Featured Extension: Polarion Work Item Integration for Tortoise SVN
Project managers… listen up. Here’s something that can keep your developers both productive and happy. Facts of life: managers love solutions like Polarion because it automatically tracks and delivers critical information managers need, not to mention traceability, collaboration, compliance and other good stuff. On the other hand, developers tend to resist such solutions because they seem like a distraction. Developers value focus and flow, and their tools. This month’s featured Polarion extension is designed to leverage the benefits of the Polarion platform with a popular developer tool: Tortoise SVN.
Subversion is still one of the most widely used version control systems. TortoiseSVN is one of the most popular Subversion clients. Polarion4Tortoise is an extension from SEABAY IT & Media Services that integrates Polarion Work Items into Tortoise SVN
What it does
With the extension in place, developers have a special Tortoise window where they can enter and save a query inthat finds any set of Work Items… tasks and issues assigned to the developer for the current sprint or release, for example.
Then, when the developer is ready to commit code that resolves a Polarion Work Item, s/he can select the item from a listing that appears in Tortoise during the commit operation.
The IDs of the selected Work Item(s) are then included in the standard Subversion commit message in the Tortoise Commit dialog. Polarion automatically links the the revision in SVN to the Polarion Work Item(s) on commit.
Why you might want it
While this may seem trivial to a project manager, it is extremely beneficial from the developer’s viewpoint. Why? Because there is no distraction. Without this kind of assist, to comply with your management requirements the developer would have to:
- leave the development environment
- open a web browser
- log in to Polarion
- browse or query for assigned Work Items
- open the item(s) just fixed
- go back to Subversion and find the revision number (because they forgot to note it when they committed!)
- go back to Polarion and enter the revision number in the Linked Revisions field of the Work Item.
Not so much time really, and a small price to pay for the traceability, transparency, and process compliance, right? Right… from the project manager’s viewpoint! The developer viewpoint? A colossal distraction and breaking of flow… and reason to resist adoption of a solution like Polarion.
The good news is that developers using Subversion can auto-link their commits to Polarion Work Items using any SVN client by simply entering Work Item IDs in the commit message. (Other version control systems are also supported. ) The Polarion4Tortoise extension streamlines the process even more for developers using Tortoise SVN.
Key Facts:
- Verified commercial extension supported by a Polarion Partner.
- Current price: $549 (US)
- Free trial version available: DOWNLOAD
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