If you are wondering why you should use SBForge as hosting platform, here are the arguments.
- Testimonials — Here you can find other peoples experience of the SBForge site and contribute with your own.
Collaborative tools
Modern approaches to software development are based on a teambased collaberative effort, opposed to the more classical silo based partitioning of work in a project. The SBForge development platform are heavily focus on lowering the barriers to sharing of information.
The central idea is to provide a shared updated information model, which can be accessed by all project members. Without a collaborative tooling model, the sharing of information will be done on a occasional and general basis, mostly face-to-face, by email or over the telephone. In the collaborative tooling setup all the project information can be accessed continuously and with as many details as need .
Classical project | Collaborative project | Collaberative and |
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The SBForge information model isn't confined to individual project, so the information can be aggregated form across entire the SBForge site. Other relevant context could be information regarding a specific user (me), organisation unit (SBForge), content type (forum), process area (test) or just plain 'googling' for information to a specific question.
Integrated tools
A major is the ability to integrate data across the project tools. This capability is critical to the concept of focused views. Without integrated tools you would be limited to access the information contained in a single application at a time, eg. your information context is defined by the tool.
| Fragmented project information in non-integrated tools | Integrated information model |
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If you on the other hand use a sufficiently integrated tooling platform, like SBForge, information will not be localized to the individual tool, but you can instead access the whole of the information cloud, focusing on the model aspect specific on your current role or problem you are working on. An example of this is accessing the information related to a specific feature. In a non-integrated information system you would properly access information through the documents containing the feature aspects, this could be test documentation, QA documentation, task documentation, code, etc, which would provide a very fragmented view of the feature if you could find all the relevant information at all. In a integrated information model you would be able to focus directly on the features, with the tools aggregation all the feature releated information from the different project models into a focused view. You can of course still view the information in a process focused, user focused or any other way you require.
Classical process focused documentation | Dynamically generated feature centric view |
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Customizable
We have tried to find tools enabling us to tailor the tools to suite our specific needs. The means all the tools making up the SBForge platform are highly configurable, both on global and project basis. The vast majority of this configuration is easily done through the tools individual GUI's, which is necessary for us to use the customization possibilities in practice .
Extendable
All the tools used in SBForge are based on plugin architecture, allowing us to extend the functionality of the base applications, with the features suited for our needs.
Powerful permission model
Because of the integrated nature of the SBForge information model an advanced permission model needs to be part of the setup. This is achieved by using tools with powerful permission configurations, couple to a central user management system (Crowd).
Modular
Even though the SBForge platform consists of a number of heavily integrated tool, it is not required that you only use SBForge tools in your project. You may chose to use other tools besides the ones provided by SBForge, this will in fact proberly be the case for most of the projects hosted at SBForge.
Open Source friendly tools
All of the tools used at SBForge are provided free to the Open Source community. As a result many Open Source projects are based on the tools used at SBForge.
Best-of-breed tools
The SBForge tools have all been selected and implemented according to the qualities mentioned.
The advantages of the individual tools are listed below: