kapila,

it depends alot upon what the CM support staff is doing. But lets assume that you manage and support source code along with automating application build, package and deployment while maintaining a separation of duties (as in a bank or other SOX compliant organization).

I have heard some experts claim that a ratio of 1 support person per 25 developers is normal. I have supported upwards of 800+ developers with only a staff of three! (yeah that was hard)

 

Bob Aiello
Editor in Chief

Joe Townsend's picture

This is a tough one to answer and as Bob points out it really depends.  Not to one up Bob but as a tool administrator ande depending on your experience level and the simplicity of the tools one CM person should be able to support 1000 plus developers and users, if the tool is stablle and the network is as well.

From a CM perspective it depends on what the duties of the CM person.  If your doing builds or deploying releases as part of your duties, then it may be as low as 1 CM person to 5 developers if nothing is autmated and builds and rel;eases are frequent.  I have found 1 CM person to 20 developers to be a comfortable number.  It all depends on the level of hand holding you have to do as well.

Kapila Narang's picture

Thanks Joe & Bob its well written. I am am suporting 200 developers with 1 person helping me in automation. Duties which i carry is from build & release management, automation of activities tools. New SCM Process . Start new process like Code Review, Sonar,Jenkins for continous builds, etc etc.

Times feel highly loaded:( but enjoy my work as i get great expsore. But seen many companies  dont take thsi role seriously unless they feel real need for it. Have been bringing new process but its okay if delayed by few months as they not mission critical to company on revenue with direct impact. Well that's how most companies think of. Where as Testers ratio is max times 2-4:1 is well maintained.

Should there be any such standards well documented & well accepted with across industry  to get best results out of SCM. Just a suggestion or is there any if yes please share.
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