Tim has already described how to schedule tasks and features in Part 3 of the series. This blog will build on this to show how you can reschedule a task or feature. This is one of the major benefits to using features – you can choose which version the feature will be completed in.  For example you might start a feature in Version 1 thinking it will only take a week. The developer working on the feature will submit changes to the feature. If you realize it will take longer than expected you can move the feature to Version 2. Because the developer only submitted changes to the featur... [More]

Lee has started to talk about merging in his last blog, as he showed how to apply a hotfix to the current development version. I’ll take on his topic to talk about one of PureCM’s most powerful features: automated merging with ‘Merge Rules’. Where does merging happen? PureCM is a client/server based solution, so the all project data is stored in a safe repository. As a developer, you work in a so called ‘workspace’, a local copy of any project held in the repository. This solutions has the benefit of supporting both concurrent and offline development. The... [More]

In this blog we will look at how to use PureCM in the process of fixing a bug in a live release. As a developer will probably already be working on 'the next release' it is important that switching to a previous release (to fix a bug) is as uncomplicated as possible. PureCM provides the mechanism for a developer to work on a fix for an old version, and create a new release, without affecting his current development environment – or have his current development environment affect the bug fix environment (parallel development) … So how does it work? Raise the task The first stage... [More]

In the last blog Kenji took a good look at some of the current and upcoming reporting systems inside PureCM. Today I'm going to take a closer look at Releases. What is a Release? A release is a snapshot of the code at a specific point in time. This gives you a permanent copy of your code at a specific point, which typically will remain read only. You can directly browse the content of a release and use it for internal/external/beta/etc builds or to send to your testers. Having a release gives you an easy way to tag points in your development and keep track of who is running which version o... [More]

We’ve now covered the development journey from setting up a project hierarchy and assigning features and tasks to completing work. It’s time to have a look at how you can keep track of what’s happened. PureCM offers several ways to visualise project status, which I’ll present below. What information do you need? True, there are countless reports, diagrams and options when looking at reporting. But if I try to reduce to the max, as a development or project manager you’ll quite likely want to get answers to the following questions: What has been completed ... [More]

We've seen how developers can work with both tasks (for small work items) and features (for larger work items). This blog will look at how code reviews can be achieved using features. Why Reviews? As a developer completes all the tasks required for a feature, without code review, the option to 'Complete' on the feature is used. Submitting the resulting changeset would merge the feature into the parent Version immediately, close the feature, and stop any code changes from being merged into the feature (from the parent Version). This means that the developer's code is added to the main (parent... [More]

In the last blog Tim described how a developer works with tasks to complete small units of work. I will follow on from this to discuss how a developer works with larger pieces of work. My Features We have already introduced the concept of a feature and described when a manager should create a feature as opposed to a task. So lets assume a manager has already assigned a feature to you. After a feature has been assigned to you it will appear in the ‘Workspaces’ view under ‘My Features’. From here you can: Open a workspace for the feature. This will allow you sele... [More]

In this part of the SDC series we are focusing on a developers day to day life. Last time Lee looked at developer workspaces, now we are going to look at how tasks interact with and manage those workspaces. My Tasks We already introduced the concept of a task in my last blog looking from a managers point of view. To a developer a task represents  a small chunk of work that has been assigned to them to complete. These can be easily viewed from the 'My Tasks' area. As you can see the tasks in this view are broken down into three sections; 'Working', 'Assigned' and 'Group'. These divide... [More]