ThoughtWorks Studios Integrates Cruise With Perforce to Scale Large, Distributed Enterprise Agile Programs

SAN FRANCISCO and LONDON, March 24 /PRNewswire/ --  ThoughtWorks Studios (www.thoughtworks-studios.com), a global leader in Agile ALM tools and training, today announced support for the integration of its Cruise® release management product with Perforce (www.perforce.com), the leading software configuration management (SCM) system. Building on the existing Mingle® project management integration, the combination of Cruise and Perforce will provide large Agile development organizations with the ideal solution to scale rapidly and overcome the challenges of distributed development – resulting in faster time-to-market, higher quality software, reduced risk and improved customer responsiveness. The integrated solution has already delivered exceptional results at Caplin Systems, a global leader in single-dealer platform e-commerce solutions for financial institutions.

"Caplin Systems is a great showcase for how integrating release management and the Perforce SCM system can help large Agile development organizations build complex software products faster, and with a higher degree of confidence," said Cyndi Mitchell, managing director of ThoughtWorks Studios. "As Agile software development methods penetrate more deeply into the enterprise, good software engineering practice becomes even more critical to building high-quality systems that are easy to change and release. This integration will further enable our Adaptive ALM solution meets those needs, ensuring that large-scale continuous integration systems do not create a bottleneck as programs get more complex."

With the Perforce and Cruise solution, IT managers and business stakeholders now have a high-performance system that provides end-to-end visibility and access to a highly-scalable and integrated release management and continuous integration system.

"Combining the Perforce SCM system with the Cruise release management tool delivers new levels of visibility and a much quicker feedback loop when working through potential integration issues that can slow the production process," said Andrew MacLeod, software architect for Caplin Systems. "Cruise's unique pipeline of deployment stages across a parallel build grid has allowed unprecedented visibility into change. Even as the number of acceptance tests grows significantly, the break-fix-verify cycle from developer check-in to working software has sped up by a factor of almost 50. Having the confidence to run as many builds as we like has greatly improved the end-quality of our software and our ability to quickly meet the needs of our customers," said MacLeod.

By using this combination of tools, development work is automatically updated, providing real time visibility and traceability – from managing artifacts (source code and related artifacts), tying changes made to source code within Perforce to related development artifacts within Mingle and Cruise. Additionally, managers can view the status of any software project through dashboards and ensure what goes into production meets business requirements. "By introducing the Cruise pipeline, we guarantee that each part gets built using the right version of the code and the right libraries," said MacLeod.

Perforce is an award-winning SCM tool that versions and manages source code and digital assets for enterprises large and small. It seamlessly handles distributed development and supports developers across a large number of platforms. Integrated with Cruise and Mingle, developers can monitor every change that is checked into Perforce, quickly build from the latest version of applications and run automated tests against it. The end-result is "push-button" deployments into manual testing, staging and production environments.

"Perforce supports a scalable Agile workflow by providing a fast SCM system that allows developers to quickly work and comprehend the effect of their changes," said John Walker, senior marketing manager at Perforce Software. "Through our integrations with Mingle and Cruise we are helping customers like Caplin Systems better manage their high-volume production environments."

To read the full case study on how Caplin Systems used Perforce and ThoughtWorks Studios' Adaptive ALM solution together to overcome the challenges of scaling a large Agile development organization, please visit: (http://www.thoughtworks-studios.com/sites/files/studios/misc/cruise-caplin-systems-case-study.pdf).

About Perforce Software

Founded in 1995, Perforce Software Inc. develops, markets and supports Perforce, the Fast Software Configuration Management System. Perforce Software is headquartered in Alameda, Calif., and sells worldwide. The company has international operations in Europe, Japan, and Australia. In addition to application software companies, Perforce customers represent a broad range of industries including game development, electronics, pharmaceutical and financial services.

About ThoughtWorks Studios

ThoughtWorks Studios is a global leader in Agile ALM tools and training. Its products and services are used by organizations as a foundation for sustainable Agile adoption, where project management, automation and engineering best practices are required. The company's Adaptive ALM™ solution provides a platform for managing all aspects of the software development lifecycle, from requirements definition and project management to test automation, quality assurance and release management. The three products that make up Adaptive ALM, Mingle® (project management) Twist® (test automation) and Cruise® (release management), are available as an integrated solution or as stand-alone products. Through its ThoughtWorks Agile Workshops series, the company also provides in-depth training courses that cover all aspects of Agile ALM. Backed as an independent division of ThoughtWorks®, the pioneering leader in Agile development and best-practices, ThoughtWorks Studios' customers include 3M, Barclays, BBC, eBay, Honeywell, McGraw-Hill, Rackspace and Vodafone. It is headquartered in San Francisco and Bangalore, with offices in London and select cities in Europe, Asia and Australia. For more information, please visit www.thoughtworks-studios.com.

SOURCE ThoughtWorks Studios