Press info to Intland Software's recent launch of codeBeamer 5.5, the agile ALM solution for software development and project management

1. PRESS RELEASE
CONTACT INFORMATION
Intland Software GmbH
Gropiusplatz 10
70563 Stuttgart / Germany
Phone: 0049-711-67400-677 Press contact : Dagmar Bisky-Groh
Fax: 0049-711-67400-686 Mail: dagmar.bisky-groh@intland.com
Web: www.intland.com
codeBeamer 5.5 Released: Agile ALM with Traceability
We are pleased to announce the general availability of codeBeamer 5.5, the latest version of our
Agile Application Lifecycle Management Solution.
Release Overview
One of the fundamental problems we addressed in codeBeamer version 5.5 is extracting more
knowledge out of the information available in your codeBeamer system, thus supporting more
informed decisions. We provide the following tools for that: visualizing current project state and project
health using realtime charts, following project events via activity streams and monitoring project
progress with fast milestone status reports.
Cross-project Release Management helps to track the realtime state of the issues to be completed in
your upcoming and completed milestones with an ease.
Baselining, which makes codeBeamer the only ALM product with this capability, is a unique
feature to take, maintain, analyze and compare snapshots of your digital content (documents and wiki
pages).
Version 5.5 introduces support for the two most practiced agile methodologies, Scrum and Kanban.
This functionality is provided optionally in any codeBeamer issue tracker.
codeBeamer 5.5 is also a major step forward in terms of integrating ALM with the best-of-breed
software tools available on the market. Most notably, codeBeamer now supports Microsoft Project,
the de-facto Project Management tool, HP Quality Center, one of the most widely used Test
Management software, and Mac OS X, Apple's popular operating system.
Milestone- / Version- / Release Management
Release management is probably one of the most sought-after new features in 5.5. (Note: the
notions "version", "milestone" and "release" are used interchangeably here.)
Here is how it works, in a nutshell.
Project versions are modeled as configuration items, utilizing the extremely powerful Configuration
Management Database features in codeBeamer. Being first-class citizens in the CMDB, versions
themselves are very powerful entities: they have their own customizable properties, their own
lifecycles, and even their own customizable workflows!
When you have your versions in place, you can associate your issues with any number of versions,
pointing their "Target Version" fields to the versions in which you are going to address them. Then,
codeBeamer provides you a super-fast view on the current state of your versions (both open and
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2. released), displaying how many open and close issues you have and how many days left until the
planned release date. Versions can be expanded to see the exact list of outstanding and completed
issues, with their details.
Live demo: codeBeamer Roadmap
Wiki dashboards: super-flexible birds-eye views on anything
To extract more valuable information from your projects and to provide fast graphical overviews on
them, 5.5 introduces a large set of highly intelligent wiki plugins. Using these, you can build custom
dashboards either in project pages, in tracker wiki pages or in personal wiki pages. As the
plugins support a rich set of parameters, you can easily narrow down your view on specific projects,
specific trackers, specific tags, or on a certain time period.
Some notable wiki dashboard plugins:
• Activity streams
• Project activity changing over time
• Number of documents, wiki pages, issues changing over time
• Number of commits changing over time
• Issue counts by various fields (status, assignee, etc.)
• Source code statistics (file counts, file sizes, LOC, etc.)
• List of issues I'm currently working on
Live demo: codeBeamer support trackers
Baselining: inexpensive snapshots of wiki and document content
Baseslines in codeBeamer capture the state of your digital content in a moment, pretty much
like tags mark a particular state of the source code in a Version Control System.
When you create a new named baseline, a snapshot of your wiki pages, documents, comments and
attachments is saved. In the future, you can "go back in time" and browse any earlier baseline, to see
how that content looked in that snapshot. Baselines can also be compared to find out what content has
been changed between two snapshots, when exactly and by whom.
Important note: baselines are not simply storage-wasting physical copies of content. They are rather
references to the current versions of the content in the given moment.
Baselines are extremely useful for audit purposes, including deviation against a previous baseline,
certification for an approval, comparison to another baseline, maintaining wiki pages for multiple
product releases, or all of these. Read more about the applications of baselining in Wikipedia.
ScrumWizard: going Agile with codeBeamer
ScrumWizard is a new extension for codeBeamer, that enables teams to go agile, by adding Scrum
and Kanban functionality to codeBeamer.
ScrumWizard with codeBeamer combines Scrum and Kanban based project execution with Agile
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). ScrumWizard is very flexible: Scrum, Kanban, waterfall,
or hybrid processes can be optionally used in any project.
ScrumWizard introduces additional value to the codeBeamer platform, leveraging its traceability,
security, visibility, and collaboration capabilities. This unique blend of the two worlds results in
incomparable productivity and simplified administration.
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3. In order to provide Distributed Version Control for distributed agile teams, CodeBeamer integrates
with the Git, Mercurial, Subversion and CVS version control systems. Developers can work fully
distributed or fully centralized, whichever is right for them.
• No-integration: ScrumWizard is a codeBeamer plugin, and leverages the codeBeamer ALM
platform's trackers and data repository.
• No-installation: ScrumWizard provides web based AJAXy user interface that runs in any
modern web browser.
