Software Development Tools: Issue and Defect Tracking With DevTrack
Software Development Tools: Issue and Defect Tracking With DevTrack
White Paper
Introduction
DevTrack is one of the most powerful and flexible This paper discusses how DevTrack was designed and
defect and project tracking solutions available. This implemented. For those that want to compare DevTrack
paper describes the unique approach and conceptual with other defect and project tracking tools based on the
model that has made DevTrack a clear leader in low-level architecture and implementation rather than the
today’s competitive defect tracking market. specific features, this paper will help you gain insight into
the DevTrack approach. This paper should also help you
Since DevTrack was first introduced in 1996, decide if the DevTrack model of defect and project tracking
TechExcel’s prospects and customers have evaluated is appropriate for your Issue tracking process and for your
the product primarily in two ways: software development team.
1. Compare DevTrack feature-by-feature This paper assumes the reader has significant knowledge
against other commercially available and experience related to managing a software development
products. process and has previously used DevTrack or some other
2. Study the DevTrack model for managing defect-tracking package. If you have not used DevTrack, we
the defect/project tracking process and recommend that you download the most recent version of the
determine if this approach satisfies their product from our Web site, install the evaluation software,
needs. and test the program using the pre-populated sample project
Please refer to www.devtrack.com for more for one or two hours. Some experience using DevTrack will
information, request a personal demo from our help you understand and appreciate the topics discussed in this
sales team, or download an evaluation copy of paper.
the product for your team to perform a thorough
evaluation.
Tracking With this dynamic model, DevTrack provides the following capabilities.
All defect-tracking tools are based on the principle of tracking a • All team members can be involved in any phase of an Issue’s
development Issue from submission through resolution. DevTrack lifecycle and there is no limit to the number of times the ownership
distinguishes itself from other defect tracking products with its unique of an Issue can be assigned and reassigned.
Open Workflow and Lifecycle conceptual model. The DevTrack model • Unique business logic can be applied to all team members such as
combines a dynamic lifecycle approach for representing and tracking each the submitters, QA members, and programmers, to ensure that each
development Issue with an integrated team representation that optimizes team member has exactly the right level of authority, visibility, and
the development workflow. TechExcel calls this approach the Open control.
Workflow / Lifecycle, or OWL model. • At any given time an Issue is assigned to one and only one team
member, team group, or group folder (refer to next section) to be
The sections that follow will define and discuss the OWL model in detail, fully responsible for the current phase of the Issue’s lifecycle.
comparing it to the more traditional approaches. • Teamwork effectiveness can be easily monitored by analyzing
the total lifecycle duration for all Issues. When the average Issue additional security prevents unauthorized viewing or modification of
lifetime is minimized, the cumulative work of all the team members confidential data associated with an Issue.
involved is optimized.
The effectiveness of each individual or team group can then be evaluated by
analyzing each of the phases in which that the person or group is involved.
DevTrack is Completely
Configurable
Nearly every aspect of the DevTrack user interface is fully configurable.
Some examples of DevTrack’s configuration options are outlined below:
• You can fully configure the user interface for both the DevTrack
client application and DevTrack Web. The user interface includes
the page layout, page content, field positioning, field type, and pre-
defined field choices.
Design Your Workflow • You can enable multiple Issue property pages including description,
current status, version control, time tracking, history, notes, Issue-
We recommend the following design and implementation steps to achieve to-Issue links, as well as three completely definable custom pages.
the most effective workflow within DevTrack. Each page can be designated as visible or invisible.
• You can enable or disable the predefined fields. Each field can be
1. Draw your workflow diagram using a format similar to Figure1 customized to record an Issue property specifically defined for your
above. Use rectangles to represent progress states, and arrows to project tracking needs.
• Custom DevTrack fields can be defined to be one of the following For project managers who need to generate presentation quality reports,
controls: single line edit box, multiple line edit control, check box, the DevTrack client application currently provides advantages over
radio button, dropdown, combo box, auto-grow combo, multiple DevTrack Web. The client application also provides advantages for some
check box control, multiple radio option control, or time/date group operations including the group property change, group forwarding,
control. group duplicating, and group deleting.
