Insulated and collaborative development

Insulated development occurs when developers do not want to receive changes made by other developers until after those changes have passed integration testing. Insulated development is a stable environment where the developer is insulated from other developers' ongoing changes.

Collaborative development occurs when developers want to receive the latest changes completed by other developers, rather than waiting until those changes have passed integration testing. Collaborative development enables developers to collaborate and share each others' changes as soon as the changes are completed.

When a developer checks out a project, he can choose the project's purpose (Insulated Development or Collaborative Development). A project's purpose can be changed in the Properties dialog box. The purpose will determine which tasks are added to the project when he updates it: Insulated Development indicates that the project selects the developer’s tasks plus the most recent tested tasks, while Collaborative Development indicates that the project will select the developer’s tasks plus all completed tasks, whether or not they have been tested.

Teams can choose to get each others’ changes after they are tested or after they are checked in. The level of insulation is determined by which objects are selected when they update their projects. A process rule is a pattern that defines how projects created for a certain purpose will be updated, by automatically setting up the update properties for a project. For example, by default, Rational Synergy provides process rules for Insulated Development and Collaborative Development.

These process rules correspond to the purposes for Insulated Development and Collaborative Development.


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