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We accelerate the evolution of your development process into a software production line. Over time, successful development environments evolve in this direction, automating mechanical processes and improving human communication and collaboration. We drastically reduce the time it takes to evolve, allowing your organization to sooner reap the benefits and tremendous cost savings of a modernized software production line. We get you there faster.
Randy DeFauw
Randy DeFauw, Director of Services for Go2Group, is a certified Perforce Consulting Partner, and also a consulting partner for Atlassian Software's JIRA and Confluence systems. He has extensive experience using best-practice tools and techniques in Configuration Management, issue tracking, and workflow automation. He has a background in CMM/SEI Level 5 software development practices.
Doug Bass
Doug Bass, Director of Development for Go2Group, is a certified Perforce Consulting Partner, and also a consulting partner for Atlassian Software's JIRA and Confluence systems. Doug is an experienced systems architect with extensive distributed application design, database architecture, and project management experience. Author of the first relational database for military applications in the UK and the first java-internet based chat application; he has experience in network design, teaches classes in Object-Oriented Design, and earned a Masters Degree in Information Architecture.
Introduction
The best way to get started with Perforce is our Perforce Best Practice Deployment Package (BPD). This is a fixed-price consulting package that provides a way to get started with Perforce and compress years of evolution into a predictable timeframe. Over a period of typically four to six weeks, we assess your needs and work with your key people to deploy Perforce in your organization, incorporating best practices where. The package includes consulting, training, tools and documentation.
Overview
The Perforce BPD Package capitalizes on Go2Group experience to bypass a normally slow and evolutionary process. We know what a mature Perforce-based development environment looks like, and we get you started off right. We take the time to learn your business, and then apply our extensive SCM and Perforce experience to produce and document a Configuration Management strategy that is in line with industry best practices, and enlightened by your own unique business environment.
Along with consulting and training, the BPD Package provides a set of utilities. At a high level, these utilities provide the following benefits:
The most advanced “branching and merging” features of Perforce become more accessible to regular users by providing tools that enforce best practices, implementing concepts of refresh and promotion.
Various administrative tasks are automated, including update of a “warm spare” Perforce server to provide a Disaster Recovery solution.
Your Perforce server hardware is setup in compliance with best practices, optimized for availability and scalability.
And much more – See details below!
The BPD Package includes comprehensive user and administrator training. Rather than just learning how Perforce works, your team learns how Perforce will be used in your environment. Since we work with your key people ahead of time to make usage decisions, training for your users is more practical and focused. For example, we can address how to use Perforce in conjunction with your organization’s workflow management or issue tracking system.
Often an organization will get going with Perforce, but won't begin to reap the biggest benefits until several years later, as the key project managers begin to understand and implement advanced concepts, like parallel development, workflow automation, and document management. We get you to that "high ROI sweet spot" faster.
BPD Package Deliverables
Our Perforce Best Practice Deployment Package includes the following deliverables:
- A Software Production Line Automation Roadmap document, customized for your environment. This may recommend SCM strategies and procedures for concurrent development, directory structure standards, workflow automation techniques, automated build solutions, document management best practices, etc. depending on the needs of your organization.
- A mature and battle hardened Warm Spare Refresh System, which provides a Disaster Recovery solution and many other advantages.
- Perforce Proxy Server Setups for up to 3 remote locations, enhancing the ability to support geographically distributed development sites. Additional locations can be added for nominal additional cost.
- An initial Perforce server configuration review to ensure your hardware configuration is optimized for availability and performance, whether your server is on Windows, Solaris, Linux, or any other Perforce-supported platform.
A set of basic Perforce triggers to enforce common best practice policies. A few examples include:
- Rejecting files that don’t belong in version control
- Ensuring modifications to access controls are approved
- A set of Perforce administration utilities that automate common tasks. Examples include:
- Friendly New User Creation, complete with template-based initial workspace setup and integration with role-based access control policies.
- Clean User Removal
- Access Control Group Management
- Development Project Branch creation and new user setup (account creation and workspace setup).
