 Each month the CM Journal provides original content articles and regular columns
from industry thought leaders and software providers on a
wide variety of configuration management and application lifecycle
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Evaluating and Selecting Right Tools - June 2009
 This month's CM Crossroads issue covers the often daunting task of Evaluating and Selecting the Right Tools. Fortunately, there are indeed many good tools on the market to support Configuration Management. There are also some pretty bad clunkers out there and you don't want to be in the position of recommending a tool that later becomes a symbol for bad decisions! Fortunately, your CM Crossroads colleagues have the guidance, based upon practical experience, to help you be successful with your Tools Evaluation and Selection Process. Matthew Johnson gets us started down the path with his article on Choosing the Right Tool and Alan Koch tells us to consider People, Process and Tools in our selection effort. Sky Basu, CTO of Kovair, shares his own Process Tool Selection Guidelines and Joe Farah has the Next Generation in Evaluating and Selecting CM/ALM Tools.
In Personality Matters, Leslie Sachs tells us how to tame some of the Wild personalities you may encounter in your tools selection process and Chayim Kirshen explains how to Promote Tools Within an Organization. Our zany Ben Weatherall has some sage advice on SCM Assessment and Tal Niznani has some information on Applying Software Configuration Management Methodology to Database Development. I couldn’t resist looking back at Steven Easterbrook’s Evaluating and Selecting CM Tools and of course, my buddy Mario Moreira’s discussion on CM Tools. In Behaviorally Speaking, I recounted some of my own experiences in tools selection and please don’t forget to drop me a line and share your experiences, challenges and questions regarding tools selection. This is a great issue and we’re delighted that you are joining us for our deep dive into Tools Evaluation and Selection!!!
Bob Aiello
Editor in Chief
CM Crossroads
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Don't be a Fool, Choose the Right Tool
Tools
can be a powerful productivity enhancer in any software development
organization, but they can also be a swirling vortex of wasted time and
money. Choosing the right tool along with ensuring its acceptance into
the project team can seem like a daunting task, but careful planning
and involving the right people creates a win-win for you and the entire
organization (i.e., think corner office with windows, reserved parking,
traveling business class... OK, stop laughing). To ...
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People, Processes and Tools
Part I: The People Premium
Every project is dependent upon
people, processes and tools. They are how the work gets done. But these
three essential elements are not equal. Each has its own strengths and
weaknesses, and provides a different value to our projects.
This three-part series explores the relative value of people,
of process, and of tools. We will look at the strengths of each, their
weaknesses, and how they provide value to our projects. Is one of the
three more important th...
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Process Tool Selection Guidelines
This
article discusses Process tools for Software Development and IT
Management and the major functionalities one should look for
in such tools. There are not many tools which can be categorized as
pure play software development process management tools. Most of the
process tools are included as part of the development and management
point tools. For example, a bug tracking tool may have a process
automation engine to define bug fixing processes. Similarly, a helpdesk
tool may have a pro...
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 | CM: THE NEXT GENERATION - Evaluating and Selecting CM/ALM Tools
Evaluating
and Selecting CM and ALM tools is an opportunity both to ensure that
you have a good Process in place, and to learn the present state and
the state-of-the art in CM/ALM technology. As with most technology, as
you move from one generation to the next, the capabilities grow more
rapidly, while the timeframe for each generation shrinks.
Evaluation is a critical step in securing good Process, and should be
done in a manner that will ensure success. You don't want ...
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 | Personality Matters – Taming the Wild Tools Selection Process
Tools selection should really be the most objective and straight forward
task that any technology professional could be asked to work on. After
all, selecting a hammer (saw or screwdriver) is always a basic task that depends upon objective criteria such as the
size of the nail that you are pounding into a wall. In technology,
tools selection involves a lot more group dynamics than you might
expect and it is very possible that personality issues (within the team
evaluating the tools) could ...
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 | Promoting Tools Within an Organization
As SCM professionals, we
want to not only work on software construction and release engineering;
we want to help software organizations iterate, release, and work as
efficiently as possible. A true SCM professional will not only work on
Build and Release Engineering, but also try to remove all roadblocks to
software development and software engineering. So instead of focusing
on a tool in particular, I'm going to discuss how the SCM professional
can introduce a tool into a dev...
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 | SCM Assessment
In past articles and forum threads I have
discussed how "pain" drives tool changes and how to go about
identifying and evaluating potential tool additions/replacements. This
month, I want to cover how to assess your existing tools and processes
to determine where you really need to focus.
...
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 | Applying Software Configuration Management Methodology to Database Development
In the beginning, there was Chaos...
In the early days of software development, everyone did their own
thing. Hardware was scarce and software projects were small. But soon,
when multi-programmer projects became common, configuration- and
change-control problems started rearing their ugly heads. When two
programmers tried to edit the same source-code file, the inevitable
happened and changes were over-written or lost. Initially, manual
(human-based) change-control processes were insti...
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| Evaluating and Selecting CM Tools - A Perspective
Why Automated
tools?
Automated tools are essential for effective and
efficient configuration management. Tools can automate many aspects of the
change management process and deliver a real time platform for managing
baseline information. Tools can also provide
reports and metrics that are necessary for continuous improvement efforts. Many
tools also provide document control and other essential functionality.
...
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 | What is a CM Tool?
Does
the title of this article sound silly? I
mean, doesn’t everyone know what a Configuration Management (CM) tool is? Isn’t a Configuration Management CM tool something
that provides version control functionality?
Well, the short answer is yes but only in its most simplistic form. CM as a discipline goes well beyond simple
version control. It is important to look
beyond what vendors define as classic CM tools and consider CM in terms of the
full...
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 | Behaviorally Speaking - Evaluating and Selecting the Right Tools
With Father's Day only a couple of weeks away, I am dreaming of the hedge trimmer or power saw that my family is almost certain to get me as a father's day gift to me. Such choices are about as silly as getting mom a new washing machine or blender (no doubt to bake me a cake). Now if you really want to get me a great gift then you would land me some new software such as Microsoft's TFS (which might actually be the only Version Control tool that I have not played with yet). Taking the shrink wrap...
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