I've been asked to maintain a few of our software development tools; Clearcase (Views, Streams, Triggers), JIRA, Enterprise Architect and various document based repositories, Confluence, doku Wiki etc..
But as I wonder where does the line is when it comes to the "best practices" and cleanup efforts to make the most of these tools for development teams.
for an SysAdmin perspective it's quite easy; Make sure u maintain the application, network and backup system. but when it's development support and in the term used "Tool's Smith" I believe is half way between a lead developer and system administrator.
Basically I would view this as someone in charge of proposing a framework enabling the developer to not see those tools, but only the process he/she needs to follow:
declare a new task (behind the scene: open a JIRA ticket)
associate to a project (UCM snasphot view to a Stream, download the code)
document the task (new page in the wiki)
...
The administration of those tools is still there, but a bit of development is needed to help the users (developers) in their daily process without them having constantly to think about the specificities of each tools.
If they wanted you to be a lead developer, they wouldn't have given you a title of "Tool Smith". I would view it as a specialized system administrator, more more to the point, application administrator. You might have some additional development responsibilities but being in charge of maintaining the tools probably doesn't confer any responsibility over how those tools are used.
Just my $0.02.
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A client of mine is trying to have all software tracked by his Configuration Management System, IBM Rational Synergy. He wants to track one of his applications, based on several nsfs. I couldn't find anything on the Interwebs about this.
Do you have an idea of how to link a Notes application to a configuration management system? I'm kinda stumped.
I studied this with an expert in IBM Rational Synergy. The only way that seems practical to me would be to use a special plug-in which they have developped. But I wouldn't want to fiddle around with the Domino Designer either.
They also talked of the possibility of saving 'snapshots' of the design (i.e. save ntfs of the design on a regular basis), but I was recalcitrant to use that since really Notes Databases should always be in a notes-controlled environment.
Bottom line, IBM Rational Synergy does not look like a good fit for doing source control management of Notes Databases. I would definitely go with Subversion or even better with git.
Is there any free downloadable test management tool for Windows 7.
I do not want to use any web-based tool where-in I have to sign-up.
All of the test management tools and bug trackers I've used (SpiraTest, Quality Center, Jira) have been web-based. My personal opinion on test management tools, for a lone / single tester, is that they are often too complex and too restrictive to be useful. Sure you can link requirements to tests but you have to input everything into a requirements section, then link it to each test set. Seems much easier to just create a matrix or two in Excel and track your coverage.
All test management tools also seem to think its possible to record your tests in a simple step by step manner with expected and actual results. I personally find this type of system to be too restrictive. A good test design may not yield itself to simple step by step instructions.
Having a good bug tracker that you and your development team can use is an excellent idea. There are lots of free / cheap options however they are all also web-based. Bugzilla is free and takes a bit of time to setup, however you can probably find a free VM somewhere which will get you up and running quickly (Google around). Trac is a free wiki of sort with some bug reporting abilities. SpiraTest is cheap - like $50 for a single user and has test managment and bug tracking capabilities, although if you have a few developers you'll want a larger license that may cost upwards of $200/300.
I personally like Jira and Atlassian's software. I'm playing around with Jira, Confluence and Bonfire for my testing. I can create wikis, etc. for my test ideas in Confluence, report bugs in Jira and use Bonfire for exploratory testing. If you want to host the software yourself (install it on VMs on your machine) Atlassian has this really cool deal called Starter for just $10/each item.
My experience has taught me that having a web-based bug tracking tool is a must have but Test Management tools tend to be a waste. However I encourage you to look around and explore. Most, if not all, of these tools have trial programs. You'll have to sign up / register but that's the cost of doing business. Wikipedia has this list on Test management Tools so have at it.
I work in a shop that's adopted TFS for source control. We're happy with the integration in VS and the other features it offers, so it's likely we're not going to switch to another platform. However, features for team collaboration and documentation are lacking compared to other solutions, most notably SVN + Trac.
Has someone been able to integrate TFS 2010 with TRAC?
