Agile Software Development with Electric Cloud
Solving Agile Development Challenges
Two of the core principles of agile development are: "deliver working code frequently" and "working software is the primary measure of progress." More and more teams, from ISVs to enterprise IT groups, are recognizing the quality and productivity benefits of integrating early and often. Whether you want to just build and test more frequently or implement a comprehensive agile process, you'll need to ensure that your build and test process is:
- fast (preferably under 30 minutes total)
- automated (not requiring manual intervention)
- reliable (broken builds are the enemy of an agile approach)
Addressing the build-test-deploy process is one of the best first steps toward an agile development model.
Read about how BioWare, a studio of Electronic Arts, used ElectricCommander and ElectricAccelerator to implement preflight builds and tests in support of Continuous Integration. Or view a demonstration of ElectricCommander and Perforce integrated to automate a seamless Continuous Integration process.
| Agile Development Challenge |
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Impact | |
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Electric Cloud Solution |
| Builds require manual intervention | |
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Integrating often will overwhelm a manual build process | |
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Automate build and release processes
Integrate with existing SCM tools to enable Continuous Integration |
| Slow build cycle (whether long individual builds or a large number of build targets) | |
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Long builds limit the number of iterations possible in a day
Builds longer than ~30 minutes rule out Continuous Integration |
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Run jobs or individual steps in parallel across multiple servers to speed builds as much as 20x |
| Developers introducing errors during integration or production builds | |
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If developers can't do preflight builds and tests on all targets/platforms prior to check-in, Continuous Integration can turn into Continuously Broken Builds | |
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Provide shared, secure access to production-class build and release resources from anywhere
Use ElectricCommander to run push-button preflight builds and tests, even without leaving the IDE |
