Client Interview

Michael Van Grouw works as a Project Scientist for Agilent Technologies in Santa Rosa California. His group makes test and measurement equipment for the optical and electrical serial communications market.

Mike, what are your main responsibilities?

I am responsible for product software strategy for our department. That means that I must ensure that our software development, from the designs that we attempt, to the tools and processes we use, work toward our overall goal of being successful in this business.

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

The most rewarding part of my job is the time that I get to spend with other developers, discussing the relative merits of a new design or refactoring ideas.

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

The most challenging part of my job is trying to maintain a rigorous and meaningful definition of "a quality product" in the presence of shrinking development schedules.

What is your background with version control and configuration management solutions?

I've been doing software development for about 15 years now. I started with History Manager, a Hewlett Packard internally written version control system. This later became an official product known as SoftCM. Going to SnapshotCM (same primary author as SoftCM) was a natural progression.

I also have some experience using Rational's (now IBM's) ClearCase and Microsoft's Visual SourceSafe, and, of course, the original RCS.

How long has your team been using SnapshotCM?

We have been using SnapshotCM for about 3 years. Our first log entry dates to April 9, 2002.

Was there ever a period of time you went without a CM solution?

No, we would never think of doing something like that.

Describe your team size and geography.

We have five software engineers and two software contractors. We are associated with the site in Santa Rosa California and support telecommuting. SnapshotCM works well for us.

What challenges do you face doing version control in your team?

One of things that I really like about our SnapshotCM version control solution is that it just works. We don't seem to experience many of the challenges that I hear other groups going through.

Do you have any other particular version control challenges related to the type of products you develop?

Not really.

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

I really appreciate the fact that it is easy to setup and to administer. We do not need someone dedicated to administrating the tool. It is also easy to migrate the database to another server in the event of a hardware upgrade or failure. I like the low total cost of ownership.

It would be nice to be able to see file histories in a graphical format.

What are your top three favorite features of SnapshotCM?

• The tool is easy to learn—the concept of a snapshot is easy to grasp.
• The tool is easy to install.
• The tool is inexpensive to administer and maintain.

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

It just seems to works. No one on the team has ever been unpleasantly surprised by something it did or did not do.

What is refreshing about using SnapshotCM?

I can have phone conversations with the creator.

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

My hope is that Scott will be nice to me for agreeing to do this interview and put in a pet feature of ours. It's pretty cool. A typical software change involves checking in several different files at once. From a change management perspective, it would be convenient to think of this as a single, atomic transaction to the snapshot. This would:

1. Prevent temporary "undefined" states in the snapshot as the individual files are checked in.
2. Provide a more meaningful change history than just the change history of the individual files.
3. Provide an easier undo mechanism than undoing all the changes in all the files.

You will have to ask Scott to tell you more about it.

[Editor's Note: We are looking into Mike's request and agree that such is "pretty cool". Read our feature article for what we support today.]