EDIT:
It's been asked that I clarify my intent here. It's very simple. I'm just asking if the TRAC project management and bug/tracking system can be used in conjunction with TFS. And, if so, what would it take?
Remember, I'm not looking for a Sharepoint solution--I've already got that. I'm asking if it's possible that TRAC and TFS can get along.
(Long rambling clarification on what I'm looking to get out of TRAC removed. The question is simply "Can TRAC work with TFS?")
Not so much of a trouble a the Trac side. There is FOSS everywhere, a lot of modularity and flexibility. No quite the same at the other side. I've read about the trouble even with one-time migration from SVN to TFS. Despite the source is all open and well documented, there no evidence of good support, that should tell you much about the chance for getting even more - constant synchronization.
Facts: MS SQL server is the base for TFS. No connector available for MS SQL server as a Trac db backend, although there are several python bindings to MS SQL server available, or the option to connect via ODBC. But just an option, nothing ready AFAIK.
I'm not aware of any well documented open TFS API as foundation for migration and integration. And I'm not convinced this will ever change. At Redmond (Microsoft) they are reportedly only considering what seems important to themselves: "helping customers with IBM Rational ClearCase and ClearQuest tools." And most probably it this behavior will persist and SVN/Trac keeps very low on the ToDo for them.
[Edit2]
While TFS has some support for bidirectional communication, these scenarios are not recommended. It mostly aims at integration, read: sucking information in, not communicating with other information systems like Trac.
[Edit]
Just for sub-task of repository browsing you could try to write code to push a duplicate of changes to another (SQLite|MySQL|PostgreSQL) repo that Trac supports right now. But I consider this is rather wasteful and ugly, and fact remains, that it's hard, if possible at all, to do the same tracking without such big code duplication. Ultimately, if you want to live without the actual check-in source changes you must at the very least send information about the meta-data like resource ID's (for link generation) to find the data in TFS.
I'm looking into that right now. So take the following as half-educated advise to the best of my knowledge and feel free to correct/discuss.
As it is included in the license (according to SAP) we would prefer using Solution Manager over other tools, for the entire life-cycle of software development. Or is it highly recommended to use specific tools for the particular processes like Test Management? Any opinions?
in general before answering this question, please be aware that SAP will bring out a new support model and the features and functions available in your SolMan installation will differ according to the support you requested from SAP. If you stick to the Enterprise Support you will (nearly) get every functionality, for Standard Support you well get less and a lot of features will not be included. At the moment, SolMan 7.10 is in Ramp Up Phase and 7.20 will be released in 2011. Due to the fact, that SAP changes the kernel of the Solution Manager Stack, which is apparently CRM from 5.0 to 7.0 you should keep in mind, that any functionality you implement in your current SolMan will lead to high migration efforts.
Apart from this, if you look at the Enterprise version, my experience is that not all features are rather good and suitable. It also depends on the organization you are working in. The SAP tools focus only on SAP, so if you are working in an environment where non-SAP Java has an important part I would look for different tools. If you look into the change management (ChaRM), it is suitable for small landscapes and for big ones only with some effort. Here you should also consider at least to have a look at different technologies and tools. From my point, there are some things like monitoring, job scheduling etc. which are quite good, but for the more general application lifecycle management tools you should at least take other options into account.
Assume your .NET-based development team is already using the following set of tools in its processes:
Subversion / TortoiseSVN / VisualSVN (source control)
NUnit (unit testing)
An open source Wiki
A proprietary bug-tracking system that is paid for
You are happy with Subversion and NUnit, but dislike the Wiki and bug-tracking system. You also would like to add some lightweight project-management software (like Fogbugz/Trac) - it does not have to be free, but obviously cheaper is better.
Can you make a compelling argument for adopting VSTS, either to add missing features and replace disliked software or to handle everything (including the source control)? Is the integration of all these features greater than the sum of the parts, or would it simply be better to acquire and replace the parts that you either do not like or do not have?