• DevTrack supports master/detail field relationships, which can
be defined between any two drop-down fields. A detail field can One area where the DevTrack client may always offer an advantage over
also be the master of an additional field, which enables cascading the Web interface is its seamless version control integration. While we
Master/Detail relationships to be defined within each DevTrack will enable version control integration via the Web, these operations will
project. remain a more platform dependent client application, and the client-based
integration will offer greater power and flexibility.
In addition to the project-level customization and configuration, DevTrack
offers an extensive set of user-level customization including the look and
feel of the user interface and many workflow related preferences. DevTrack is fully scalable
For example, a user may select to display the DevTrack Issue list with DevTrack scales as your team grows. Team groups can share one web
different fields and in different order from other users. A user may also server and application server or install their own. Multiple web servers
select to customize his/her team member dropdown list to include the and application servers will handle the workload separately, thus greatly
team members he/she regularly assigns to new Issues. improving the throughput. They will have connect to the Database Access
component for any Database operations. A separate search engine can
DevTrack’s extensive customization does not come with a performance installed to enhance the search performance.
penalty. DevTrack’s point-and-click customization prevents users from
creating extra tables or scripting language. As a result, performance is
always optimized by the programming logic, which is not altered by the
customization process.
installed at the same location as the central DevTrack database server, or at skills-based routing of new Issues guarantees each team member is always
different locations, and can be installed inside or outside of firewalls. assigned only appropriate Issues to resolve.
Suppose you have several remote development teams in China and you Auto-routing ensures that when an Issue is submitted, or re-assigned
want to enable these teams to work efficiently with your team in the United to a new team member, it is automatically assigned to the most appropriate
States. If you have a dedicated, fast connection between your DevTrack team member. Routing can be 100% skills-based, 100% workload-based, or
Web server in the U.S. and a Web server in China, you might want to install a weighted combination of the two.
an additional DevTrack Web server in China. This enables the Chinese
development team to use DevTrack Web from their local web server. The The auto-routing criteria can be fully customized using any combination
Internet performance would be faster assuming the data exchange between of the pre-defined Issue properties such as product, problem area, and
the Web server computer in China and the database server in the United priority. Because each combination of Issue properties directly corresponds
States is fast. to the skill set of the team members who would be working on an Issue, it is
most appropriate to select the team member based on these criteria. Each
In most cases you will find that using a Web server computer local to criterion is then associated with a list of applicable owners or group folders,
the database server provides the best performance. Because every page each of which is then assigned a ranking index from 1 to 10. An owner
in DevTrack Web is carefully designed to be less than 100K, you will with a “10” is the best match for the skills required for the defined criteria.
experience responsive performance regardless of your location, even with a
28K modem connection. Auto-escalation is a powerful feature that enables email
notification to be setup and repeated as appropriate, and Issues to be
While multiple database servers using a carefully designed database automatically re-assigned when needed. Issues can be auto-escalated based
replication schema might improve system responsiveness and performance, on the Planned Finish Date, or based on a Lack of Work Progress.
you run the risk of data update conflicts. Unless you have unidirectional
database replication, we do not recommend you use database replication to You can specify the account type, group folder, or a specific owner to which
handle multiple development teams. to have the Issue re-assigned. By checking the “Apply auto routing rules”
checkbox, the re-assignment will be defined by the rules you have defined
Project Related Document in the auto-routing page. You are also able to define a new Progress Status
for the Issue when it is re-assigned. This is useful if you need the progress
Management status to change to a state such as “Escalated to group 2” if the Issue is being
routed to a more experienced group because it is overdue or no progress has
DevTrack is designed to manage all aspects of project tracking, including
development-related document management. All project related been made by the existing owner.
documents, such as internal design, external design, testing cases, and
QA documentation, can be managed within the DevTrack database. The Industry’s Best Integration
External HTML links and Web site references can also be managed
within DevTrack. You can then link DevTrack Issues with specific design with Microsoft’s Visual
documents, testing cases, etc.
