Software Development Process Automation

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mercuryskin

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Hi Everyone,

I am involved with Software Development Process Implementation, not business process management (BPM).

Most (actually all) of the companies I have assisted with in process implementation in SA have their processes either sitting in documents or less than half of those processes are automated.

I have done a lot researching on the internet and with clients to find out if there is a tool available in SA that can fully automate the entire software development life cycle model? This SLDC should include
* Project Management + PM activities
* Requirements Definition + RD activities
* Technical Solutions + TS activities
* Product Integration + PI activities
* Quality Assurance + QA activities

But no-one seems to know of a Software Development Process tool/product?
 
It worries me a bit when you mention "Automating" the SDLC. I hope you are referring to using software tools to integrate the process.
Some methodologies work well using software to document and integrate this process, others dont.
If you want tools for this, they are available, however there are only a couple of proper suites that cross the entire SDLC in an integrated manner.
IBM Rational is the grand daddy of this. There is nothing else that comes close to the sort of integration when cutting cross SDLC
and the newer (but more buggy) Team Concert.
However, it is a bag of hurt if you are not familiar with it. And is not economical unless you have a fairly decent number of developers (I would say 100 at least) in your company
 
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There is some fuzziness when it comes to defining automation within an SDLC process.

Probably best look at products like IBM's Rational Rose family - as long as you have pretty deep pockets !

OTOH Microsoft's Team System (with the architect components + maybe third-party add-ons) may well suffice.

My feeling is that with the greater acceptance of Agile techniques the more formalised SDLC is becoming less important ....
 
Hi JStrike, integrating the processes is exactly what I mean.
The RTC has a download trail which I will look into.
I used to work with an in-house tool that was developed to automate internal processes, however as soon as the main developer left no-one had the time nor interest in upkeeping the tool. This tool worked, but there were challenges that came with it.
I still believe though that tools of this nature can be simplified, with simplicity it creates the interest :-)
 
mercuryskin, RTC is quite nice. Quiet flexible as well, without the price of the whole Rational suite. However, it isn't as complete, but could well fit your purposes better.

rrh : I wouldn't recommend Team System at all. It barely covers 1 or 2 components in the SDLC. If, however, as you say you get some other software to work in conjunction with it, it could get start becoming a solution. Enterprise Architect could provide some of the gaps, but requirements and testing are still left out. And integration between the apps is still a question mark
 
JStrike said:
mercuryskin, RTC is quite nice. Quiet flexible as well, without the price of the whole Rational suite. However, it isn't as complete, but could well fit your purposes better.

rrh : I wouldn't recommend Team System at all. It barely covers 1 or 2 components in the SDLC. If, however, as you say you get some other software to work in conjunction with it, it could get start becoming a solution. Enterprise Architect could provide some of the gaps, but requirements and testing are still left out. And integration between the apps is still a question mark
Click to expand...

@TStrike: We are looking at TFS mainly 'cos it is now free with MSDN. The overall control of the development phases - including testing - appears to be on the up-and-up, with a number of people leaving SVN-only to move to TFS with source control + bug reporting + continuous integration, etc.

I have never used SharePoint to any great extent, so using SharePoint to control project documentation is an unknown to me: my cynical side says 'Oh yeah ?'

I must admit to not being a fan of EA, considering it to be mainly a tool for drawing pictures for fans of the waterfall ... :)

I prefer the iterative delivery approach of Agile: my belief is that the design flaws of a product only show once the users start actively using a product for their day-to-day work.
 
rrh said:
@TStrike: We are looking at TFS mainly 'cos it is now free with MSDN. The overall control of the development phases - including testing - appears to be on the up-and-up, with a number of people leaving SVN-only to move to TFS with source control + bug reporting + continuous integration, etc.

I have never used SharePoint to any great extent, so using SharePoint to control project documentation is an unknown to me: my cynical side says 'Oh yeah ?'

I must admit to not being a fan of EA, considering it to be mainly a tool for drawing pictures for fans of the waterfall ... :)

I prefer the iterative delivery approach of Agile: my belief is that the design flaws of a product only show once the users start actively using a product for their day-to-day work.
Click to expand...

I too prefer agile. But if you do use agile methodology, Team System comes up even shorter. Rational is pretty much the only suite that can be customized to use agile processes such as RUP (or OpenUP, etc).
That being said, integration suites aren't really necessary for Agile. In fact, I believe they hamper them.

As far as Team System goes for source control + bug reporting + continuous integration. It does a good job for source control and basic bug tracking. What Rational ReqPro, Rational ClearQuest, Rational Functional Tester and Rational Manual Tester do is not even related to that. They handle the integration across the SDLC. Bug Tracking + Source Control + CI is a given.

That all being said, I detest Rational :-)
However, there is nothing that comes even remotely close to it.
PS, modeling is part of agile too :-)

mercuryskin, JIRA is just a bug tracking tool. However, you might be able to get it to integrate with other tools
 
JStrike said:
I too prefer agile. But if you do use agile methodology, Team System comes up even shorter. Rational is pretty much the only suite that can be customized to use agile processes such as RUP (or OpenUP, etc).
That being said, integration suites aren't really necessary for Agile. In fact, I believe they hamper them.

As far as Team System goes for source control + bug reporting + continuous integration. It does a good job for source control and basic bug tracking. What Rational ReqPro, Rational ClearQuest, Rational Functional Tester and Rational Manual Tester do is not even related to that. They handle the integration across the SDLC. Bug Tracking + Source Control + CI is a given.

That all being said, I detest Rational :-)
However, there is nothing that comes even remotely close to it.
PS, modeling is part of agile too :-)

mercuryskin, JIRA is just a bug tracking tool. However, you might be able to get it to integrate with other tools
Click to expand...

I was around when Grady first started Rational, though haven't actually worked with the full Rational suite.

I agree with you that modelling is part of agile. That said, I have been involved in projects where the requirements gathering phase [alone] was +2 years i.e. the requirements were out-of-date before coding started, so I suppose that it would be more accurate to say that I prefer coding + iterative releases to analysis paralysis ... :)
 
rrh said:
I was around when Grady first started Rational, though haven't actually worked with the full Rational suite.

I agree with you that modelling is part of agile. That said, I have been involved in projects where the requirements gathering phase [alone] was +2 years i.e. the requirements were out-of-date before coding started, so I suppose that it would be more accurate to say that I prefer coding + iterative releases to analysis paralysis ... :)
Click to expand...

TWO YEARS - Shoot that is a long time :-)
@ JStrike, I had a look at the inforamation around JIRA and yes it won't be suitable.

We had one senario where one Exec wanted to implement Rantional and the other Exec wanted to implement Boland, for sometime they couldn't see eye to eye...
 
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