Customer Interview

Dave Poppe is a Software Engineer working for Agilent Technologies, Inc.

Dave, what are your main responsibilities?

My team develops software for oscilloscopes. We run on Windows and I work on different aspects of the software, from the GUI to low-level calibration code.

What's the most exciting—and/or rewarding—part of your job for you?

The most exciting part is when we start shipping a new product. Our software team is small enough that you feel a lot of ownership for that.

What's the most challenging part of the job for you?

Schedule pressure is probably the most challenging part. We get in the "too much to do with too few people" problem sometimes.

When did your team start working with True Blue Software, and why?

We had used SoftCM for a number of years. Then we moved to ClearCase. ClearCase gave us some benefits in capability but cost us a lot of admin time. It was also sluggish and had several bad ease-of-use issues. After seeing a demo of SnapshotCM, we were impressed by the ease-of-use advantages so we switched to SnapshotCM. Also, the administrative cost for ClearCase was expensive, and we felt SnapshotCM would cut that down considerably (and it did).

What is your background with SnapshotCM?

A couple of us investigated SnapshotCM for our needs and I converted our history from our old tool. There are a couple of other people who handle the admin for SnapshotCM, so I mostly answer questions from the other developers on my team. I am, of course, an end user too. I also handle most of the merges we have.

What do you feel are the advantages/disadvantages of working with SnapshotCM?

Some of the advantages are:

1. It's very easy to add a development snapshot and get working on it.
2. The UI is pretty intuitive and works well for our use model.
3. The tool is very fast; we don't have to waste time waiting for the hourglass to go away.

Disadvantages:

1. We don't really like the built-in merge tool so we've configured Araxis Merge instead. Compared to our earlier environment in ClearCase, simple merges take more work, but complex merges are easier to figure out.
2. I like the GUI in Windows, but on Unix it is command line only. Fortunately for our group, we are on Windows.
3. ClearCase had a nice view of the file's history, with the display showing the ancestry graphically. SnapshotCM's view is a history list.

How does SnapshotCM help your team save time/frustration/money?

We can get the separation we want with development snapshots. If we decide to change and a group goes to individual snapshots, for instance, this can be changed very quickly. This gives us a lot of flexibility.

SnapshotCM has a good solution for the merge problem of refreshing your workspace and getting a partial change because you are working on some of the files required for that change. On our previous product, the merge happened only on check-in, which made us waste a half a day or so figuring out what was out-of-date several times.

Most of the advantages save us time in our day-to-day development. Doing a "refresh" when the Snapshot hasn't changed much is very fast. When your view is pretty out-of-date, the refresh time is still very respectable. Network failures don't bother very much like they do with a server-state model like ClearCase.

What are your plans or hopes for working with True Blue Software in the future?

I hope to keep working with True Blue Software in the future. True Blue has been very responsive to our questions.

What would you recommend to other team leaders or managers who were thinking about adopting a configuration management solution?

There are several things to consider when you are looking for a CM system. Obviously, the capability you desire has to be there, but some of the more subtle things to watch out for are administrative overhead and programmer efficiency. Programmer efficiency can be helped by a system that is fast and offers a good working model for day-to-day development. The work model supported/imposed by the CM system can be either a benefit or a burden on your development process.