Jacobs Vehicle Systems implemented Borland® StarTeam to manage software change and centralize control of project activities and digital assets. The program has helped the company speed the software build process and reduce rework by improving efficiency and team communication.
Jacobs Vehicle Systems develops and manufactures commercial vehicle retarding systems. With more than 40 years experience in the business, Jacobs is known for its modern manufacturing methods.
Management wanted to automate their SCCM process, which maintains a base software code line for their electronics-based products and modified software code branches for each customer specific implementation. While the company had an existing configuration management tool, it lacked integrated change management capabilities. This left development teams to cross-reference change requests with source code manually, which was inconsistent and prone to error.
The lack of an integrated SCCM system also slowed the build and release process, causing large amounts of rework. There was no effective way to isolate changes, reuse existing components or merge code updates from the baseline product to the software code branches for each customer specific implementation.
Management needed to centralize control and increase project visibility and collaboration to enable the engineers to concurrently make changes to code without reintroducing previously fixed defects. They also needed to improve the effectiveness of geographically distributed development through better support and access from remote locations.
After evaluating solutions from multiple vendors, Jacobs chose the Borland StarTeam, a unified software change and configuration management offering. Ease-of-use and low maintenance overhead were key selection criteria, as well as integrated change management.
Using the system, the team now links change requests (CR) to source code changes, which gives direct visibility into all changes that go into a build. Prior to implementing Borland StarTeam, CR status was reported to customers through manually created version description documents. While these documents were accurate, they were static and aged as soon as they were created. With Borland StarTeam, the team can communicate real-time CR status to customers, which has improved customer care and loyalty.
The system has also helped to speed the build and release process and allowed Jacobs to optimize team resources to meet customer requirements. With a central location for build components, Jacobs can create builds up to five times faster than with the previous system.
“There are few software tools in this industry that work consistently and reliably,” continued Gosselin. “We are such a small group that we don’t have the time to deal with problematic tools, which was why the Borland product was such a huge relief to us. Availability and uptime isn’t a problem. Borland StarTeam allows us to focus on productivity and customer care.”
Borland
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: Design World :
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