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Process Perspective: Keep All Re-use in mind in the Software Development Process Software re-use is a worthy and noble ideal to aim for during any development, but why not let's take a bigger picture view of the whole software development environment. Make the goal to set up our process so that as much as possible is re-used on subsequent projects. Here are some thoughts on achieving this.
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What Links the Requirements to Tests in Development Today? What’s happened to the links between requirements and tests? How do we know what to test and when? How do we, and the customers, know we got the system being built right? What’s the traceability between the two disciplines?
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Characteristics of the Agile SCM Solution This article focuses on the characteristics of SCM solutions, tool, and environments that are necessary to for agile development to succeed, particularly about agile SCM striving to be as transparent and "frictionless", automating as much as possible.
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Is Continuous Integration Just Another Buzz Word? Last month we wrote that we would be addressing some questions and concerns raised by readers who gave us feedback on previous articles. We still intend to address these concerns. However, since the theme for this month (continuous integration) is one of the core "enabling practices" of agile methods like extreme programming, we felt it necessary to shift our focus this month to cover it instead of what we had originally intended.
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ABCs of a Branching and Merging Strategy Branching is both simple and complex. For many, it is challenging to know where to begin. This article hopes to provide a starting point, by highlighting branching concepts, providing reasons for branching, and suggesting an approach to establish a branching and merging strategy.
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Agile SCM – Build Management for an Agile Team A number of people work together to develop a software application. The application is useful only when the components each person works on come together: the process of integration. The mechanics of integration happens during a build. Last month we discussed continuous integration. Integration implies building and this month we'll talk about the various kinds of builds one does during a development process.
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Merging Defect Fixes into the Development Codeline No matter what type of software you develop, from internal IT applications to web applications to commercial software packages, fixing bugs following a release is part of the software development lifecycle. Realistically, software maintenance can be a project by itself. However, the process of merging production fixes into the development codeline is an equally significant effort. Unfortunately, the effort required to merge production fixes into the development codeline can be grossly underestimated and improperly staffed even by organizations that practice otherwise good software development.
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A Practical Approach for Selecting and Adopting an SCM Tool Wanted: A software configuration management (SCM) tool that (a) provides the capabilities necessary to support an organization's software development process, (b) integrates seamlessly with the Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), (c) facilitates the organization's change management process, (d) facilitates the organization's build process, (e) requires only modest training for technical staff , and (f) encourages proper and effective use by technical staff.
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Learn from your Vendor: Solution Selling If your daughter ever comes home with a friendly, outgoing guy named Norbert, shoot first and ask questions later.
Some years ago, a salesman named Norbert at the SCM vendor where I worked got a call in late December from a prospect that had decided to buy from a different vendor. He asked to keep an appointment he had made for a wrapping up session. He went to the meeting with a sales proposal in hand, and after reengineering the vision of the customer, actually left with a sales agreement. Now that's a short sales cycle!
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Strategic Weakness: SCM Implementation Risks The best way to make a project succeed is to communicate effectively. When all levels of the project share the goals, vision, constraints, and plan, everyone on the team can pull as hard and as creatively as possible in the right direction. Failing to share the goals and vision underlying a software configuration management (SCM) implementation can cause it to fail.
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