Evaluating and selecting the right tools is one of the most fun and creative tasks in CM. I have led many tools “bake-offs”, usually with the job of implementing the solution chosen by the evaluation team. I am personally tools and process agnostic. Conducting a good product evaluation can be very challenging and not just because of the technical challenges imposed by the tool.  I usually find that there are equally challenging issues involving organizational culture, process and the team’s social and political structure. I have learned that evaluating and selecting the right tools is not only possible – it is essential. Read on if you would like to get your tools selection process on the track for success!

Which Tool is Best
Some tools are good and some tools are really bad. Technology professionals must often contend with tools that are unreliable, limited in function and difficult to use. After you get stuck with a bad tool for a while, you will decide that it is extremely important to pick the right tools. I have worked with (or at least evaluated) just about every source code management tool on the market and I certainly have my opinions on which tools are best.

Every Tool Has a Place
I have learned over the years that just about every tool has a place where it can be used effectively. Still not all tools are alike and I certainly prefer some tools over others. Years ago, I worked with RCS and SCCS which were the version controls of choice on early Unix machines. I remember waiting for PVCS to be become available on the machines that I was using for a trading system being developed by a financial services firm in NYC. Since I knew that my favorite version control tool would be available in a few months I wrote a set of front end scripts to make SCCS look and feel like PVCS as much as possible. After this experience I worked with CVS which is essentially a wrapper around RCS. We’ve come a long way since then and we have many great choices for source code management solutions.

Which Tool Should I Use?
While Subversion and GIT have many dedicated followers, commercial source code management tools including Accurev and MKS are successfully used in many companies. I have personally used ClearCase since version 2.1 (it is up to 7.1 now) and many of my friends still call me “Bob-the-vob” (a vob is a versioned object base – the repository for ClearCase). Martin Fowler has been quoted as saying that the only commercial source code management tool worth paying money for is Perforce which has a very loyal following. If you peruse the CM Crossroads forums you will see that there are a number of other source code management tools in use today and I always invite tools vendors to write scholarly articles on their tools and processes (no sales fluff please). But I am going on record as saying that IBM’s Rational Team Concert is setting a new bar for full ALM solutions. I spoke about this at the IBM Innovate 2010 conference in Orlando in June 2010 and I would like to explain exactly why I believe that we are on a new plateau in terms of source code management (or really ALM) solutions.

Not Your Father’s ClearCase Anymore
IBM’s Rational Team Concert 2.0 raises the bar in terms of its usage model, ability to customize, reliability and scalability. That’s not to say that the game is over. Accurev’s Damon Poole is no lightweight in this space and companies like MKS, Perforce and others will likely come back with their own improved (and fantastic offerings). But let’s examine exactly why RTC is changing the game.

Workitems Become First Class Citizens
The RTC usage model puts workitems (whether they be defects, tasks, use cases or custom designed) as the central player driving the ALM. You don’t start working until your manager creates and assigns you a workitem. The workitem has a central paradigm of being a vehicle for a discussion. This is precisely why RTC is team collaboration software. When you see an incoming workitem, it is easy to start a discussion that should result in clarifying the work that needs to be done. In organizations that have developers working around the world in different timezones (different language and cultures) and this focus is precisely on target for success. Changes made to the code are delivered with the associated workitem (e.g. task, defect) and can be reviewed by another developer (who sees them as incoming changesets). If the wrong changes were made then, once again, the paradigm of discussing the changes is explicitly shown in the workitem. I believe that this is precisely the way that source code changes should be managed.

[Editor's note - I have been reminded and am glad to acknowledge that there are other ALM solutions that also use workitems. I noted in my 2008 review of SpectrumSCM, that "I originally reviewed this product in 2004 and was impressed back then with its task and life-cycle based, Change Request (CR) centric approach to full lifecycle based source code management". I believe that CM is a team sport - so keep those emails and calls coming!]

Eclipse Centric Front End
RTC uses an Eclipse front-end. Now be careful here because I have seen issues with Eclipse plugin compatibility. Visual Studio is also supported and overall the performance is better than ClearCase (especially for distributed development teams). There is some complexity with regard to the way that streams and components work (be careful with the flow targets). RTC is a little easier to use than ClearCase, but I am a big fan of training for any source code management solution – especially complicated ones.

What About the Backend?
I have been involved with several RTC implementations now and I am impressed by the available choices for setting up a robust backend. There are several production databases (including Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server) which allow you to centralize your DBA function on a specific set of database servers. I have set this up using several IBM Rational solutions including RTC, RQM and Reqpro – all accessing the same backend DB2 server.

Open Standards Anyone?
IBM’s new effort to establish open standards needs to be monitored but I believe hold great promise for allowing both IBM and non-IBM products to work cooperatively on the JAZZ platform. I am planning on following up with additional articles on IBM open services for lifecycle collaboration (http://www.open-services.net) in the near future.

How About a Mainframe for Scalability?
The most exciting news that I have heard in a long time is that RTC can work on mainframes (z/OS), i-series, Unix/Linux and Windows. I have not seen this yet, but I have been told that you can have a Windows based RTC Client accessing an RTC server on any of the aforementioned platforms. (I have used it on Linux/Unix/Windows.) That’s my idea of scalability!

Reporting Bugs
RTC also has a dedicated team of developers sitting in a big ol’ fish bowl. (Shhhh – one of the top RTC developers is a member of our own CM Crossroads RTC group!) I have subscribed to lists used directly by the developers and found myself being updated directly on bugs and feature requests that I had initiated – all through IBM’s own internal RTC development process. Nothing like eating your own dogfood!

