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MKS Integrity 2007 pulls ahead of the competition with an integrated and comprehensive ALM solution. |
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 Author: Bob Aiello
There has never been a more exciting and rewarding time to
be in the industry of systems application development. There also has never
been a time when the risks were greater and the margin for error more critical
- you must get it right or your failure will make headlines the next day. From process
workflow, application requirements, source code management, through setting up
a seamless deployment strategy - MKS leaves a lot of its competitors stunned by
its full set of features and versatile comprehensive solution. If you are a
development manager and you want to get your projects under control than you
should take a serious look at MKS Integrity 2007. Read on if you want to learn
more about this process and workflow platform that can set the stage for your
large scale development effort to be a success in terms of meeting your
deliverables on time and within budget.
How do we get the job done?
Many development managers are looking to implement
integrated and comprehensive ALM solutions to support automated workflow,
requirements tracking, source code management, along with build and deploy
framworks to help manage the extraordinarily complex business of developing
large scale (e.g. SOA) applications wih large budgets and essentially no room
for error or cost overruns. Senior management has learned that it is very
possible, and indeed essential, to have visibility into the projects that they
choose to fund. Top technology talent is not easy to recruit and effectively
manage with the competing business demands which are so common today in our
fast-paced business world. Eliminating ambiguity by specifying what needs to
get done (and by when) can mean that your technology talent can focus on what
they do best instead of spinning their wheels trying to figure how to get their
release into QA on time. MKS Integrity 2007 has a comprehensive framework to
address each of these compelling requirements that can make the difference
between project success and project failure.
Workflow is hot!
There is an ongoing debate within the software development
community as to which process improvement framework is best. Daily discussions
occur in my world as to exactly how much process is required to avoid mistakes
and meet our goals of establishing repeatable builds and improving application
quality. Often best practices from CMMi, Agile, ITIL, or COBIT are considered and debated for their
effectiveness and added value to the organization. What is clear is that
developers need to know what tasks must be completed and how (and when) their
completion should be communicated to others. Senior management needs visibility
into how the development effort is going - whether it be a major year-long
project or an emergency bug fix. Defining the process means that the tasks,
roles and responsibilities and deadlines must be clearly defined and communicated.
Projects can fail and/or be seriously delayed just because the team does not
have an efficient means of communicating the status of any dependency in the
project. Robust workflow tools help the software development team to improve
their efficiency and effectiveness while meeting their deadlines on time and
within budget.
MKS workflow and visual modeling.
The MKS workflow tool allows for the development of
processes workflows that are highly customized and flexible. State transitions
are managed with appropriate approvals and based upon roles and predetermined
entitlements. There is even a facility for electronic (cryptographic)
signatures which means that approvals and transitions are non-repudiated (a
requirement in many regulatory environments). The process engineer has a visual
modeling tool that allows for the workflow design process to be interactive -
which is essential in getting the team to agree upon a new and improved way of
working (e.g., process improvement). The product comes with out-of-the-box
materials on how to use development methodologies (e.g., waterfall and
iterative) and process improvement frameworks such as ITIL.
Getting
the requirements right.
MKS Integrity for requirements starts by helping the team
clarify exactly what functionality needs to be developed and then integrates
with the rest of MKS Integrity so that requirements are seamlessly connected to
design, development, testing and deployment. This tool has rich features
including a document view that supports context-based authoring, rich text,
tables, in-line images and a robust structure that allows all of the stake
holders to see the requirements framework in a logical and cognitively
compelling manner. The requirements gathering process can be enforced to make
certain that test cases reflect the application specifications. Requirements
themselves are versioned, allowing for control over whom and when
specifications are modified. This framework maximizes the best practices of
requirements reuse and, most importantly, allows for requirements to follow
through their own lifecycle and approvals.
There is also a facility for conflict resolution including the ability
for multiple users to give their input which is vetted through the toolset
until consensus is reached and the final set of specifications determined.
Managing Change in MKS Integrity
From a change management perspective, all change to the
artifacts within the MKS repository, requirements, test cases, source code,
etc, is controlled and governed by authorizing items. These items (formerly
known as issues) are created in MKS Integrity and, depending on the artifact, change
packages are then created for each item which then, acting as a container,
groups together specific members (e.g., files) that need to be changed in order
to correct or satisfy the item. The change package is then assigned an ID and
is in an "open" state. Members can be added to a change package through the SCM
functions (e.g., checkout, checkin, adding, etc.). The user checks in the
members which, once the change package is closed, are then moved along to the
next state in the workflow. This integrated functionality allows a higher level
of change control and change management.
MKS Integrity also integrates with MS Project in addition to
its own project management capabilities, which include time accounting and
reporting.
Parallel Development
The source management capabilities within MKS Integrity
include support for parallel development such as development paths, branch and
merge functionality. Variants in the code may be worked on in private sandboxes
which can then be updated (resynched) with changes that have been checked in by
other developers.
Checkouts may be reserved (locked) or unreserved (optimistic) as preferred by
the development team. Developers should create Checkpoints in order to baseline
the entire project either on the trunk or a development branch. Changes may be
organized into Change Packages. Releases may be organized onto release branches
which is a common practice with some CM tools. Project History allows the
developer to see all of the versions for a particular variant of the code (this
is critical when reverse engineering someone else's code or just trying to
recall what went into a particular release). Graphical history views allow the
developer to examine a project's development paths and branches. MKS Source has
powerful SCM features that are considered best practices by most software
development professionals.
