Version Control

Articles

Process Perspective: There is More to Requirements Than Just Use Cases and UML

Requirements do not equal use cases or UML diagrams only. Use cases are a sub-set of doing requirements. There are also more ways of modeling than just using UML. Obviously it depends on the size of the project you are working on that will dictate exactly what your process will need to create. Let’s look at the bigger team size project and explore in simple terms what we should be doing for requirements and how this interfaces to the rest of the team’s activities.

Charles Edwards
Agile Configuration Management Environments

How can software configuration management be compatible with agile software development? Aren’t the two diametrically opposed to one another? Sometimes it may seem that way. There is a commonly perceived tension between SCM and development agility that makes it difficult to achieve an effective yet precarious “equilibrium” between the two:

Brad Appleton's picture Brad Appleton
Process Perspective: Keep All Re-use in Mind When Establishing your 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.

Charles Edwards
The Importance of a Directory Structure for the Development Process

Software process is becoming more and more important in SCM. Gone are the days of simple configuration managing the source code and software release builds. Now we need to manage versions of the UML models, versions of the requirements, versions of the tests, versions of the iteration plans and be able to create integration streams for all the different disciplines too. Requirement analysts should be able to work on a branch of a use case model, testers should be able to work on a branch of their test model, etc. At the end of an iteration, all of this should be brought together and released as an iteration release, for the process to be properly controlled.

 

Charles Edwards
Avoid Role Name Confusion

Don't you find it confusing when you go from one company to another and find all sorts of different names for similar roles people play in the IT software development process? I have had heated debates with people only to find we were in violent agreement and it was the use of different terminology that was causing the incorrect interpretation, because we were ultimately both trying to say the same thing. This doesn't only happen with roles and activities on projects but with many different terminologies meaning the same thing!

 

Charles Edwards
Integrating Developer Tools: Intuition vs. Reality

While many people intuitively feel that we should integrate the development tools we use in our software development environment to better manage the development team, the task of actually doing so can sometimes be as big if not bigger than the software project we are trying to develop. It's hard enough trying to implement individual software development tools while you are in the throes of building software, let alone get multiple sets of these tools to start synchronizing and talking to one another.


Charles Edwards
Enterprises Need Higher Level Process Frameworks for Better Control

Enterprise application integration (EAI) is problem many large organizations facie today. With the emphasis on the integration part of the applications within the enterprise, more recently made even more complex by integrating applications outside of the enterprise. There are business engineering approaches can alleviate many of these problems and have in particular organizations.

Charles Edwards
Using Process-Enabled SCM Tools to Facilitate the Software Development Lifecycle

When used appropriately, process-enabled SCM tools facilitate iterative team software development in a highly dynamic environment. As SCM practitioners, we should educate and guide our customers, the members of software development teams, to exploit the application lifecycle capabilities of process-enabled SCM tools.

Michael Sayko
Integrating a Requirements Management Tool into a Software CM Environment

Most people think they know what configuration management (CM) means. And they're right. Unfortunately, they don't all think it means the same thing. So let's look at some of the basics of CM. This isn't a "how to" article, as much as it's an "at least" article:  at least you'll know what to expect for the rest of this article.

 

Austin Hastings
Codeline Merging and Locking: Continuous Updates and Two-Phased Commits

This month we will discuss the subject of merging our changes with the codeline. First we will outline the basic process to use. Next, we'll mention some of the obstacles that arise, and strategies to overcome them. We will conclude with a discussion of how to decide which strategies are right for you!

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