Re: Why Change Management? was: IBM Unveils Change Management Software for System i

Nathan

We are a pretty small shop where iSeries is concerned, so we might have a couple people working on the same exact objects from time to time. Conflict resolution is critical, even if you need it just a couple times a year. I think you agree with that generally.

One of my concerns is object dependencies - we shall see how that goes. That is a layer of complexity that most other OS' don't have to deal with. The announcement also did not mention anything except RPG and COBOL and a couple other things, but one hopes that device files and CL and all the stuff we deal with can be handled with it.

I'm very interested, as is at least one other here and maybe another, besides - I hope!

Vern

Nathan Andelin wrote:

From: "rob"
Well, this is going off on a tangent (hence the change in
subject line)

I'm a little more comfortable with Change Management as a topic, than what IBM may or may not be doing with RDi.

Can someone be in favor of change management, but also have a preference for server based IDE's, applications, and tools? And in favor of something geared more toward the native IBM i environment? How about giving me CHKSRCOUT, and CHKSRCIN commands, or something like that? I'm a big proponent of history, and accountability. Especially when working with a team.

Most teams I've worked with haven't had trouble stumbling over another developer's work. You might have one person on a finance package, another on the HR package, another on the CRM package, another on ... There was enough separation that clobbering another's work wasn't much of an issue.

Packaging and promoting changes to customers servers is more of an issue and automating that process would be something I'd like to know more about. My environment is simpler than most. Most of my application components are RPG *PGM and *SRVPGM objects. I even use a command to parse HTML templates and store them in a source physical file, which makes them quick to load, and easy to distribute.

Nathan.