agile

In this article, the authors the use of basic patterns that can help build a software configuration management process that works well with your agile development environment. They discuss how codeline policy, private work spaces, smoke tests, private system builds, integration building, unit testing, and regression testing all work together to enable you to maintain an active development line.

Big projects require many little user stories. But if these scenarios don't add up to one good story, then you're probably missing out on the big picture. In this week's column, Jeff Patton describes how his team weaves many small tales into a single strong report by identifying key characters and themes.

In the March 2006 issue of Better Software magazine, Dan North began a discussion of the evolution of behavior-driven development from test-driven development. Here, North continues the conversation with closer look at "mocks," utility classes that, for testing purposes, pretend to be some component or service with which your object will interact.

This article focuses on branching and merging. We present some background for branching and merging, and consider some of the implications for agile development in particular. We also hope to reduce some of the suspicion that many agile developers have of branching. The article assumes some overall branching knowledge and yet revisits some particular details that often seem to confuse people. This is a fertile area which we will continue to expand on in future articles.