Dimensions CM is Software Change and Configuration Management for Agile development, developed by Serena Software and now sold by OpenText.
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PTC Windchill RV&S
Score 8.2 out of 10
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PTC Windchill RV&S (formerly Integrity Lifecycle Manager of the Integrity suite) is an MBSE (model-based systems engineering) suite. The former Integrity suite contains an Asset Library which supports systems-of-systems approach to design (i.e. linking models into higher-level models that subsume them), a Process Director which is designed to articulate, manage and improve the design process, and a Modeler for visualizing and controlling the product design process. The Integrity suite is…
Serena CM is well suited to highly controlled, audited, and process driven environments. It will allow strict segregation of duties, and change traceability. If implemented correctly it will help you quickly build trusts with your auditors. It is also well suited to environments that require constant branching and merging. Due to the complexity of the product and learning curve for your development and operations team it may be overkill in a small shop with loose rules
PTC Integrity is an excellent source code management and version control tool, and I would suggest anyone to use it for that purpose. We can even define our workflows using individual forms for implementing Change Management, Defect Management and Access management requests. If properly used, this tool is great for managing our code for very long periods, considering my 4-5 years of usage. Though the UI could be better, and integration with some application servers could be better implemented, this tool is a good tool.
Code Promotion: Dimensions CM allows supervisors to control changes to code, in that they delegate requests to developers, and act as a gatekeeper prior to promoting to the next environment. This functionality is configurable so you can set up a workflow that best fits the structure and requirements of your own company.
Code Repository for changes and versioning: Code can be checked out by item or by synchronizing folders. Code revisions can be compared against other revisions or work files. Item histories show which developers made which modifications, and which supervisor and operations personnel were involved in assigning the request and promoting the code to each environment. Additionally a pedigree will show a stream diagram which graphically displays branches and merges.
Deployment: Serena Change Management offers help automating deployment including integrations with SVN and Jenkins. Its newer versions also have a powerful graphical deployment automation tool (Serena Deployment Automation- SDA). It comes with a certain amount of licenses built-in. If you have a many nodes to deploy to there will be separate licensing costs for that.
The only major negative that I have encountered with Serena CM product is that the very power and flexibility of the tool means there is a risk that you will make a mess of things. In other words it gives you plenty of rope to tangle yourself with. I recommend careful, well thought out deployments implementing the built in roles and workflows that can be turned on and configured, using a consistent methodology.
My experience with the Serena help desk support has not been impressive. Though reasonably polite and diligent, the technicians were well trained, and often gave bad advise and terrible scripts. On several occasions I had to rewrite scripts they have me; if I had run them as provided they would have caused even more difficulties than the problem I was trying to solve. I speak of the support in the past tense because I conditioned myself not to call them, it was usually just easier to solve nay problems my self. They do have a good account management team though, and for any major issues you can go thru them.
It can be overwhelming with the number of tabs, functions and ways to achieve the same result. The average user may struggle with learning the tool.
The text editing in Integrity is weak and does not provide many options. Because of this, many user decide to use MS word instead, to document requirements.
I do not make decisions on what tool my company uses. I am just the user of the tool and such decisions are not handled by me. If I were to make such decisions, I would definitely renew MKS, considering the amount of data we have stored in MKS and the current number of users who are familiar with the system
PTC Integrity comparatively could be considered a nice Source code management, Version controlling tool and could be compared with tools like StarTeam. If the integration to move/migrate code could be integrated into this tool, it would become an extremely powerful tool.
PTC Integrity administration can be somewhat daunting. They have been able to help with every question that I have submitted. Their support website is very easy to understand and submit questions and their phone support is wonderful
Serena CM is superior to Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) in overall functionality, but does not have very good native integration with Microsoft. Therefore in a Microsoft centric shop with no audit needs ,TFS would be better. Otherwise I would choose Serena CM
I think the reason that PTC Integrity was initially chosen is that it was the best product available in the mix at the time. This coupled with the PTC deal on multiple products was a no brainer based on the size and scope of potential users.
Serena has facilitated our annual completion of various audit and technology control certifications. These certifications make a huge difference to our company's reputation and bottom line.
MKS Integrity has proved to be particularly useful in the software development process by increasing employee effieciency
MKS integrity has also made software development a very efficient process and makes feature releases and bug fixing a lot easier
In addition to the above, our organization has been able to support manufacturing easily by reverting to a previous software version in case of an emergency.
It has also led to faster time to market for new products.
