Introduction
Overview
Chapter 1; suffice it to say for now that it consists of common-sense development practices practiced religiously and in concert. Two of these common-sense practices are testing and frequent integration. Almost no software development shop would consider leaving these steps out of its process entirely—after all, a system has to be integrated to ship, and it must be tested to ensure that the customers accept the shipment. Thanks to the dot-com shakeout, most of the shops that did skip these practices are now out of business. Still, many software companies either struggle with implementing these processes, or acknowledge that they should be done but claim that “things are just too busy right now” to do them. This book explains and demonstrates the use of software tools to help put these valuable practices into place.