Interrupting Development/Emergency Patch

I almost never interrupt the current iteration unless something horrible has gone wrong.

If there is an emergency "Production Halt" type of "Severity 1" bug, obviously it has to be fixed immediately. Here's how:

This sort of bug gets immediate attention. If you have followed the advice about properly configuring your infrastructure and your code base, this should not be too terribly difficult to fix.

The developer will have to do the fix in the branch that represents the released product. (See details in Branch Development) A new test should be added to prove the bug exists. Once development is done, the code is checked into the branch and a Test build is created. NOTE: The fix is often promoted to the TRUNK as well (unless it was already inadvertently fixed). The build with the fix is tested: automated tests plus the *new* special test to prove the bug is no longer present. The codeline is then delivered to PRODuction using the general automated processes we already have working like clockwork. Even if it is only one line of code, the process still works.

Meanwhile, nobody else was bothered by this activity. The iteration marches onward, undisturbed.