MKS Source
Projects (and subprojects) can be created to organize a
hierarchy of items (which can also be linked into relationships) that are then
able to be worked on according to the workflow states that have been specified.
Like many SCM tools, MKS Source has a concept of a sandbox -
a private workspace. Developers can checkout their code, update and then check
their changes back in as needed. Resynchronizing (in other tools called
rebasing) allows the developer to update his sandbox prior to checking his
changes back in (which avoids breaking the build). Continuous Integrations
tools such as CruiseControl recognize MKS Source and allow you to update
sandboxes for the nightly (or hourly) build. Change packages then allow you to
create a logical unit of work leading into MKS's deployment functionality -
which provides a framework for organizing your application deployment. This
product offering employs the best practices of staging your changes and
preplanning backout procedures if necessary. Agents run on the target machine
to perform actions on behalf of MKS Integrity as driven by the workflow. The
administrator or build engineer installs and configures the MKS Agent with the
appropriate security including user and group accounts that are authorized to
make necessary updates. Getting your builds and deploys more reliable,
including full traceability and the ability to seamlessly fallback (backout
changes) from a particular deploy, is core capability of any software
development lifecycle.
What's new in MKS Integrity 2007
Many improvements have been made in this release of the
product. In addition to the investment in next generation requirements
management along with the new optimistic locking paradigms discussed earlier, there
is also support for large data sets (through context-based filtering on fields
such as users, groups, projects, states and pick lists). Don't underestimate
the scalability features here; I have seen other workflow/change management
solutions initially be a huge success only to fall apart when the number of
items posted, or objects within the system, made navigating the tools
completely impossible. Users can now explicitly set queries, charts, reports
and dashboards as being their favorite, which allows for more logical
navigation and organization of information. Projects, users and groups can also
be set to be active or inactive to reduce the amount of information that is
readily viewable - while maintaining history as needed. All of these new and
improved features help in managing large amounts of data in an evolving
business.
Test Management Enhancements
The testing process can be extremely complex, with testers
needing to focus on not only identifying application regression, but also brand
new functionality, meeting the specifications, as well as meeting the business
needs at a practical level. MKS Integrity enhancements include tools to facilitate test
case authoring, automated test execution framework, as well as the overall test
management workflow. Test coverage reporting enables the QA manager to identify
test coverage gaps and to monitor the status and progress of the overall
testing effort. Test cases and scripts themselves can be placed under version
control which is obviously essential for any effective release management
process.
Viewsets and customizing
Viewsets (actually collections of views) are powerful
filters which allow your administrator to create customized filters which can
(optionally) be forced upon a particular user. This is an essential
administrative task, improved in this release of the product, which allows MKS
Integrity to make sense from each user role (e.g., developer, release manager,
tester, etc.). Users can also make modifications to their views which are then
persisted and visible the next time that the user logs back into the system.
Again, a back room feature like the scalability work, the control and
publishing aspect to viewsets allows you to really control and tailor the users'
experience with the product.
A few things haven't changed.
In my 2005 review of this product, I noted that the underlying
architecture of the product was J2EE built on an application server framework.
MKS Integrity continues to boast support for IBM's DB2, Oracle or Microsoft's
SQL Server. This product was built from the ground up with a consistent and
extensible framework instead of purchasing a few different software packages
and trying to integrate them together as many vendors do today. Please see my
2005 review for more on this solid framework.
Administration
Improvements
Admins will also cheer their improved management
of service packs including restoration of hot-fixes if necessary. Improved
repository diagnostics allows admins to get an early warning in the event of
hardware issues that might inadvertently result in repository corruption or
perhaps create serious performance bottlenecks. The better tools out there
today manage the repository as a database with full surveillance and response
procedures that allow the admin to keep the environment running smoothly and
efficiently.
Additional supported platforms
MKS continues to support the latest platforms and databases
including HP-UX 11i v3, RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.0 ES and the client is also
supported on Windows Vista, Fedora Core 6, Suse Linus Enterprise Desktop 10
with databases including DB2 9 Base+ (AIX, Win32, Linux & Solaris) and DB2
400 V5R4.
MKS Source Integrations include Borland JBuilder, Eclipse,
WebSpere Dev Studio, Sybase PowerBuilder 10.5 and IBM's Rational RAD, RSA and
RMS software modeler.
MKS Integrity has also supported integration with Mercury's Quality Center for some time now including
linking defects to changes in source code.
Deciding if MKS Integrity is right for you
MKS Integrity 2007 combines powerful project/portfolio
management, requirements tracking, process and workflow design and management,
source code management along with build (OpenMake), test and deploy. MKS
supports integration with Oracle/PeopleSoft and SAP
and process improvement frameworks, such as the very popular ITIL. This product
provides a complete ALM framework that helps senior management have visibility
into current project status and future project planning. The applications
development team benefits from an extensive workflow methodology which provides
clarity (and sanity) into the often exciting and turbulent software development
effort. If you need to manage large scale software development efforts, and you
want to get it right, then MKS Integrity 2007 should be on your short list of
products to consider in helping you manage the entire software development
effort.
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Requirements
Management (RM) Zone
is a microsite within the CM Crossroads community that provides
resources and information about software requirements definition, requirements
management, requirements based testing and requirements reuse.
The RM Zone is a valuable resource bringing together articles, research, tools,
events and other information that community members can leverage to improve
their requirements management practices and deliver software
applications that meet the needs of their businesses.
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