Thursday, April
12, 2012
What Does it
Really Do? Figuring Out Software Process Support Tools
Abstract:
There are probably millions of tools available
today to support the software development process, both free and fee
licensed. Even restricting attention to process support tools, tools
that are most valuable when the development process involves multiple people
over months or years of time, the list still includes requirements managers,
issue and effect tracking systems, project management tools, test managers,
etc. Supporting these tools can take as much as a third of project
effort and tool choices are often made for the life of the product, which can
be decades. The selection of tools is difficult because the decision must
take into account not only the technical properties of the tool but the
nature of the product being developed, the structure of the organization
doing the developing and the development process being followed.
A starting point for making selection decisions is
to understand what different tools do in terms of what kinds of information
they store and how they manipulate it. This can then be related to the
properties of the applications being developed and the nature of the
development organization and the development process in
order to decide whether or not a particular type of tool is needed. I will
look at requirements analysis tools, issue and defect tracking tools,
configuration management tools, build managers, test managers, and project
management tools. A particular focus will be application lifecycle
managers, integrated suites of development tools intended to provide seamless
linking of information across tool boundaries. Examples include IBM
Rhapsody/Jazz, Microsoft Team Foundation, and the Atlassian suite.
Speaker:
Ruven Brooks, Ruven Brooks Consulting
|