One of the features that the developers like is that they can retrieve what they need with ISPW. They don't have to go through a process or request something be done by another team. They can get the programs they need, compile them, retrieve the JCL and alter the JCL if they need to, and put these programs wherever they need to go for their testing. They can promote all the way through to the production step. I know that might make a lot of companies nervous when we talk about the fact that developers can promote to production. What that means is the developers promote the code to the point of being ready to be released into production.  The release step is still controlled using your current approval process. This  gives the development staff a lot more control over what they're doing, and it dovetails nicely into an Agile process. ISPW is really great at giving the developers access to all of the components all the way through the process.

The control of actually putting code into production is more about the "when" and not the "how." In most companies, your change-control coordinators or business analysts,  or managers that release code into production environment, will still do that last step. That's all controllable and secure at different levels. But it really gives the development staff a way to get everything where it needs to be, staged-up and ready to be released so that they can go work on something else. And the management of that movement into production is still maintained through whatever level you choose. 

It's pretty much a purpose-built application for source control and change management. That's what we use it for.

The visual ability to see potential downstream impacts to code changes is a value add in helping our developers identify and understand the impact associated with their change. Utilization of the deploy feature in ISPW has also been a key functionality.

I think the most valuable features are code management, code deployment, and code generation. The fact that those three features are included makes BMC Compuware ISPW a robust product. If one of those features was missing, it would be less robust and less interesting. But because it has those three features, it is a very good solution for code development and management.

• The plugin ISPW integrated into Eclipse is a really valuable functionality for developers who already use it. It helps to have quick access to the components, to see versions, life cycle, and to do generation and deployment in the environments. 

• ISPW deployment can be interfaced using API to "XL Release" product (XebiaLabs). In the months coming, we are going to implement this functionality in our DevOps project.