Although we usually introduce the custom development part in EBS projects as “a small piece only” and “we will avoid as best as possible”, the development effort can be enormous and should therefore be well addressed by project standards. Any additional solution or additional software tool or product shall influence the custom development rules (by adding, removing or replacing sections).

It is very common in EBS projects to create a so called “MD.030 Development Standards” document and put everything what’s related to development conventions into it. This document gets approval and will be shared among all developers. Later, additional sections have to be added, and usually the development lead is responsible for doing this.

However, sometimes used development techniques are not documented properly, and therefore the development solutions deviate from each other, or from the initially agreed standards.

My advice would be the following: keep the MD.030 as a base document, and add a Wiki on top. The “Development Wiki” covers the following:

• Collect input from every developer without updating the MD.030 directly
• Collect additional topics that might need further specification
• Allow a discussion about such topics by reviewing/updating the wiki directly
• Add also decisions or open questions right into it.

In one of my own projects we were using this “Developer Wiki” quite extensive, and my experience is very positive. We had different sections in it, good cross references, but also additional material like code templates, links to external web pages etc.

By using this wiki, the development standards became “owned” by the right group of people, the developers. They recognized that information sharing can improve the overall development quality, but will also reduce the workload on individuals. Finally, the wiki was much more accurate and helpful for the daily development work than our initial MD.030, and we all decided to retire the document completely.

Summary:

Information sharing in the development area is very important! The usual “MD.030 Development Standards“ is a good starting point, but should be combined with a “Development Wiki”, allowing everyone to address and discuss necessary improvements. A well-structured Wiki can replace the document in some sections completely.

Side Note:

The corresponding task in Oracle OUM (Oracle Unified Method) is DS.050 ‘Determine Design and Build Standards’

Volker