I remember looking into VSTS a few years ago and thought it was terribly expensive and not really better than many of the free options, but I assume Microsoft has continued to work on it?
VSTS is great, if you do everything in it. Unfortunately the price has not become better over the years. :( The CAL's are still ludicrously expensive. The only improvement is that if a person uses only the work item system, and works only with his/her own work items (no peeking at other person's work items!) then there is no need for a CAL. This makes it a bit easier to use it as an external bugreport system. Still it leaves a lot to be desired in this area.
There is one way to alleviate the cost - become Microsoft Certified Partner. If you are a simple partner, you get 5 VS/TFS licenses for free; if you are a Gold Certifiend Partner, you get 25 (if memory fails me not). That should be enough for most companies. But getting the Gold status might be tricky, depending on what you do.
If you only dislike those two parts, then perhaps it's better just to find a replacement for them instead for everything? There are many wiki systems out there, some should be to your liking. The same goes for bugtracking too.
We are extremely happy with not only the tools, but the integration that Team Foundation Server, and the various Team Editions have given us. We previously used Borland's StarTeam for source control and issue tracking with a 3rd party wiki, the name of which escapes me at the moment.
It came time for us to extend our licensing and support agreement with Borland, only to learn that the cost of adding users to our license and upgrading the product would cost us as much (a little more, actually) than biting the bullet and making the switch. One thing to consider is that you would normally pay for the development tools to begin with, so the cost is partially absorbed by our budget.
We also did not feel the need for getting Team Suite for every person. You might want to consider it for the developers, but other disciplines don't really have a benefit in using all of the tools in most companies.
We were able to get the appropriate team editions for twelve people, enough CALs for 50 users (for Team Explorer, Teamprise, Team Project Portals, Team Web Access), Teamprise for the five Mac Users that we have, and the Team Foundation Server software itself for under six figures. Considering that includes the developer tools that we normally would be buying, it was a good deal.
The upfront cost on new licensing also covered two years, so we could split the budget between the 2008 and 2009 fiscal years. The very important thing is to make sure not to let the licenses lapse, as the renewals on licenses cost a fraction of the initial cost and also include version upgrades.
As to the features, we are in the process of rolling out. About half of our department completed training, and I have already started migrating projects over. The development team absolutely loves the features and tight integration with their workflow. Version control is a snap, and work items (and their related reporting artifacts) are extensible to the nth degree. The fact that TFS relies heavily on bringing sanity to workflow management helps to tie in all of the processes to a level that you just can not get with multiple vendors.
My absolute favorite thing, though, is the extensibility model. Using the Team Foundation Server API, you can easily write check-in policies, write tools to interface with the system, develop plug-ins, and more. We are already seeing gains in productivity and the quality of our products through a minimal implementation.
Still on the horizon, though, is integrating Team Build. I have yet to set up a build project, but it seems to be seamless and painless. Time will tell... :-)
Edit - I forgot to mention that our migration to TFS includes licensing for the Test Load Agent. The load testing functionality within Team Test is one of, if not the absolute best that I have seen.
Where I'm at, we've settled on the following:
SVN for source control
Redmine for bug-tracking and wiki
NUnit for unit testing
CruiseControl.NET for our build server
Redmine is an open source Ruby on Rails application that supports multiple projects much better than Trac and seems to be much easier to administer. It's definitely worth checking out.
VSTS seems to be way too much money compared to other products. As an additional benefit, you also get the souce with open source solutions, which allows you to modify things to fit your need if the capability isn't there yet.
I'd stick with SVN and use trac or bugzilla or fogbugz. You could also do a trial of team server. In my opinion it is not worth the money. MS had their chance with version control and they screwed it up a long time ago. Too late to the party if you ask me and frankly I am not impressed with how they try to control all your development experience in the IDE with "integration" to the source control. I prefer the perforce/SVN and separate defect tracking solution.
With all that said, you probably can't go wrong with any of the following:
bugzilla or trac or fogbugz AND SVN
MS team thingamabob