The general method employed was that of a step through simulation.
First, the beam-beam interaction is simulated using the guinea-pig program. Then the output from guinea-pig is taken as input for the bhwide bhabha scattering simulation.
At all stages of the process, data is outputted and visualised to check for errors: a plot that cannot be explained from physics points either to a bug in the code or to a new physics result.
The programming was divided into writing data visualisation routines using Root[cern root homepage] to check the physics, and interfacing the different pieces of software. Scripts were also produced to run the software as a scan over sets of parameters.
Fig g: flowchart of software used