Getting agile development from careening out of control has long been a challenge to organizations conducting with teams scattered across multiple sites. For source code control systems like IBM’s Rational ClearCase that rely heavily on scripts for updating, that can become a burden because large-scale projects don't simply involve check-ins and check-outs of individual snippets of code, but configurations that apply to multiple pieces of related code artifacts.

AccuRev supports streams, a departure from the branches and labels that constitute the way ClearCase organizes artifacts. In essence, a stream is a more object-oriented approach to representing code and the configurations that apply to it, in that it can inherit configurations and changes from other streams – a feat not easily pulled off with ClearCase. So having one support the other requires a feat akin to object/relational mapping, in that AccuRev needs to map its streams onto ClearCase’s branches.

So what does this all have to do with agile development? With their ability to inherit changes, code can be more readily changed or refactored on the fly, especially if the change was initiated by a team or through a branch of code that was recently added or moved into to the project. By contrast, in ClearCase you would have had to pre-plan the branching of code in advance, a clearly un-agile approach to development.

The new version of AccuRev, which has added support for ClearCase, was designed for a scenario where local groups of developers break off from ClearCase. That is, like an enterprise database, you just don't replace your source code control system overnight, if ever. Thus provides a path for satellite groups who need a more agile tool can sync their code with the mother ship.

The company, like many ISVs, had a great 2007; it claims that the momentum hasn’t stopped as of January 2008.

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