Distributed Software Development with Electric Cloud

Solving Build and Release Challenges with Distributed Development Teams

Whether teams are distributed across the street, across town, or across the globe, distributed development presents challenges. Requiring a distributed software development organization to function effectively across multiple locations places greater importance on:

• Effective communication
• Productive, well-defined workflows
• Visibility and reporting

There are additional, specific challenges for distributed software development teams within the build and release process, including resource availability, network bandwidth, etc. Furthermore, teams have traditionally relied upon the nightly build for production build and test cycles. When teams are located across the globe there is no overnight.

Distributed  Development  Challenge				Impact				Electric Cloud Solution
Remote developers need to build and test on several target platforms/configurations				Remote locations don't have all needed hardware resources locally Often must rely on a remote, central build team to perform full builds causing delays Maintenance costs associated with multiple environments				Provide secure access to build and test resources for remote teams to minimize duplicate hardware investment Speed builds up to 20x to provide rapid feedback for remote developers
Build managers manually queue build requests and support multiple teams				Central team supporting multiple locations means fielding requests and handling crises around the clock				Invoke builds/tests on a scheduled basis or upon code check-in, without manual intervention Centralize build resources and manage multiple projects from a single interface
QA doesn't get frequent, "clean" builds				Inability to test early and often impacts product quality				Enable developer pre-flight builds to minimize breaks in production builds Speed overall build and test cycles for more iterative development
Managers lack visibility into results/status from remote teams				Status reports are typically self-reported and after the fact Difficult to spot trends that may affect the schedule				Provide shared view of real-time status via Web interface Generate detailed, cross-project reports for better predictability

Read more about how ElectricCommander, ElectricAccelerator, and ElectricInsight help you to automate, accelerate, and analyze distributed software development.