IBM and MKS solutions are neatly outfitted to manage enterprise-level SCM

When it comes to software projects, maintaining productivity and software quality demands a tightly managed development and deployment process. Enterprise IT is turning to SCM (software configuration management) solutions either to boost efficiencies locally or to closely manage offshore projects.

Companies exploring SCM solutions should add IBM’s Rational ClearCase Change Management Solution 6.0 and MKS’s Integrity Solution 4.6 to their short list of candidates. During my tests, both products proved well-matched and well-prepared to tackle the rigors of process-centric SCM.

Both compare favorably to other SCM solutions, such as Merant Professionaland Serena’s TeamTrack, although IBM and MKS have higher price tags to go along with the power, flexibility, and functionality they offer.

For my tests, I executed two proof-of-concept projects. One examined how well the two products increased development efficiencies for a team in a localized medical facility.

The second project gauged how well the two solutions tackled the requirements of a fictitious insurance company whose software development work occurred both stateside and offshore. Both solutions are ideal in enterprise settings as well as within distributed multisite development projects. IBM edged out MKS ever so slightly due only to its tight and intuitive IDE integration and ease of setup. You may yield different results depending on your needs.

While setting up my testbed, I found that the MKS solution took slightly longer to implement initially than did the IBM product, although I didn’t run into any major hurdles.

Both MKS and IBM offer out-of-the box software change processes that will work for many companies. Furthermore, each solution offers point-and-click tools to allow administrators or project leads to tweak the supplied process workflows or to generate entirely new workflows to mirror the specific needs of the organization.

The Integrity Solution workflow tools made it very easy to change the provided workflows for the medical team and to create new workflows for the insurance development teams. I enjoyed equal success when working with the ClearCase workflow tools.

Both IBM and MKS offer a role-based approach to process management so that interfaces, tasks, and actions are specific to a given user role on the project team. For example, defect-related tasks were routed to developers whereas build tasks within the workflow were routed to the release management engineers. The role-based approach keeps teams focused on the tasks they must execute to rapidly complete a development cycle.

ClearCase and Integrity Solution also both excel at alerting team members to critical issues that can affect the development cycle as well as providing useful reporting data. For example, I was able to configure ClearCase to send e-mail alerts to managers should a defect not be addressed within the time estimated for the fix. Furthermore, I used ClearCase’s query as well as charting facilities and Integrity Solution’s Report Wizard to generate a variety of reports — some detailed to reflect outstanding actions for engineers and others to gain insight into the overall status of the project.