![]() Otherwise, we’ve recently started diving into CI builds to get them up and running for all. To put things into perspective, this entire process occurred via email thread previously, and we have 50 named users and 50 approvals-only users. Finally, and only after they sign off, that’s when we push it to release all the way. Then in production, the QA team does another smoke test in BuildMaster in production again. Once QA is done, the QA testers sign off on their test in BuildMaster, and then our SDLC requires the product management team and the development managers to sign off on the release before it moves to production. Our process looks like this: We go through development and then the release coordinator approves before we send it to the QA environment. ![]() “It’s a very easy, intuitive interface to understand and implement a process in, but also keeps our developers focused on development.” One of the first things I did with BuildMaster was create a custom workflow for our approval process. That was the key driver I was looking for a tool that would be easy to maintain over the long run. It’s a very easy, intuitive interface to understand and implement a process in, but also keeps our developers focused on development. One doesn’t need to know much about programming. That also has been taken care of by BuildMaster.įinally, with all the canned actions BuildMaster has made available it is easy for our deploy analysts who aren’t necessarily developers to implement build and deploy processes. It’s also worth mentioning that with our old way of doing things, while the team prepared for production nothing could be approved and it had a ripple effect of delaying other aspects of deployment as well. ![]() There has been a definite savings of 48 hours a week or so, which is 200 developer hours/month. Now it doesn’t take any time, because it’s all in BuildMaster. To be more specific, we previously had 2 full time employees spending two full days to plan for release. “It has provided us the flexibility to manage our releases” It has provided us the flexibility to manage our releases, because we do over 450 releases into production a year. Now we have a nice dashboard so we can see the stage per each release, and the status of approvals. It gave us the ability to manage the releases electronically, whereas in its manual state it was very messy and error prone. The nice thing about BuildMaster is that it is not only a build tool, but it is also a deployment tool. What are some of the benefits switching to BuildMaster ensures for our end users? That’s when we purchased BuildMaster, commissioned Inedo’s professional services, and we worked it out piece by piece. What I found was that I could mirror the same manual processes we were already doing, except automate it with BuildMaster, so there wasn’t necessarily a process change so much as just automating that process, which was ideal. BuildMaster seemed perfect for us based on OE Connection’s culture and processes. ![]() One of my teammates saw an ad for BuildMaster on The Daily WTF, and it was the first I’d heard of it. What lead to you considering BuildMaster? This was causing so much pain for OEConnection that I was brought on to simplify and automate the processes. As you can imagine we also lost entire teams of people regularly because of this. The team working on it would normally have to work all weekend to get the deploy into production and get the bugs worked out. The entire build-release process, from change request documents for web config files, to keeping track of all the releases and how they relate to one another, was completely manual. Prior to BuildMaster we were on monthly release cycle with one “mega build” per month. Serving the industries of Automotive, Heavy-Duty truck, and beyond, OEConnection equips some of the world’s largest original equipment manufacturers, their franchised dealers/distributors, and their customers with timely and accurate online parts marketing, procurement, and wholesale management solutions.Ĭan you give me an overview of how you developed software before BuildMaster? As the automotive industry’s largest OE parts marketplace, OEConnection connects more than 35,000 North American buyers and sellers to seamlessly market, manage, and move an average of over 6 million original equipment parts transactions monthly. OEConnection is an award-winning technology leader and innovator of original equipment (OE) replacement parts solutions. Working closely with BuildMaster he changed OEConnection’s release philosophy in a big way. But, Mark recognized the benefits of the methodology that was emerging on the scene. When we first began working with Mark Rainey, Team Lead in Configuration Management for OEConnection, in early 2010, the word DevOps wasn’t as common as it is today.
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