Build and Deployment Management - September 2008
Build and Deployment management is a critical function that is sometimes quite challenging to implement. But, of course, that's exactly why you came here for the best practices that work in the real world. Robert Cowham, Steve Berczuk and Brad Appleton start us off by explaining Agile Build and how Deployment is King! Joe Farah takes us to the next generation of build engineering while Mayank Gupta tells us about Continuous Integration and Enterprise Build Automation. Ben Weatherall helps us find the deeper meaning of Deployment while Michael Sayko tells us all about Using a Commercial Tool to Automate a Build and Deployment Process. Of course, I couldn't resist explaining about designing cockpit controls in a large airplane! (Yeah, this was still very much build and deploy related.)
I also want to announce that we have been making some exciting - behind the scenes - improvements on our website. Many of our loyal readers know that we made some major changes to support multimedia. Now we are starting to go back and iterate through some cool usage improvements (yeah we actually do Agile ourselves!). For example, the registration page now sports an auto-fill function - so please go ahead and update your profile information. We pledge to keep working to improve your experience with many more improvements to come. So, please drop me a line and let me know how we can improve your experience in using CM Crossroads!
Bob Aiello
Editor in Chief
CM Crossroads
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Behaviorally Speaking - Build and Deployment Management
Build, Release and Deployment Management is very much like designing the controls in the cockpit of a large airplane. Everyone understands the importance of creating complex airplane controls that are easy to understand and enable the pilot to make split second decisions with perfect accuracy. The field of ergonomics focuses on designing equipment, including complex controls that fit the operator perfectly, enabling continuous operation with few or no mistakes. We expect pilots to always underst...
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Breaking News; Build Still Important, but Deployment is King!
Build and Deployment
are subjects which are dear to our hearts and we have written quite a lot about
them over the years. While the details may change from year to year as
technology evolves, the underlying principles remain the same.
Regarding building, we
are going to take the opportunity to provide a guide to some of our previous
articles which still hold true.
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Finding meaning in your Build and Deploy Process
This month's topic, Build and Deployment Management, fits in
with several of the previous topics (specifically Minimizing the Requirements GIGO
Factor, CM Tool Chains & Their Management and Release Management) to cover
most of the CM Life Cycle stages. Once again, let's define some terms:
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 | Continuous Integration and Enterprise Build Automation
How often have you or one of your teammates checked the source code into the code library which then instantly triggered an automated build? How many times did this instant build succeed? Do you have an automated build and release system that ensures your software is built in the same way each and every time? Are deployments to staging environments entirely automated and executed with a single click? While reviewing a defect in a production release, are you able to backtrack through the source ...
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 | Using a Commercial Tool to Automate a Build and Deployment Process
Your responsibility is to "design
and build tools to run and monitor an optimized, parallel, nightly and
on-demand build and deploy system across multiple development branches in
multiple environments." How will you tackle this challenge? Will you create
tools from scratch or will you construct a comprehensive system by customizing
an existing framework?...
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 | CM: THE NEXT GENERATION of Build Management
The very
first generation of CM tools dealt with support for build operations. Typically, this was through the inclusion of
a facility such as a Make utility, and perhaps some tools to help build Make
files. But as we move into the next
generation of CM tools, it is also more important to be able to manage the
builds at an information level. Build
Management moves from the earlier build operation support and tagging
functions, to wider traceability and better information accessibility....
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 | Release Management, the Super Discipline
Have you ever wondered what is the best approach to establish the relationship and the placement of the tasks of the various software disciplines? Have the project managers, developers, and testers been confused because they generally know what CM is but are not clear where CM tasks should occur in a project release lifecycle and how they relate to other disciplines? ...
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