- A set of Perforce user tools that make advanced Perforce features more accessible. Examples include:
- A utility to implement concurrent development concepts of Refresh and Promotion, providing safety catches that make advanced branching and merging concepts quickly accessible to your staff.
- A utility to automate procedures to rollback a submitted changelist
- A utility to automate procedures to detect changes made while working detached from the Perforce server (for example, working on a laptop while traveling).
- A customized Perforce Network Installer that simplifies Perforce install by presetting defaults defined for your organization (for Windows users only).
- Our enhanced version of a Change Review/Email Notification mechanism, allowing you to be notified by email of changes submitted to Perforce.
- A Perforce access control implementation (protections table) appropriate to your environment.
- An automated backup mechanism, which we review with your system administration personnel.
- A Toolkit that greatly simplifies automation with Perforce, particularly useful for Perforce administrators, build engineers and developers.
- Training: Two Days of user training and One Day of administrator training. Training is provided by a Perforce-Certified trainer with development experience. Training may be conducted on your premises, or at a technical training facility (with a nominal facilities cost).
- Documentation: An initial Release Engineering web site, complete with Perforce FAQ and documentation for all BPD utilities. This can stand by itself as a resource for your Perforce users, and it is suitable for inclusion in a Configuration Management document hierarchy if you have one. It documents all deployed software, including scripts, the automated backup mechanism, and the like.
- Support: Two weeks of offsite email and phone support after Perforce deployment/rollout within your organization. Annual support and maintenance is available with a Support Agreement.
Pricing
Please Contact Go2Group for current pricing.
BPD Package Options
In addition the base BPD Package, we provide the following optional add-ons:
- An LDAP integration, taking advantage of Perforce's external authentication triggers to make Perforce use your existing LDAP or Microsoft Active Directory server for authentication.
- Issue Tracking Integration: If you are using Atlassian JIRA for issue tracking, we can implement a Perforce/JIRA integration. Note that we also offer a JIRA Best Practice Deployment Package. If you are using other issue tracking or workflow management systems, we can integrate with those for additional costs on a time & materials basis.
- Wiki Integration: If you are using Atlassian Confluence for collaboration, we can provide our Confluence/Perforce integration. Note that we also offer a Confluence Best Practice Deployment Package that can help you get started with Confluence. If you are using other wiki or collaboration tools, we can integrate with those for additional costs on a time & materials basis.
Our Perforce Best Practice Deployment Audit is a customized solution intended to bring an existing Perforce installation up to speed with our Perforce BPD Package. We review your existing Perforce installation, and ensure that it is up to BPD Standards. This may entail things like:
- implementing a best-practices branching strategy
- ensuring that your acess controls are in line with your needs
- ensuring that a sufficient Disaster Recovery solution is in place
This package is ideal for the Venture Capitalist who wants to ensure their new veture starts off right, with a comprehesive installation a well-integrated suite of best-of-breed tools for key aspects of a Software Production Line, including:
- Perforce for Configuration Management
- Atlassian Bamboo for Build Automation
- Atlassian JIRA for Issue Tracking and Workflow Management
- Atlassian Confluence Wiki for Collaboration and Documentation
- A Test Automation solution appropriate for your environment
In addition our Perforce BPD Package, we also provide standard Perforce product training. Training can be conducted on your premises, at training facilities in Boston or Waltham, MA, or at rental training facilities near you. We provide a Perforce Certified Trainer, and use Perforce-certified training materials. Courses are influenced by extensive consulting experience, so your team will benefit from insights that go above and beyond basic "how to" knowledge.
The following courses are available:
Perforce Boot Camp
3 Days. Includes two days of intensive general purpose Perforce user training, and one day of administrator training. User training covers generic CM topics like best practices for parallel development, workflow automation, and document management with Perforce in addition to Perforce product training. Training options include Windows, Unix, Macintosh, or Mixed Environment training, with GUI or command-line focus. Course includes two optional Special Topics or Demos.
Perforce General Purpose User Training
2 Days. Boot Camp less the Admin training. Course includes two optional Special Topics or Demos.
Perforce "Gotta Get My Job Done" Training
1/2 Day. Suitable for non-technical Perforce users. Includes generic CM topics often of interest to non-technical users, such as web deployment and document management. Course includes one optional Special Topics or Demo.
