This book is not a technical implementation manual but rather a bridge between the worlds of Agile practices and Configuration Management. As such, it can be read be either Agilists wanting to get a grip on configuration management, or configuration managers wanting to understand how Agile projects may be accommodated.

In places I myself yelling, ‘but this should be done on any project, not just Agile’, before recalling that the sole purpose of this book is to offer that bridge between CM and Agile. Much of the advice in the book is good advice on almost any project. The book is useful to any CM practitioner whether applying CM to Agile or not—simply replace the word ‘Agile’ with ‘good’ throughout and you won’t go far wrong.

The book presents two primers; one for CM, the other for Agile. These primers provide a whirlwind tour of each discipline in order to orient the reader to the material in the remainder of the book. Each primer is sufficient that the interested reader will not be lost in later material  while remaining brief enough that they do not dominate.

After these primer chapters Moreira discusses how CM and Agile values work together. This chapter should disabuse the reader of any notion that the two disciplines are in any way in conflict and reassure each side that the other has only the best interest of both at heart.

Chapter five discusses infrastructure in the context of Agile projects, highlighting practical issues such as short lead times between project initiation and the need for infrastructure to be in place to support development which will start much sooner than in non-Agile projects. Some practical advice is offered on delivering infrastructure and in reusing existing infrastructure.

Next, the specifics of CM implementation on Agile projects is discussed. Discussions about the implications of team coordination and locations are discussed along with potential difficulties and possible solutions when dealing with Agile teams that are near– or off–shored rather than collocated.

By far the largest chapter, chapter seven, is dedicated to adapting CM pratices for Agile. Each of the main CM functions (identify, control, report, and audit) are examined from the perspective of their impact on, and benefit to, an Agile project. Particular care is taken to point out where CM practices must be tailored to the Agile mindset in order to accommodate Agile practices. A great deal of the advice boils down to ‘keep it lean’ and ‘do nothing that does not add value’; tenets that apply universally, but are particularly important for Agile projects.

The final three chapters deal with the relationship between CM tools and Agile projects, tool selection, and the application of CM standards and frameworks to Agile projects. Chapters eight and ten are written by guest authors Damon Poole and Bob Aiello respectively. These three chapters cover a lot of ground already covered in the first seven chapters, but from a fresh perspective.

A book that every CM practitioner (and every Agilist) should read.

Blimey! It’s different! VERY different. In fact it’s a completely new way of working. I mean COMPLETELY! The only things that remains the same are that you’re handling video and it’s a non-linear editing tool.

There’s certainly plenty of professional’s complaining about Final Cut Pro X. Why? Complaints can be broadly split into two camps:

1. “Ew! It’s different. I don’t like it.”
2. “It does not support <insert favourite feature>, so I hate it.”

Okay, the first camp are immediately dismissed. Every new release of a product that attempts a significant overhaul faces opposition like this. People generally find the disjoint of learning a new way of working uncomfortable. Too bad. Such is the price of progress.

The second group are simply not going to be the early adopters. Look guys, Apple works this way with all their products. They release a product the will appeal to a large proportion of their customers, then they wait for all the complaints, then they add in those features that most people really need. Simple.

If you really need a feature that’s missing, keep using FCP 7. It’s not that difficult. FCP 7 was great yesterday, it will be great today. FCP X does not downgrade FCP 7′s functionality out of spite. If a feature is really needed (and if it’s technically possible) Apple will put it into FCP X over the next year or two. (Oh, and the the moron who said FCP X deleted his FCP 7, look for a folder under your applications folder. FCP X moves FCP 7 out of the way, it does not delete it.)

I’ve only been using FCP X for a few hours and, yes, the interface is, at the moment, a barrier to me because it’s so new. There are tons of features in FCP X I can see being real time savers (like automatically cataloguing clips, auto-synching clips, locking clip together on the timeline) and the new paradigm of a storyline makes perfect sense to me. It will take a few days messing about to get used to it all, but I’m confident it will be a great fit for me in the long run.

If you’re a professional working in a broader workflow then, sure, you’ll not want FCP X. It does not export XML (so passing your work too and fro through a complex workflow is out), nor can it import clips using an EDL. Nor can it open FCP 7 projects. All of this is probably because FCP X takes such a different approach to controlling the timeline that it may not be possible.

So, what are Apple up to?

