SEEK operates Australia's most widely-used job search site, seek.com.au. To keep the site fresh, fast and functional, SEEK employs a team of developers, who are engaged on numerous concurrent enhancements. These developers used a source code repository tool for version control, but found it increasingly difficult to use, partly because it restricted them from working on the same section of code at the same time.
'We have a constant pipeline of development projects,' says Shane Lavelle, Deployment
Manager, SEEK. 'That means we need robust source control systems. These systems manage the code that each developer works on and ensure we don't develop version control conflicts.
In addition, downloading code from the repository took a lot of time, with some developers had to wait 45 minutes before they could resume work, which slowed our development time. What we really wanted was a closer fit with our integrated development environment (IDE) to enable us all to work more seamlessly.'
Working together with Readify, SEEK deployed Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010. Readify helped integrate this with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN, and trained developers in how to work with it. This solution comprises a variety of source code development features, including Version Control, Work Items Management, Continuous Integration and Reporting Tools. More sophisticated version control means developers can work closely with each other without disrupting each other's code. And the ability to complete and deploy enhancements faster has helped with the company's move to Agile Software Development.
After deployment, the immediate response from SEEK developers was overwhelmingly positive, and Team Foundation Server is now being used to help manage all development projects.
Integration with Visual Studio Ultimate has increased productivity by providing developers with single step compiling capabilities and better source code version control and tracking.
'Ultimately Team Foundation Server speeds our time to delivery,' says Lavelle. 'When we want a new feature, we can have it built, tested and operating on the SEEK Web site much faster.'
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