We attended the 2004 IBM Rational User Conference to promote our last book, The Art of ClearCase Deployment (Addison-Wesley, 2004), and to enjoy the warm and humid weather of Dallas, Texas. We set up shop next to the Pearson booth, only occasionally slipping away to engage in a game of multiplayer Quake at a booth across the way with a large display covering grid technology. Our book was selling well, and we were enjoying the interaction with the crowd. But one question kept popping up: “Does your book talk at all about ClearQuest?”
Our answer was always apologetic: We discussed ClearQuest in the framework of the entire software configuration management continuum, but we did not specifically dive into the ClearQuest product or configuration. And yet the questions were persistent. People were obviously hungry for some formal content, for something more than the technical documentation available on the IBM website.
By the third day, we decided to talk to the Pearson team in attendance about the prospect of writing a ClearQuest book. We figured there had to be a project in the works somewhere, given the vast number of books related to change management already floating around out there. Apparently not. The Pearson team members were ecstatic, to put it mildly. They told us that there were no other books in the works and that they had been looking for someone to take the reins on the effort. To solidify our resolve, we also mentioned the possibility to several of the IBM marketing folks who had passed by throughout the week to check the status of our current book sales. They agreed that there was a huge demand for a book on the subject—so right then and there we agreed to take on the project. A few weeks later, our proposal had been accepted and a contract signed.
Throughout our shared writing history (since 1997), we have always initiated our projects by first researching other authors and understanding what content has come before us and what questions have been left unanswered. For ClearQuest, there seemed to be a fairly large gap. Even the IBM website seemed to show a lack of content. Sure, there are plenty of training slides and technical manuals available online, and we have training materials from past versions and various external training companies. And during the past few months, there’s been some effort to add articles outlining individual experiences integrating ClearQuest to various proprietary and mainstream applications. What was missing was a comprehensive view of ClearQuest that shows how it fits into the change management continuum.
Our intention with this book was to provide a solid roadmap for how to deploy ClearQuest, from the business justifications and issues, to the proper planning and design that will meet your current and longer-term business needs, down to the things you should consider around implementation of your design. ClearQuest is a flexible, dynamic application that can be modeled to fit your particular needs. The key to success is to properly plan your deployment, execute that plan, and provide adequate training for all users so there is acceptance of the new system and quantifiable benefits to your projects and products.
The goal of this book is to help the reader understand the actors, the business cases, and the complete problem domain before embarking on a defect-tracking implementation of any size. This book provides insight into the management issues, integration issues, and implementation issues surrounding the components of a ClearQuest deployment. The book also covers issues and tactical responses to implementing both small, team-based solutions as well as large, multisite deployments found in many of today’s global enterprises.
ClearQuest is a natural partner to ClearCase for a robust configuration management solution. ClearCase provides the framework and the organization, while ClearQuest provides the interface for engineering, product management, field operations, and support to document and track defects, enhancements, issues, and documentation iterations.
Each chapter follows a logical flow, with the intent of providing actionable steps and relevant examples that you can use during your own planning. We offer practical guidelines for designing and deploying an end-to-end solution—all taken from our own experiences in building these kinds of solutions—and show how ClearQuest fits into the overall change management system. Each chapter contains relevant diagrams and visual examples to illustrate new concepts and ideas.
Our goal for Implementing IBM Rational ClearQuest is to present the material in a way that a broader group of project personnel can understand and use, while hopefully getting a better picture of how an end-to-end defect-tracking solution can enhance an organization’s ability to address customer requirements more quickly. By helping a broader group of project players understand the change management continuum, we aim to help teams deliver better products, faster.
For those of you unfamiliar with our online articles or previous book, we are not your typical authors. Our writing style can be colloquial at times. We prefer to write in the same voice with which we work and consult; we present and teach on a regular basis, and we like to have fun with what we do.
The goal of our books is to ease the reader into the subject matter, most often through humor. The world does not need one more dry, difficult-to-consume technical book. While the subject matter in this book doesn’t leave a lot of room for anecdotal stories, we’ve made some attempts at humor nonetheless.
