A few months ago we've run our first blog series, publishing about a dozen blogs on how common software challenges can be tackled effectively. The SDC series was born. We've had some great conversations with readers and customers as result of that blog series, so I'm glad to announce the next series that will start soon: Agile Version Control Hmm. Agile in 2011? Ten years after the agile manifesto was published? Of course! These 10 years have brought many rich experiences working with agile and other methodologies in software development. We still get numerous rich and insightful discussions... [More]

  There are many issues to consider when deciding how to structure your software from an architectural point of view. Chances are that you’ve already split up your code into several modules or components to separate the various routines. However, deciding about the best software design isn’t the purpose of this blog. At PureCM, we like to look at software from a version control point of view. So let’s agree for the purpose of this blog that a component is a set of files and folders that are versioned together. This also means we’re looking at code components, and... [More]

  Over the last few years, we’ve seen a large number of development teams moving away from file-based version control tools. This is no surprise, as new tools on the market started to support the concept of changesets and atomic commits. Why grouping changes makes sense So instead of checking in every single file, developers were now able to group their changes in changesets. This gives teams a much better project history, as each changeset reflects a task. Also, changesets are applied to the repository database atomically, i.e. completely or not at all, thus protecting database ... [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]

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]

  So far, we’ve covered the new planning functionality of PureCM Professional. You’ve seen how to define project and versions and how to schedule and assign work items using features and tasks.   Is this series going to be all about release planning? So all about project management and nothing on software configuration management (SCM), the traditional core of PureCM. Clearly not! PureCM 2010 fully integrates release planning and configuration management, offering important benefits to the user: In smaller companies, planning and configuration management is of... [More]

The last PureCM 2010-1 release has added some very powerful features to PureCM. But how do they relate to day-to-day development? And how to get started? These questions are at the core of our new ‘Solving Development Challenges’ (SDC) blog series that kicks off with this one. So watch out for our SDC blogs to learn about how you can facilitate your software development with PureCM!  One challenge, one blog The next blog in a few days time will look at project planning from a project manager’s perspective. Then we’ll take the development manager’s view on c... [More]

Looking into 2010 from a PureCM point of view Exciting times are ahead with the PureCM 2010-1 beta now available for download and the full release coming closer. As this release will mark a very substantial step forward regarding PureCM's feature set, it looks like this is a great moment to share our product roadmap with you. Please feel free to comment; regardless of whether you want to praise or criticise!  Feature Target release   Release planning, task tracking Agile release planning for multiple projects using releases and iterations Support... [More]