While a large team enables you to put the code together fairly quickly, it makes standards harder to maintain. It also leaves the base code without a clearly defined owner, which makes controlling changes to the code more difficult. A small team ensures high standards of code and a clearly defined ownership. Since part of the object of base code is to abstract complex routines from the application, it also makes sense to use a high-caliber team to create the code.
The code that is created is also going to need to be tested to the highest standards. The developers who are going to use the base code rely on its integrity from day one. If they can't, they are likely to code workarounds for any bugs discovered in the base code, which can then cause problems once the base code is corrected.
Source or Executable?
So do you include the base code in projects as source code or in an ActiveX component? For the reasons discussed above, routines that subclass existing Visual Basic routines must be included as source code in the application. Ideally, as many additional routines as possible should be distributed to the developers in executable form. By placing all the public routines in GlobalMultiUse classes, all the developer has to do is add a reference to the ActiveX component into the project. This also allows the base routines to be subclassed if necessary.The Business Case
Most companies treat each project in isolation, producing for each a budget and cost-justification. Unfortunately, the project to create a set of base code does not have any immediate impact on the business and is difficult to justify to the business in the short term.Because the base code must be carefully written and extensively tested before being used in the first project, the business benefits only start to appear about a year after the project starts. Therefore, the project should probably be funded as an internal IT project that can then be recovered from the business in small chunks every time a new application is built on the base code. I cannot stress enough that having no base code will invariably result in either nonstandard code, increased development time, or both. At a time when many organizations are employing the services of third-party contractors, it is important for corporate code to conform to the defined standards of that organization. By having a base to start with, you also increase the likelihood of your standards being adhered to.
Changing Base Code
Just as it is important to create high-quality base code, it is equally important to ensure that base code is changed in a very controlled manner. The base code project within Visual SourceSafe should be regarded as the highest-security project in your organization. As such, only a select core of developers should have anything but read-only access to the project. Remember that any changes to the code will be incorporated in every other application the next time the applications are built.Controlling changes to the base code is also extremely important. A strict change control process needs to be in place for the base code and every change request must be fully justified. When a change cannot be fully justified, alternative solutions need to be found. See the sidebar on the following page for one possible scenario (along with a solution).