Guiding Enterprises to Effective DVCS Adoption

In the UK many enterprises involved in software development are realising the competitive advantage of moving to a distributed version control system (DVCS). DVCS is now forming a vital role in their strategy towards continuous delivery. This advantage is gained not just in switching tool sets but by adapting to a more collaborative approach to development and fully understanding the opportunities this technology enables.

Enterprise Git repository managementDVCS enhances the way development teams interact, enabling greater collaboration and communication across the enterprise. This collaboration helps break down those islands of information which can stifle innovation and productivity. With guidance from Atlassian Platinum Experts Clearvision and developer tools from Atlassian, the path to DVCS adoption is made much smoother.

Those familiar with source control management tools like Subversion, Perforce, ClearCase and Accurev, can learn to use DVCS tools fairly quickly. Atlassian provide tools to get started both behind the firewall or in the cloud. Atlassian’s Stash helps with your Git repository management needs behind the firewall or Atlassian’s bitbucket helps you host your Git and Hg code in the cloud.

Git verses Mercurial - why Git ?

However using DVCS tools to their full benefit has a considerable learning curve. Whist you still add and commit your files in the conventional way, DVCS has many other features that need mastering before you get the full benefits. For example, learning how to use local and shared repositories for different stages of the build pipeline as well as using pull requests across teams can have a dramatic effect on the amount of software delivered. I recommend reading our diffs and patches post, that explains the benefits of DVCS further.

Migrating legacy projects from SVN is yet another challenge, especially for the enterprise, but again leads to opportunities to enhance the development experience with your existing code base. It presents an opportunity to refactor your repositories, understand your core domain and start to isolate technical debt with greater effect. When a large code base is broken down into valuable components, the architecture tends to be more adaptable to change. Those interested can read more on switching from SVN in our centralised vs distributed blog post.

Clearvision are a long standing Atlassian Platinum Expert and have a great deal of experience moving enterprises away from large and cumbersome source control management systems. They believe that source control tools should be easy enough to use and manage by developers. So if you have one or more dedicated resources managing your source control tooling, then it becomes very expensive and a very slow process to delivering software. With the benefit of experience from Clearvision and Atlassian products, developers can quickly incorporate DVCS tooling into their software development life-cycle.

Clearvision recognised that we all have a large amount of legacy code running the business, and have poured their collective experience into their AgileSCM offering, to ensure your chosen DVCS tooling is used efficiently to develop and release products in a controlled, repeatable and secure manner.

With guidance from our experts in the field, the path to getting the most value from DVCS adoption is made much smoother. You can discover just how Clearvision and Atlassian help enterprises move to DVCS by attending the webcast Migrating To Git: An Effective Approach on Thursday June 21st, 2012 (15.00 - 16.00 BST - London time).

Thank you.
@jr0cket

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