So Should the Other Tools Vendors Surrender and Close Shop?
Of course not! The game is far from over and I fully expect that many tools vendors will contact me over the next few months/years to show me how their products have caught up and surpassed IBM’s Rational Team Concert. There are also many legacy systems that cannot (and should not) migrate to RTC. And there will always be folks who just want to stay with their favorite CVS/SVN/GIT version control tools. Subversion and GIT have raised the bar in many ways themselves and certainly have a well deserved and very strong following.

Conclusion
I am tools and process agnostic. I have seen tools and processes work successfully in many organizations and other times, I have seen them fail miserably. I have learned first hand that some tools will work in one place and then not in another. That said, the bar is higher today and we are the ones who will benefit as a result. Get ready for the next generation of source management tools coming soon and please contact me to share your tools evaluation experiences!

Bob Aiello is the Editor-in-Chief for CM Crossroads and the author of CM Best Practices: Practical Methods that Work in the Real World, Addison-Wesley Professional (http://cmbestpractices.com). Bob is the Executive Director of Practices and Services at Configuration Management, Inc. (www.cmi.com) where he specializes in Software Process Improvement including Software Configuration and Release Management. Mr. Aiello has over 25 years experience as a technical manager in several top NYC Financial Services firms where he had company-wide responsibility for CM, often providing hands-on technical support for enterprise Source Code Management tools, SOX/Cobit compliance, build engineering, continuous integration and automated application deployment. Bob is the Vice Chair of the IEEE 828 Standards working group (CM Planning) and is a member of the IEEE Software and Systems Engineering Standards Committee (S2ESC) Management Board. He is a long-standing member of the Steering Committee of the NYC Software Process Improvement Network (CitySPIN), where he has served as the chair of the CM SIG. Mr. Aiello holds a Masters in Industrial Psychology from NYU and a B.S. in Computer Science and Math from Hofstra University. You may contact Mr. Aiello at bob.aiello@ieee.org or link with him at http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobaiello

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Bob Aiello said:

... hey everyone, this is a great discussion. I fully expected to be pinged for this article although I am surprised that none of the enthusiasts of other CM tools have tried to weigh in on this discussion yet. We should always be pushing to raise the bar on SCM tools. I want everyone to also keep in mind that I accept articles from all of my colleagues. Here is editorial calendar. http://www.cmcrossroads.com/home/company/editorial-calendar Keep em coming - now I have to get back to preparing for my RTC demo. Bob

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June 30, 2010
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Ben Weatherall said:

... Bob, you mentioned SpectrumSCM as another product which follows this paradigm, but remember that StarTeam was one of the firsts that pioneered it. It looks like a good idea is being incorporated into many of the integrated SCM solutions that are coming to the fore these days. From that perspective, I am a very happy camper. I would be very interested to learn more about the underlying technology, however. For now, I am just happy to get designers, developers. testers and managers to get together to decide what they want to do.

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June 30, 2010
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MikeD348 said:

... Let me weigh in here as too many are taking a 'whack' at poor Bob here on what I know was not his intention to just write a product ad for IBM. As a long time SCM Architect myself I too have used many different solutions over the past 25+ years. I agree with Bob when he said that most solutions have a place and our function is often finding that right place IMHO! I have been working on a RTC/RQM migration project now for a few months and I have really dug the RTC solution! Once again to agree with Bob one of the best things is the fact they take the Work Item or Change Request or whatever you want to call it to a new level! On my project we are still some time from our first BETA but we have started to use the RTC product already for our project development planning and tracking. Ours is a very large project with at least a dozen or more working directly on the project. We track all of our activity via Work Items of a Task type so we all can view the processes and to interact. I never did anything like that before with ANY other SCM solution! In closing I too do not get paid by IBM but as a long time SCM tool user I have found the RTC solution to be very robust and as strong a early release than I have ever seen! ------mikeD

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June 29, 2010
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Bill Langston said:

... Bob, I understand what you are saying and you said as much in the article at the beginning and end. However, the article reads to me as an endorsement of RTC rather than a commentary on the attributes to consider when evaluating and selecting a tool. Such a commentary is what you stated in your opening summary: "Read on if you would like to get your tools selection process on the track for success!" If you re-read it, you will find that every paragraph starting with "Which Tool Should I Use" focuses on reasons for using RTC rather than why a particular characteristic of a CM tool might or might not be desireable when setting up to select a tool. With that said, I will jump over and open a thread per your suggestion. Regards Bill

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June 25, 2010
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Bob Aiello said:

... Bill, I think that you are asking a great question. This article was about my own personal journey (especially) over the last year to review available CM/ALM tools on the market and my own experience in selecting and implementing Rational Team Concert. The article was not a product review and IBM did not pay me to say nice things about them. I have worked with (or at least reviewed) almost every CM/ALM tool on the market and they each have their own value along with pros & cons. I believe that RTC raises the bar and I tried to be very specific about why I believe that to be the case. If you (or anyone else) disagree then lets start a thread in the forums or I can create a new CM Crossroads tools group and we can have that discussion together. I knew full well that the Subversion/GIT/Perforce/ enthusiasts would call me on this and I am glad to start the debate. As I said "bring it baby - bring it!". I truly believe that RTC is a huge step forward for CM/ALM automation, although I am not saying that the other fine tools vendors (and advertisers :-) won't come back with better software for a smarter planet too! At the end of the day we are moving the CM industry forward and proving more value while improving quality and productivity! This is real progress and I am not shy about taking a stand and recognizing that IBM did a good on RTC.

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June 25, 2010
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Bill Langston said:

	... Bob, Was this article really about evaluating and selecting the right tool? What I read was a review of IBM RTC.
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June 25, 2010
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