buildfactory FAQ

buildfactory facilitates rapid application delivery for large-scale .NET and J2EE projects. It does this by addressing the 'last mile' build and deployment problems facing most large-scale .NET and JEE initiatives. Such projects are often characterized and inhibited by idiosyncratic scripting widgets for build and release which are not scalable nor repeatable and require intensive specialist ( and usually very expensive) expertise. As a consequence, development projects experience latency, and there is typically a bottleneck around the 'deployment' or 'environments' teams. Meanwhile, there is limited visibility of the exact state the project, especially for the management and stakeholder communities.

buildfactory addresses these issues through:

• bringing convention and standards to the build process;
• a repeatable implementation framework;
• automated workflows for build, test and release;
• giving real time control and visibility via a dashboard interface.

Core features include:

• Build Management
  automated compilation and integration of tests, workflow for assemly and deployment
• Dependency Management
  enabling parallel projects to share in-progress of common components; making sure required binaries are in the right places for all environments
• Automated Testing
  unit, integration, some system and functional testing
• Deployment
  provisioning of container/ settings, provision/ set-up of application
• Release Management
  Assemble – package - report
• Quality Management
  definition of pass & fail quality gates per developer, per project, per programme
• Integrated Issue Management
  defect mapping to releases through integration with issue management system
• Dashboard
  view of status, threshold configuration, real time control

Compared to traditional Application Lifecycle Management suites, buildfactory wins by providing a rapid, best of breed, solution to the build and release challenge. One size cannot fit all, so ‘suite’ offerings extending into requirements management, modelling, design, project management, testing, change management and environments management cannot provide the targeted, cost-effective response presented by buildfactory. And while a suite implementation usually mandates a significant migration programme that is massively invasive to ongoing or imminent projects and organisational processes, a buildfactory deployment is non-invasive (integrating with existing assets and processes through open XML interfaces).

Compared to other Software Configuration Management (SCM) products, buildfactory wins by applying a build quality regime (“Quality Gates”) across all project environments (not just the 'last mile' deployment environment typically the focus of other build tools); Thus, buildfactory is consistent in the developer environment (IDE plug-in), the project environment (build server) and the enterprise/ programme. It also differentiates by using existing SCM implementations rather than having to rip and replace sub-systems (for instance, Maven, Ant, Subversion, CVS, VSS, TFS, MSBuild).

buildfactory handles the full lifecycle of build and release management out of the box. For customers with existing facilities it incorporates a unique integration mechanism enabling the provision of plug-ins that support 3-way integration:

• Define phases/ process
• Define build tools
• Define deployment environment

buildfactory is ready to use with Eclipse, WebLogic Workshop, and Microsoft Visual Studio.

Customers in corporate IT departments, systems integrators and and packaged software vendors are using buildfactory today.

The buildfactory ‘bootstrap’ goes from ‘install’ to ‘use’ in under an hour. Schedule a demonstration to find out how.

buildfactory is available under a simple, low cost subscription model that enables usage and support under a single price. Contact us for more details.

Key aspects of Agile development that buildfactory provides facilities for include:

Early demonstration of working code to validate requirements
Until the code / implementation is presented and validated the project remains in a state of financial exposure (how do you know your investment is paying off without seeing something tangible?). buildfactory supports this through automation of the assembly, integration and deployment of code as soon as it is available. The result is real (not a ‘mock-up’) and presents a real-time indicator of project viability from that point on.

Regular release of working software in time-boxed increments
In order to commit to aggressive timescales you need to be able to, at any point, quantify your state of completion. This is best determined by hourly inspection of code based on integration and test completion and is automated by buildfactory. There is no scope for downstream surprises.
As soon as the first release is done you need to be able to rapidly integrate and regression test the evolving second release. buildfactory automates this and keeps a track of what is released where for each subsequent release.

Change supported throughout the lifecycle
In order to make the ‘in-flight’ changes that enable Agile to be flexible you need to be able to easily isolate the impacted components, synchronise with workstreams using old versions and handle regression and integration testing for all environments. This is automated by buildfactory.

buildfactory is process- agnostic and is useful for any development endeavour requiring scalability (addition of multiple teams), acceleration and quality control.