Tools and techniques for building and testing software systems

A major issue for each software project is its choice of software building and test processes and the models, methodologies, and tools used to implement them. The project needs efficient and effective procedures to manage change, control versions, and integrate the software to ensure cost-efficient, on-time deployment of a software system. Within AT&T's software-development community, increasing attention is being focused on quicker delivery of higher quality software. As a result, past and current practices are being evaluated and upgraded. This paper outlines some processes, tools, and techniques that offer a potential set of solutions for a variety of software-development platforms. We focus on the SIMP process, which extends some existing tools to provide a software-development process and technology for building, integrating, and testing software systems in AT&T. We believe that SIMP (which stands for software integration, management, and production) offers a generic solution in a set of tools configured to meet the needs of many software-development environments.