Workflow: defining, designing and building a programming process and version control system. Part II – requirements to production

AbstractThere are a number of papers discussing the need for version control in the development of programs in the pharmaceutical industry. From version control packages with simple command line interfaces, such as CVS or RCS, to the more complex and graphical tools like Rational Rose®, programmers are told: there is a system out there to version your software, so do it! This is an important step in software development, but it is not the 'be all end all' for programmers. Since the industry insists on a review or 'QC' (quality control) step to ensure that the specifications of the statisticians are met by the code of the programmers, there needs to be the same system to allow for the flow of validated code from the programmer to the statistician to the 'final' or validated version of the code. This paper discusses the process that was originally used, a paper based system, and the evolution of our workflow from this paper based system, through a commercial application and into an internally built system. ...