I’ve just released a video explaining how we’re using IBM UrbanCode Deploy to continuously upgrade the staging and production systems on Jazz.net. In the video, I explain the Jazz.net internal architecture, the different staging systems, and the process we use to upgrade the production systems. Finally, I demonstrate how we use UrbanCode Deploy to automate […]

Have you ever wondered if a build includes a fix? Perhaps you’re in QA and you want to ensure you’re testing the right build, or perhaps you’re a developer and you want to make sure that your changes made it into a build. Either way, Rational Team Concert makes it easy. Let’s look at how […]

This week we released CLM 4.0.6, the next version of Rational Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM). CLM 4.0.6 will be our first quarterly release for 2014 and represents the start of our second full year in continuous delivery mode. We’re off to a fast start, focusing on improvements in key areas including DevOps, consumability, cross platform […]

In my previous post on building robust teams, I mentioned the need to have some people in a team with an appetite for risk and some who are risk-averse. Some people take risks because they are too inexperienced to know better but some experienced people know that it’s important to take risks. NetFlix continuous delivery […]

The failure of “predict and control” When it comes to managing projects and teams, the natural inclination for many people is to try to predict and control everything while taking comfort in tools and technology and processes and practices. This happens frequently in software development despite the fact that other, far more mature, domains learned […]

Friction In a previous post about retrospectives and continuous improvement I described how we track “pain points” which are issues that block or hinder our ability to develop a specific development capability. Another way to think of pain points is that they are sources of friction. In physics, friction is a force that impedes movement. […]

This is the fifth installment in our blog series describing the transformation of our internal ALM development organization toward a Continuous Delivery model. The previous post was Planning & Execution from Prototype to Practice. In this series, we describe the motivations behind adoption of a Continuous Delivery model and the many challenges we faced as we […]

In a previous post Sreerupa Sen wrote about run teams and feature teams and how they are helping to make our continuous delivery successful. I want to expand on that in this post and talk a bit about the culture that enables such fluid organizational constructs to work successfully. In the Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) project […]

The ability of any team to execute with agility is predicated on a shared awareness of important team elements such as the team’s strategy, plans, and current status. A measure of shared awareness is easily gained when team members work alongside one another. You can’t help but notice what your teammate is doing when she […]

We test a lot.  The primary reason for this is because we have so much to test.  As you can imagine, a product as large as our Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution – with many millions of lines of code – requires a gargantuan test effort moving from release to release while maintaining the level […]