Zac's Blogon software…

I am a People over Process person.  Once we have the right people in place it is essential to craft a process which empowers our team to produce to their absolute full potential; anything less and we waste time and money.

I have decided to wire up a software development process using some new tools with the goal of increasing my own efficiency for consulting projects and hobby projects.  The first step is to choose some tools;  I will start with these three:

TargetProcess for User Stories

I chose TargetProcess after looking at the following screenshot:

This is how I want to track my project regardless of whether I choose to embrace pure Kanban.  TargetProcess is designed for flexibility.

TeamCity for Builds

Automated builds are a must and I want mine to look like this:

Charisma for Bug Tracking

I chose Charisma after looking at the following screenshot:

A bug tracker that puts search and tagging first is very intriguing.

Extensibility and interoperability were also major factors in the choices above because we are going to create user stories and bugs using two different applications, each tuned to its specific audience.

Future Posts in this Series:

• Explore TeamCity
• Explore TargetProcess
• Explore Charisma
• Development Process Overview\Design
• Integrating Charisma with TargetProcess
• Integrating Charisma with TeamCity
• Case Studies
• Lessons Learned

I have been addicted to Continuous Integration for the last five years.  The first question I ask when I start a new project is “What does your build look like?”  If the answer doesn’t include the words fully automated or single button press I am extremely disappointed.  It’s really almost a physical reaction; I want nothing to do with any software project that doesn’t rely on an automated build.  I can’t help it of course but honestly, the tools are out there and freely available; there is no excuse at this point.

So all of my projects have automated builds.  I used CruiseControl.NET for many years with much satisfaction.  Over time I built up a generic NAnt build script that all my projects relied on.  This script automated the works; unit testing, code coverage, static analysis, coding standards checking, etc.  I haven’t looked at it in a long time but I opened it today…

it’s 1500 lines of XML!!!  For years it has provided bang for the buck because I have used it in over 20 projects but man, 1500 lines of XML is not something you ever want to look at.

I opened this script because I need to port one of my old CruiseControl.NET builds to JetBrains TeamCity 4.5.  My initial thought was that I would simply configure TeamCity to use the NAnt Build Runner to kick off targets in my existing script much like CruiseControl.

It didn’t take long to realize that TeamCity is too awesome for my monster script.  In one hour I was able to completely throw away my 1500 lines and get my project building and unit tested in TeamCity with zero lines of script.  Zero lines!

I love to see how much progress is being made in continuous integration tooling.  I will post shortly about what an incredible piece of software JetBrains TeamCity 4.5 is.