As usual I think that many reviewers are missing the point. The number of professional users of FCP who need these features is vanishingly small compared with the actual, or potential, user base who want a professional editing tool and work alone or in a small team. All those Indie film producers, YouTube/Vimeo/etc. producers. All those small companies (like me) who do their own video work. The list goes on and on. Apple are not here to serve a minority, they’re looking at the bigger picture.

Sure, they will lose professional editors unless they find a way to fill some of the perceived gaps in the next 12-18 months. But let’s face it, many of those whining about FCP X fall into category one above, and of those that fall into category two most will continue using FCP 7 until either a) it gets so long in the tooth they are forced to move, or b) FCP X becomes a viable upgrade for them. What they will NOT do (unless they’re idiots) is immediately start moving their workflow to Premiere or Avid just to spite Apple.

So, hit or miss?

I little from column A, a little from column B. For me, I think FCP X will be perfect once I get my head around this new interface. The speed improvements are awesome, the new features and automation are great for someone in my position, and overall I like the storyline idea. FCP X is going to make my life much easier. On the other hand, it does mean taking time to retrain myself, and no doubt I will find some things I dislike along the way, but these are the price of progress.

IBM Rational ClearCase 7.0: Master the Tools that Monitor, Analyze, and Manage Software Configurations

by Marc Girod and Tatania Shpichko

Published by PACKT Publishing

ISBN 978-1-849680-12-7

I am reviewing the eBook (PDF download) version of the book.

Reading this book will not make you a ClearCase administrator, or user for that matter. It is mainly a manifesto for the authors’ views on why base ClearCase is the SCM tool and how you should be using it.

This book is part technical presentation, part dogmatic manifesto. On the one hand the authors have evidently found a method of using ClearCase that works for them, on  the other they are fanatical in their approach, brooking no descent from their chosen methodology. Any other approach to SCM or use of ClearCase is simply wrong; a position repeatedly and unambiguously emphasised throughout the book.

This is not an easy book to read. Not because the subject matter is particularly sophisticated but because the prose is often difficult to decode. Throughout the book you will encounter things like the following two samples (chosen pretty much at random):

The opacity of tools, as well as that of sources, is of course only a matter of viewpoint: the boundaries are only surfaces of separation between realms of distinct coherence.

Attributes are the preferred alternative to comments. They are preferred because their typing allows to avoid depending on parsing informal text.

Unfortunately this abstruse prose style means the authors’ ideas are often obscured. They really make the reader work hard to figure out what is being said. The book would, in short, have benefit immensely from being professionally edited by a native English speaker.

Another feature that I would have found immensely helpful would be a few well chosen diagrams. The authors are big advocates of the command line, but extending this bias into a book intended to educate, leaves readers with the additional cognitive task of imaging many of the situations based on text output where a simple diagram would make everything immediately obvious. Imagining the situation being described is not always a simple task when the output is from unfamiliar tools (and given the authors make extensive use of some Perl utilities there is plenty for even existing ClearCase users to find unfamiliar).

That said, the book is not without merit and does contain some interesting ideas (if only one takes the time to wade through the authors’ style).

The book does contain plenty of examples and these are used to discuss the application of the authors’ approach. The authors’ evidently use the approach that they advocate, so this is no theoretical approach but one that obviously works for them.

So, who would benefit from reading this book? With the caveat that any serious practitioner should read everything they can: if you want to use base ClearCase (no UCM, the authors are very dismissive of this innovation) and you are content to follow the prescriptions of the author, then this book may be of value to you.

If you are looking for a book that will teach you about ClearCase or a book showing anything other than base ClearCase, then you will have to look elsewhere. Multisite is dealt with, but mostly to highlight the difficulties in using it—this in itself is quite useful information.

The authors principal concern is with the leveraging of ClearCase’s derived objects and ClearMake system to make builds more efficient (although there is nodding acceptance that the advantages are less apparent when using systems such a Java with its compiler’s built in dependency management).

I can see some benefits to the authors’ derived object maintenance approach. However, there are many simpler, and better, ways to improve build reliability and performance (proper system decomposition and leveraging parallel builds, for example). Anyway, this is a review of the book, not a critique of the approach, so I shall defer my observations on the correctness of the authors assertions about the superiority of managing derived objects and simply say that the book contained no substantial argument that I found persuasive in favour of their approach (although it does contain much assertion of the superiority of the approach).

