IBM SC34-4499-03 manual An introduction to TeamConnection

Chapter 1. An introduction to TeamConnection

TeamConnection provides an environment and tools to make software development run smoothly, whether your development team is small or large. Using TeamConnection, you can communicate with and share data among team members to keep up with the many tasks in the development life cycle, from planning through maintenance.

What does TeamConnection do for you? It takes care of the following:

vCon®guration management: the process of identifying, organizing, managing, and controlling software modules as they change over time. This includes controlling access to your software modules and providing noti®cation to team members as software modules change.

vRelease management: the logical organization of objects that are related to an application. The release provides a logical view of objects that must be built, tested, and distributed together. Releases are versioned, built, and packaged.

vVersion control: the tracking of relationships among the versions of the various parts that make up an application. Version control enables you to build your product using stable levels of code, even if the code is constantly changing. It provides control over which changes are available to everyone and, optionally, allows more than one developer at a time to update a part.

vChange control: the controlling of changes to parts that are stored in TeamConnection. TeamConnection keeps track of any part changes you make and the reasons you make them. Your development team can build releases with accuracy and efficiency, even as the parts evolve. The product ensures that the change process is followed and that the changes are authorized. After changes are made, it allows you to integrate the changes and build the application. TeamConnection tracks all changes to the parts across multiple products and environments.

The change control process is con®gurable. Your team can decide how strict the change control should be, from loose to very tight. You can also adjust the level of control as you move through a development cycle.

vBuild support: the function that enables you to de®ne the structure of your application and then to create it within TeamConnection from your input parts. Independent steps in a build can run in parallel on different servers, thus reducing your build time. You can build applications for platforms in addition to the one TeamConnection runs onÐcurrently, you can use TeamConnection to build applications on AIX, HP-UX, OS/2, Windows NT, Windows 95, Solaris, MVS, and MVS OpenEdition.

vPackaging support: the preparation of your application for electronic distribution to other users.

This chapter de®nes the basic terms and concepts you need to make the most of TeamConnection. Read this chapter ®rst; then decide which information you need next:

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