We tend to follow a natural progression in our writing, moving the reader from broader concepts through to the more technical aspects of a ClearQuest deployment. In the early chapters, we start by making the business case for ClearQuest, moving you through some of the basic features to help you understand the full breadth of the solution, and then tackle the more complex issues toward the end. We want you to understand the actors, the use cases, and the complete problem domain before embarking on a change management implementation of any size.
Unlike other books in the broader category of software development best practices, this book will help you better understand how ClearQuest fits into your change management solution by covering both strategic and tactical issues for deployment. Most chapters contain actionable steps that you can follow in your own planning efforts, along with relevant examples and plenty of screenshots.
Many of the diagrams, screenshots, and feature tables come from the IBM Rational ClearQuest manuals, available through purchase of the software. Some of the materials are also available online.
One other feature of this book is the association with the IBM developerWorks website. At the end of most chapters are links to relevant articles, training classes, and scripts to point you toward more detailed topics from IBM and other authors. The links are referenced by number throughout the chapter (A: article; T: training, S: script) in the order they appear.
Implementing IBM Rational ClearQuest is specifically targeted toward those readers who want to learn how to create an end-to-end change management solution using ClearQuest and how a robust defect-tracking system fits into the larger product development organization.
The book provides value propositions to three primary types of users:
The field engineer, who may access the system from within the office or while at a customer site
The manager in charge of change management (most likely the tool administrator), who will ultimately own and operate the system and ensure its integrity against the overall change management system
The senior manager or product manager, who relies on the information within the system to improve product design and response rates to customer requests and issues
The book assumes no particular knowledge of change management tools, object-oriented analysis and design, programming, or any modeling methodologies; however, it serves as both an introduction and a bridge, for example, to connection points with ClearCase.
Chapter 1—Building and Maintaining the Feedback Loop with Customers
One of the primary problems with most product development organizations is poor communication between development and product management, and especially between the company and the customer. This chapter provides a case for building more robust communication channels between disparate groups.
Chapter 2—The Value Proposition
This chapter offers a synopsis outlining the value of ClearQuest. The chapter will help you understand the components of change management, define the value proposition within your own organization, and provide some suggestions on how to get buy-in from both your team and management.
Chapter 3—Selling Your Team on Change Management
Beyond the tool value proposition, this chapter outlines the nature of change requests and how to track them. It also provides a good overview of the role of various tools in the change management continuum.
Chapter 4—Moving Parts
This chapter presents the fundamentals of the ClearQuest architecture and the change request lifecycle. We explain the various ClearQuest components, basic installation, high-level administration and customization, and schema and database setup. We also show you how to work within ClearQuest Designer.
Chapter 5—Analyzing Your Company’s Needs
Before you attempt to deploy any software application, you will want to adequately model your system. This chapter will help you define your ClearQuest actors, use cases, activity diagrams, workflow, and reports.
Chapter 6—Designing Your System
Following on the heels of analysis comes your system design. This chapter will assist you in your efforts to define classes, states and transitions, deployment diagrams, and your system-level design.
Chapter 7—Implementation: Schema and Database Design
Once your system has been designed, it is time to implement. This chapter walks you through the process of selecting your schema, defining your users and roles, creating groups, and setting up your database.
Chapter 8—Implementation: Customizing the Schema and Creating Hooks
With your core system established, you’ll want to customize ClearQuest to fit the nuances of your organization. This chapter will help you create your record type families, set field characteristics, define permissions, and perform custom scripting to individualize your solution.
Chapter 9—ClearQuest for Eclipse
This chapter contains everything you need to know to install, configure, and use the ClearQuest Eclipse plug-in.
Chapter 10—ClearQuest Integrations
This chapter provides an integration overview, including information about ClearQuest packages, Unified Change Management (UCM), and best practices for developing your own integrations.
Chapter 11—Deployment and Administration
With a focus on deployment activities, this chapter covers installation issues, database setup and configuration tasks, suggestions on testing and data backups, postinstallation issues, the always-bigger-than-it-seems data migration, and—of course—training your team.
Chapter 12—Multisite Development
What better way to wrap things up than to jump into what is possibly the most complex issue in the book: multisite deployment. This chapter reviews multisite design and management concepts such as synchronization, mastership, and how to resolve conflicts. Fun stuff.