The approach to version control described in the book is fundamentally quite simple, but the explaination makes this simple system appear more complex than necessary. In summary, the proposed approach is, in essence, branch per change. The “novel” feature, according to the authors’, is that they promote the idea that there is no need to merge changes back into an integration branch, preferring instead to use labels to pick up versions from the extant fix branches. I often found myself having difficulty seeing the real benefits of this system, or indeed any significant benefit of the system over more widely used approached. The main benefit seems to be that this approach maintains identities within ClearCase, making the authors derived object maintenance objective feasible.

The authors attempt to dismiss alternative approaches (such as use of integration branches), but I found their explanations of the weaknesses in these approaches seemed most often to be based on misunderstandings of the mechanics of these alternative approaches rather than fundamental problems. (Although I defer to their superior knowledge of ClearCase’s shortcomings when they make specific comments on the problems with these methods when using ClearCase.) Perhaps I misunderstood their case. It was honestly difficult to tell sometimes simply because of the writing style and dismissive tone in some sections.

This is not a book with wide appeal, and this may explain the high price. Is it worth the £20.39 (eBook price), £30.59 (printed book price)?

At about 320 pages (excluding the index and front-matter) the book is brief enough to read comfortably on a wet Sunday. Unless you are specifically looking for a prescriptive method of applying base ClearCase to your organisation I would have to say, ‘no, this book is not worth the purchase price’. There is simply not sufficient content of general interest to the SCM practitioner, or even of interest to those looking for a general ClearCase book.

In the course of helping a client look for tools to support their development process I recalled that a couple of years ago I looked briefly at JIRA when building a change control system for another client. So, I suggested we look at JIRA as a possible tool for this new system.

Having looked around the JIRA site I noticed that Atlassian had also taken FishEye (a tool I had used before for providing viewing and analysis tools on repositories) into their stable. And they also support a whole suite of integrated tools that can be used individually or together.

I suggested we take a closer look. So, we set about creating a very simple demonstration of the tools.

I have to say, ‘I’m impressed’.

These are great looking, well integrated, easy to use, easy to set up and very competitively priced tools. Based on a couple of months playing around with them, I’d have absolutely no difficulty recommending them to organisations of almost any size—certainly they should be on your list of tools to look at.

Not only are the tools themselves very flexible and easy to configure but the company seems very keen to hear from their customers. They have open beta programmes and actively encourage users to take part in product development (they really do want to know what their customers want). They also provide really low cost licenses; up to 90 days evaluation licenses and then for small teams (or individuals) they offer 10 user licenses for $10. Seriously! This is a brilliant move. It means freelance consultants (such as your’s truly) can actually use their tools and develop for them, without needing to remortgage the house to obtain licenses. (The tools also don’t require a massive hardware commitment—in fact I’m running a system on a Linux virtual machine on my Mac Pro  and it works great for development and creating documentation/training material.)

Oh, and if you’re a non-profit or open source organisation they will let you have unlimited licenses for free! Genius.

Can’t be bothered with all that setup? Atlassian offer a hosted solution for many of their tools too. (Although I can’t comment on these as I have not tried them, but if they’re anything like as good as what I have seen so far, they’re probably worth looking at if you want a hosted solution.)

The price apart, the tools really are very good. And if they don’t do exactly what you want you can always write your own extensions. Atlassian publish comprehensive developer information and the tools all communicate through open web interfaces and all support a plugin architecture (which I understand Atlassian are working hard to make simpler to use).

Another promising sign is that Atlassian ‘eat their own dog food’. They user all their own tools internally and pride themselves on being the guinea pigs for all their product development. Their own website and online documentation is all run through their own products.

Even better! Atlassian let their product speak for itself. No annoying salespeople calling, no pressure to come along and ‘do a demo’. They just provide you with a really simple way to download their product, get an evaluation license, and then let the product do the selling (no kidding I had downloaded, installed and licensed JIRA in about ten minutes—it took about a day to install, license and integrate the entire suite). Brilliant! [Note to all vendors: if you're product is good then let it speak for you. If you're product needs to be explained, then make it better, provide good online documentation, and provide help when it's requested. I understand that some customer like a demo, but many just want to try out your product for themselves. After all, if it can't be setup and used by their own staff, what hope is there for the future? They just end up being highly dependent on your consulting services. Oh. I think I get it now.]

If, as seems likely, the client goes ahead with this solution I’ll be sure to report back on how these products perform under real life conditions, but for now, go take a look.

Review in a Nutshell

I maintain that this is still one of the best books written on the subject.

Review in Detail

As I said in the opening remark, this book was, for me, quite literally life changing. I read this book while working as a software engineer in the mid-80′s. Why? Partly from curiosity, but also because the team I was working on were looking to improve control on the product as we migrated from an old PDP-11 to a new MicroVAX.

