[TheMonarch]

Very high level documentation is good. Things like, what are the steps to get the app to build, what tools do you need to install, frameworks, etc. What's the directory structure, so that a newcomer knows how to approach the project.

I'm a fan of self documenting code. Trying to document code is nice, but rarely possible to keep up to date. I do like to put short comments on a method if the name and class its in don't provide enough info. It's better to spend time writing code and tests than documentation.

You can't always convince people to do things they don't want to do. Some people don't care about putting more than the minimum of effort into work. Most people hate change. But if you just go ahead and create the pocket of excellence, people tend to notice why its good and if you get momentum then the rest will follow. Who are the influential people on your team who if they started using these good practices, the rest would follow? How do you think you should best convince them? For some people, find out what motivates them, and then see if you can explain to them how adopting these practices would benefit them.

[anonymous-dev]

About the first paragraph, that's exactly what I am trying to get going.

About the second paragraph, I 100% agree with this.

I did create this pocket of excellence (myself only) and lead the way for some time. Yet no one notices it and the ones who do, well, they don't care about it - both for junior and senior developers. IMO, the most influential peoples are so called "rockstar" developers within the company and they clearly stated they don't see the interests. I already talked to them and attempted to convince them. I am running out of ideas.

[TheMonarch]

Why are the rockstar dev's not interested in things like automated builds, and unit tests? Are they really "rockstar" dev's? It might be political. Maybe they like being the only ones who know how to build the product, or that it has to be done on their machines.

Sometimes people shoot down ideas of those below them because they don't want to see a "threat" rise up to compete with them. Maybe if you can't convince the rockstars, just get everyone else onboard.

So you created the "pocket", are you getting anyone else involved? If you already tried to get official adoption of these practices and that didn't work, I dunno. You might just get it done. A lot of times managers ignore requests like this because they don't want to bother with change. THey don't realize the benefit, or they don't want to try to force change on a team (maybe they don't want to adopt anything the rockstars aren't into).