• No-administration: ScrumWizard leverages codeBeamer's fine-grained security model, with
its role and group based access control and administration.
Feature highlights:
• Product backlog plan
• Sprint plan
• Release plan
• Kanban for sprint daily meeting and task update
• Realtime charts and tables to visualize the current project state
ScrumWizard is a plugin developed by ESAST, Intland's partner in the Taiwan region. ScrumWizard
will be available for public download in 2010 December.
For more details, please see the ScrumWizard screenshot tour or watch the quick overview video.
Improved experience through user-centered design
After the long years of focusing on problems, developing their solutions, and not paying too much
attention to the actual user experience, we realize that for our users, ultimately, "interface is the
product".
Currently we are increasing our efforts on making the interactions with codeBeamer not only
efficient, but also a pleasant experience. We are going to gradually introduce a minimalistic,
transparent, non-intrusive look, that gets out of users' way. It will be at least as performant as our old
interface was, and we will take many small steps, instead of radically changing all details in a single
version.
5.5 is the initial step of this new approach.
Trackers that immediately make sense
In 5.5, we have completely redesigned the trackers initially configured for newly created
projects.
codeBeamer trackers are extremely flexible (best in industry, in many aspect), thus it is very easy to fall
into the trap of setting up bloated "monster" trackers with features that no-one is going to understand
and use. Even we do it sometimes.
Now, our design driving force was to "provide the simplest 20% that could serve well the 80% of the
users". Based on this Pareto-ish principle:
• We provide out-of-the-box solutions to track the 5 most typical issue types: bugs,
change request, requirements, tasks, and tests. The new configurations handle also their
relationships elegantly, by helping to create tasks for requirements, or creating tests for bugs
easily.
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4. • We configured the fields, the workflows, and the links between the trackers accordingly, using
many of the possibilities available in codeBeamer (including calculated fields and field value
dependencies).
The new default configurations are also to be considered "best practice", and are great starting
points to set up custom configurations.
Highly secure processes with "two-man rule"
The two-man rule (also known as four eyes principle) is a security mechanism optionally available in
any codeBeamer tracker now.
The two-man rule requires each change to be approved by two separate users, thus minimizing
the chance for accidental or unapproved changes, and providing high level of security for
critical issues. It can be universally applied to a lot of problems, for instance, mutual agreement on
requirements changes by customers and implementors, financial decisions approved by the CEO and
the CFO, or code reviews by a tech lead and a developer.
Learn more about the two-man rule in Wikipedia.
Integrations: Microsoft Project, HP Quality Center and Eclipse
Microsoft Project: codeBeamer 5.5 enables importing your task- and scheduling information from
Microsoft Project, the dominant Project Management software, to codeBeamer. Your team can then
track the project progress in the web, maintain the status in a centralized place, avoid
synchronization issues, and leverage the plethora of functions that codeBeamer provides to track
issues (reporting and escalations, for instance).
codeBeamer Eclipse Studio: CBES, our productivity tool built on the top of the Mylyn task
framework, received amazing feedback from multitask-heavy developers. The most current CBES
version 3.1 is compatible with codeBeamer 5.5, and with both Eclipse 3.5 and 3.6. New features: it
enables listing change sets per Mylyn tasks, support for codeBeamer Release Management (see
above), enhanced offline capabilities (like adding attachments offline). Free download available at the
CBES project page at JavaForge.
HP Quality Center is addressing wide-range of quality assurance services and is widely used for test
management and test execution. CodeBeamer's integration with HP Quality Center is extending
codeBeamer's Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) services with support for test management.
(customer contribution)
MercurialEclipse: Coming soon... version 1.7 of the definite Mercurial plugin for Eclipse, maintained
by open source contributors and Intland Software, is on its way. More details on the actual
enhancements later. Until then follow the progress or download the plugin for free at the
MercurialEclipse project at JavaForge.
New platform: Mac OS X
We added support for a new platform: a native distribution package for Mac OS X 10.6 is available.
You can install codeBeamer to your beloved Mac as easily as to a Linux or Windows computer.
Other goodies: activity streams, my issues, starring, RSS and more
Lots of, lots of other improvements that will make your life easier. Some highlights:
Activity Streams keep you informed about your projects, tracking "who did what, when and where" in
real time. An easy way to stay up-to-date.
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5. My Issues and some other wiki plugins provide you comprehensive and filterable lists of your issues,
faster than ever before.
Starring helps to bookmark your most important tasks and content with a single click.
RSS feeds get your data mobile, and reduce your mail traffic. No mail flood anymore.
Links
• Download the free installer of codeBeamer
• Use the free hosted codeBeamer
• More on 5.5
• More on codeBeamer
ABOUT INTLAND SOFTWARE
Intland Software is dedicated provider of agile collaboration and Application Lifecycle Management
solutions for software development.
"codeBeamer", Intland’s collaborative development platform, has won several productivity and
innovation awards in the categories of collaboration tools, knowledge management, change and
configuration management tools.
Major international organisations in industries such as automobile, avionics, defence, banking &
finance, healthcare, logistics and telecommunications trust in Intland’s expertise.
The company’s headquarters is based in Stuttgart, Germany, with a subsidiary in Silicon Valley, USA.
Follow @intland on Twitter: http://twitter.com/intland
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