This week we released CLM 4.0.5, the next version of Rational Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM), and the latest quarterly release using our new continuous delivery model.

A continuous delivery kind of year

CLM 4.0.5 will be our fourth quarterly release this year, and we’ve heard positive feedback from several clients about the more rapid delivery of new capabilities and improved value. Internally we have made progress in the transformation to this model in areas such as reduced build time and increased automated test coverage. Certainly there is more to do, and we will continue to learn and improve as we head into 2014.

Strengthening the IBM DevOps solution

CLM is a key component of the IBM DevOps solution, and with CLM 4.0.5, we have added improvements in the release and deploy phases of the lifecycle. You can now continuously build and deploy your applications with Rational Team Concert Build and UrbanCode Deploy. The UrbanCode Deploy process design tool makes it easy to define the steps required to deploy a new version of an application. Rational Team Concert 4.0.5 Team Build supports a new, post-build deploy option that makes it easy to create a new component version for UrbanCode to upload and then deploy into a live environment.

Enhanced consumability and serviceability

Improving consumability has been a priority this year, and CLM 4.0.5 is no exception. Examples of this across the CLM products include:

1. Rational Team Concert (RTC) Planning Filters (see my work items). If you need to filter out the plan to see just the work items that are owned by you, new “Owned by me” and “Owned by Others” filters make it easy to stay focused on your plan items.
2. Bulk edit support for approvals and links in RTC. The Eclipse client now enables bulk edit support for approvals and links, making it easier to update multiple work items from a query result set at one time. You can now query on all link types and approvals as well as recent comments.
3. Quickly create a plan with multiple sprints-iterations in RTC. If you need to quickly create a new plan with multiple sprints each running for three weeks, followed by multiple endgame iterations of one week duration, you provide the start date and the duration of each type of iteration in weeks and the start date end dates are then generated automatically.
4. In RTC, get advanced SCM merge support so that it’s easier to back port a fix to multiple releases in any order.
5. Drag and drop in Rational Requirements Composer (RRC). It is now possible to use drag and drop operations for many different activities including:
   • Move and re-position information around within a module
   • Link between different requirements within a module and across the project
   • Display two modules side by side in different windows and drag and drop linking between them. Essential for high volume link creation
   • Copy and link operations to aid the analyst drawing high-level requirements into lower level specifications to decompose into further detail
6. In RRC, faster loading and scrolling of large modules will reduce the wait time to see further pages of information within modules.
7. Flawless accelerator key support in RRC. When using a tool for an extended period of time, keyboard accelerator keys increase user productivity. This release reviews and extends all accelerator keys to streamline analyst productivity.
8. Rational Quality Manager (RQM) improved workflow for approving test artifacts in bulk directly from a test plan thanks to new sections for test scripts, test suites, and test case results. A set of new process advisors for state transition are available as well.
9. RQM streamlined integration with Requirements Management tools, including the ability to link a test plan to a RRC module view.
10. Improved test categories in RQM provide advanced organization of test artifacts. You can now add multiple subcategories to a single category, and the category editor was redesigned to provide a more dynamic and complete way to manage categories.
11. Enhanced control over long-running test suites in RQM. You can now pause, resume, and completely stop test suite runs.
12. New restoration abilities in RQM allow you to restore deleted test artifacts in the Trash view.

On the serviceability front, CLM Server Monitoring (Tech Preview) is now installed by default. Delivered with CLM 4.0.4, this capability to monitor applications activities and resources for proactive notification of issues related to scalability, performance and availability is now installed by default and can be enabled through JMX by using a tool such as Jconsole.

In addition, we’ve added to the control over report execution time that was also introduced in CLM 4.0.4. Administrators now have the ability to optionally configure a maximum run duration for BIRT reports.

One other item added in the reporting area is the ability to extract, transform, and load (ETL) for membership and roles data. The project and team membership and roles data is now loaded into the data warehouse.

Managing projects and process

For administrators and project managers, the work is never done. With CLM 4.0.5, we have added enhancements to make life a little easier:

• Archiving and restoring process description data. Process description, category and practice element data can now be archived in order to prevent permanent loss.
• Selecting multiple administrators bulk actions for administrators, such as removals, that are made possible by being able to select multiple administrators when editing a project or team area.

New platform support

With each release we work to stay up-to-date to support the latest versions of browsers, operations systems, databases and so on. With CLM 4.0.5 we’ve added support for the following:

• Internet Explorer 10
• FireFox 24 ESR
• Windows Server 2012
• Traditional Websphere Application Server V8.5.5

To see all of what’s new, check out New and Noteworthy for each product: Rational Team Concert, Rational Quality Manager, Rational Requirements Composer, and Rational Software Architect Design Manager.

Thank you!

As 2013 draws to a close, the CLM team would like to offer a big THANK YOU to you, our clients. Your active involvement in our internal continuous delivery process has been instrumental in helping us make significant progress this year, and we look forward to working with you in 2014! Please continue to stay involved and let us know your ideas.

Phil Vogel, Program Director
CLM Product Management
pwvogel@us.ibm.com