SourceSafe
Skills-based Routing and Issue DevTrack provides seamless integration with Microsoft’s Visual SourceSafe
version control software, allowing users to automatically associate an Issue
Escalation in DevTrack with the check in/check out operations of Visual SourceSafe,
providing a tight link between version control and defect management.
Defining and enforcing the defect resolution process is critical for
effectively managing software development. DevTrack’s definable workflow With DevTrack’s source code control (SCC) add-in module, you can select
allows you to create and control process states, transitions, and applicable related DevTrack Issues directly from within Visual SourceSafe or other
owners to ensure that every defect and Issue is verified, resolved, tested, software development platforms such as Visual Studio and Visual C++,
integrated, and released as appropriate for your organization. Automatic while you perform check-in/check-out operations. This means you can stay
The Account Hourly Rate allows the hourly rate to be specified for each
account type. The Member Hourly Rate allows the hourly rate to be
specified for each team member. The Account Privilege page defines
Deploying DevTrack
account types so that some team members can edit time usage for others
and can edit the hourly rate for the Issue level time entries.
Deploying DevTrack is a relatively easy process. First install the DevTrack
database server and the DevTrack Web servers. If you want to use the
Email Integration and Notification DevTrack client application, you can install it directly from your DevTrack
database server computer, which contains a DevTrack client setup folder
DevTrack’s Email Submission feature allows external email messages for automated installation.
to be sent directly into a DevTrack project, automatically creating an
Issue record. The Email Submission page is the area to set up all email DevTrack can be configured to use one or multiple server computers. The
information to integrate with the email server. There are four areas that DevTrack Web server can share the same computer with the DevTrack
need to be setup to enable email: the General Settings, the Incoming Mail Application/Database server or the Web and Application/Database servers
Server, the Outgoing Mail Server, and the Email Auto-Submit page. can be installed on separate systems.
DevTrack Enterprise Edition workflow can also prevent a transition from occurring if certain
tasks are not completed.
The DevTrack 6.1 Standard Edition includes all the features of DevTrack • Event Automation Improvements
version 6.03 plus some feature enhancements. DevTrack 6.1 Enterprise In addition to the status of an event automating the status of an
Edition includes all the Standard Edition features plus new advanced issue, DevTrack 6.1 now allows the status of a group of events to
features. affect this automation. For instance, it is now possible to say that
when all events of a certain group, such as Approval, are closed
Software Development Lifecycle Management (SDLC) is becoming successfully, progress to the next state. However, if any of these
increasingly important to today’s software development teams. DevTrack events are closed but not successful, another state automation can
is designed as a total product development project-tracking solution occur.
– starting with Day One. Hundreds of companies are deploy DevTrack • Subprojects as Conditions of Email
to manage their software development project tracking and total lifecycle Notifications
management. Subprojects can now be used a condition within email notifications.
• DevPlan Integration
DevTrack Enterprise Edition is designed and developed to provide DevTrack 6.1 Enterprise Edition is fully integrated with DevPlan,
customers with additional advanced features to achieve better product TechExcel’s new project management tool. Managers can create and
lifecycle tracking and management tools. DevTrack 6.1 Enterprise Edition manage project plans in DevPlan, and use DevTrack to track the
offers the following advanced features: implementation of those projects.
• Release Management For a more detailed discussion on DevTrack Enterprise Edition, please refer to
The Release Management module adds exciting capabilities to the the DevTrack Enterprise Edition white paper.
Enterprise Edition of DevTrack 6.1. Using this system, a parent
issue can spawn several child test issues, each belonging single issue
to a distinct product, versions, and build. An unlimited number of
these child issues can be used to track the resolution of the parent
issues across these diverse environments.
• QA Test Events
A new type of event, called QA Test Events, allows for
unprecedented coverage of issue verification. QA test events can be
linked to Build subprojects, allowing issues within those subprojects
to automatically generate testing across different platform,
languages, or any other user defined variable. The results of these
tests can be used to automate the parent issue.
• Co-owner Events
A co-owner event allows DevTrack users to define multiple owners
of different areas of an issue. For instance, if an issue needed a fix in
several different versions of a component, a co-owner event could