We have now covered the entire development cycle, from developers completing tasks in their development projects, through the build managers gathering and testing of tasks, to the final project release and the establishment of a baseline for the next release. The figure summarizes how projects are used to implement the workflow. The arrows show how tasks flow through the various projects. The key points in the figure are:
- The project shown as the baseline project is the one that developers normally copy to a development project. Alternatively, a developer could copy the Integration Testing or System Testing project. Developers typically copy from a project that is a member of the baseline. The project shown at the end, PROJECT-2.0, is part of the new released baseline. In the example, only one project is shown for the sake of simplicity. Typically, a baseline contains many projects.
- Each developer has a project that includes the latest baseline. The build manager creates a baseline after the completed tasks pass integration testing. Each developer also has a personal folder (for example, Jane’s Assigned or Completed Tasks for Release editor/2.0) to gather his or her tasks for the specified release. Each developer can add tasks to or remove tasks from the project grouping.
- The build manager uses the integration and system testing projects for testing. The integration testing projects use a folder named All Completed Tasks for Release editor/2.0, that gathers tasks using a query. The build manager adds approved changes to or removes approved changes from the project grouping.
- The build manager creates a baseline from each integration testing build and system testing build that passes the appropriate level of testing. At the end of the release, the build manager releases the final system testing baseline.