Perforce Web Development Branching Strategies
1 Day. Requires Perforce Boot Camp or Perforce General Purpose User Training. This discusses advanced branching strategies pioneered by Go2Group and presented at the Perforce User Conference in 2003. We present revolutionary branching strategies that are suitable for web development environments that require both fast deployment of content changes and rigorous testing of functionality changes. Course includes two optional Special Topics or Demos.
In addition to basic Perforce Training, we provide short demonstrations or special topics that are appropriate for your organization. Each special topic or demo takes about 15-20 minutes. The following special topics and demonstrations are available:
- Demo of Perforce/JIRA integration showing benefits of interaction between issue tracking and version control systems
- Perforce/Microsoft Visual Studio .NET SCC Integration Demo.
- P4FTP Plugin Demo using MacroMedia DreamWeaver.
- P4/Eclipse Demo demonstrating Perforce interaction with the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers.
- Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Compliance with Perforce – A discussion on deployment of Perforce in the context of compliance projects.
- Got a special topic you'd like to see that's not listed here? Ask us!
Custom Course Preparation
If our existing courses don’t meet your training needs, please give us a call. We can work with you to arrange a training solution suited to your needs.
Go2Group Consulting Services
Go2Group Software Production Line Automation Services
Go2Group architects software development environments that achieve the benefits realized by manufacturing processes - extensive automation, efficiency, and reliability. Under the banner of productivity enhancement, we provide a wide array of consulting services. A few examples are:
CM Strategy Development - Need help developing Codeline Management Policy, or perhaps a high level Configuration Management Plan for your organization? We can help! We help our clients establish standards, plans, policies, and detailed procedures. In addition to work with clients, Go2Group is helping improve the state of our industry by serving as an active participant in the development of industry standards for configuration management.
Tools Evaluations - Software production lines typically integrate many components, like version control systems issue tracking systems, build systems, test automation systems, and the like. We help do deep evaluations necessary to establish a product as an enterprise corporate standard. Or we can help help a comprehensive business case, including ROI calculations, to challenge longstanding corporate standards. Obviously, we like Perforce. If you need help making the case to replace legacy systems with Perforce -- Call us!
Sarbanes Oxley Compliance Support - Go2Group has experience supporting those parts of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance projects that overlap with our core expertise in Configuration Management. See the article we produced in collaboration with Perforce.
Legacy Systems Migrations - Go2Group can support migration of your existing version control data to Perforce. In addition to having experience with publicly available conversion utilities to convert from CVS and RCS, Go2Group has developed an insightful, lightweight approach to migrations using our P4BBI.
Our Perforce Baseline & Branch Importer (P4BBI) provides an alternative approach to SCM migrations. This approach has provided a competitive advantage by offering a low cost alternative migration strategy to clients migrating from systems for which no supported migration tool exists, such as ClearCase and Subversion. It is a generic approach to import only "interesting" history from any SCM system into Perforce. Interesting history is captured in histograms, which define a series of baselines and major branching operations to capture and import. Even in cases where a supported migration tool exists, the P4BBI provides a way to leave behind years of uninteresting history, bringing forward into Perforce just enough information to support maintenance activities on old codelines.
This provides a cost-effective and technically straightforward way to migrate from IBM Rational ClearCase, by importing key baselines and enough branching history information to enable post-migration merge operations to work correctly.
The P4BBI has been used to successfully migrate to Perforce from diverse systems including:
- AccuRev
- IBM Rational ClearCase
- Subversion
- PVCS
- StarTeam
- VSS
Software Build Automation - If SCM systems are the foundation of any software production line, build systems are the heart. We develop, enhance, and extend software build systems for a variety of platforms. We have expertise with various popular build tools, like jam, ant, nant, and Cruise Control.
Systems Integrations - Need Perforce integrated with your issue tracking system, Help Desk ticket system, or perhaps requirements management system? We can help! Note that Go2Group is a North American reseller for Atlassian products, including Atlassian JIRA, a particularly popular workflow automation system that integrates well with Perforce.
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