That was my motivation, so should you seek out a copy and read it?

Who is it aimed at?

The book is aimed at a non-technical audience unfamiliar with software configuration management (SCM). This does not mean there is no value in reading the book if you are technically inclined or already familiar with configuration management. Far from it. I enjoyed rereading it recently and, even though it has been over twenty years since I first stumbled across this book in the underused library where I worked, I enjoyed being reminded of the fundamentals (with a twinge of nostalgia admittedly).

The book’s aim is to lay out the core principles of SCM and places them in the context of system development. This it does effectively. If you are looking for a step-by-step implementation guide then this is not the book for you.

Is it well written?

Bersoff, Henderson and Siegel write in a relaxed, semi-formal style that is easy to read. On occasion the walked through examples become a little laboured, but this may be a consequence of my familiarity with the subject. People reading the book early in their configuration management careers will find the detail helpful.

Does it cover the subject matter?

The book is divided into eight chapters:

• Chapter 1: The Problem of Software

  Where we are introduced to the nature of software and the problem to be solved.

• Chapter 2: Managing the System Development

  Configuration management is put into context within the system development lifecycle.

• Chapter 3: Attaining and Maintaining Product Integrity

  Lays the foundation for implementing configuration management.

• Chapter 4: Configuration Identification

  Explains the identification problem and lays out it solution within the SCM framework.

• Chapter 5: Configuration Control

  Explains the problem of change control and then proceeds to explain its implementation in the context of the configuration management plan.

• Chapter 6: Configuration Auditing

  Explains the problem that auditing addresses. Expands on the auditing principles and demonstrates them with a case study.

• Chapter 7: Configuration Status Accounting

  Explains the problem that status accounting addresses and the principles on which it is founded.

• Chapter 8: Epilogue

  Ties up loose ends and discusses the consequences of implementing configuration management.

These eight chapters cover all that matters in configuration management and places it into the wider system development context well.

The material discusses at length the documentation used in configuration management and some of this is a little dated. There is, for example, much emphasis on manual processing and little on automation. This is entirely forgivable given the paucity of supporting applications at the time the book was written.

The development methodology described in the book is, as one might expect of a book written some thirty years ago, based on a more traditional waterfall model. This should not, however, deter you from reading this book. The core principles remain sound and are easily adapted to any development methodology.

Despite the lack of coverage for support applications (such as change control systems or even version control systems) the principles are described well and almost all of the manual processes described are relevant to modern implementations of SCM even though we tend to rely more on databases, rather than manual paper records, to hold and process information.

What is missing?

Automation and the use of modern applications to control the SCM process are not covered for the obvious reason that they were less common in the late 70′s and early 80′s when this book was written.

This book, quite rightly in my opinion, is ‘bare metal’ SCM. There is no discussion of other lifecycle disciplines beyond that required to place SCM in the context of the system development processes.

While the book discusses some implementation issues it is not a guide to implementation. As such there is no implementation plan beyond a brief discussion of the configuration management plan.

Standards are not discussed, but any standards extant in the early 80′s would be superseded by now so this is no great loss.

Would I but it now?

So, would I buy this book now, knowing what I do?

Yes! Absolutely and without reservation. (In fact I did. The copy I recently re-read was obtained only six months ago from a second hand book seller on Amazon for the princely sum of fifteen of your English pounds sterling.)

Review in a Nutshell

No.

Review in detail

This is a travesty. Described under the product description as:

Learn Configuration and CMDB management the right way with this unique, thoroughly modern guide to today’s Configuration Management challenges and opportunities. Written by an in-the-trenches practitioner, this book goes beyond concepts and definitions to challenge prevalent thinking about the field and provide a step-by-step guide to implementing a successful CMDB strategy. Discover how to move beyond mainstream analysis, why qualitative data should be your focus, and more insights and techniques that will help you develop a customer-centric mindset without sacrificing your company’s bottom line. You have more information at hand about your Configuration and its business environment than ever before. But are you using it to “out-think” your rivals? If not, you may be missing out on a potent competitive tool.

This, and I use the term loosely, book is little more than a set of Powerpoint slides with some annotations. There are some extended notes in the second half of the book, but these do little more than reiterate ITIL v3. This is, without doubt, the worst book I have read to date (not just the worst book on the CMDB, the worst period). At £15 ($30) this book is massively overpriced.

This book looks to me as if it has been written as an accompaniment to a training course, not as a standalone book.