Guides and Best-Practices in IT & Software Development

08/03/2022 in Technology

Project Management Tools: Jira, Redmine and Easy Redmine review

Maik Krause

When it comes to supporting the team in coordinating tasks, long-term projects and goals, the use of project management software is obligatory. This is the only way to transparently map individual planning steps and tasks and organize projects without losing an overview of the respective status, counteract problems in time and ultimately also meet deadlines. This post compares three popular tools: Jira, Redmine and Easy Redmine.

07/31/2022 in EcoSystem

DevOps Toolchain Cloudogu EcoSystem DevStarter

Daniel Huchthausen

The introduction of DevOps often involves changes in working methods and processes. Therefore, a flexible infrastructure is needed that is flexible and consists of easy-to-use tools to support cross-functional exchange. The Cloudogu EcoSystem DevStarter is an example of such an infrastructure.

07/06/2022 in EcoSystem

Completely carefree switch to Easy Redmine with Cloudogu

Maik Krause

Easy Redmine is a modern project-management tool based on the widely used open source tool Redmine and is used by over 300,000 users in over 3500 companies. As the only Easy Software Gold Partner in Germany, Cloudogu is your contact for switching to Easy Redmine.

05/31/2022 in Insides

Cloudogu as a signee of the Diversity Charter

Lena Skopek

Fittingly for the German Diversity Day on May 31st, 2022 and the 10th anniversary of this day, we are now also one of the 4500 signees of the Diversity Charter.

05/05/2022 in Insides

Transformability as the key to corporate success

Tatjana Ksienzyk

Our ambition is to accompany customers in the successful transformation of their software development processes. The proactive approach to change is the central focus here. In this blog post, I would like to give you an impression of the challenges we have faced as a company in recent years and how we have mastered them with openness and transformability.

04/12/2022 in Technology

BugShot: Browser plugin for Redmine

Philipp Ahrendt

BugShot is our new browser extension for Chrome browsers. It allows you to document visual bugs on websites and web apps directly from the browser window in Redmine or Easy Redmine as a ticket.

04/07/2022 in DevOps

Kubernetes least privilege implementation using the Google Cloud as an example

Lukas von Maikowski and Daniel Huchthausen

Everyone knows it: granting privileges is always a balance between security, usability and maintenance effort. If permissions are granted very generously, the effort is very low and there are rarely any hurdles to use; however, security is compromised. If permissions are granted sparingly, security is higher, but there are costly processes and a lot of administrative overhead.

03/17/2022 in DevOps

Mastering GitOps Event

Daniel Huchthausen

On April 07, 2022, the Heise online event Mastering GitOps will take place with an exciting program around the use of GitOps. In addition to a detailed introduction to the topic, the event will also show how Kubernetes clusters can be managed and how code reviews can be simplified.

03/11/2022 in Insides

Learning day at Cloudogu

Maik Krause

In keeping with our corporate values - collaborative, learning organization, mission-oriented - we have found another way to integrate professional development beyond learning by doing and to promote the fun of learning and self-organization with the introduction of our learning day. Find out what our learning day is.

02/08/2022 in Insides

Cloudogu is TOP Company 2022

Tatjana Ksienzyk

Full of pride, our first employer award recently reached us. We were awarded the TOP Company award for 2022 by kununu. This puts us in the top 5 percent of the most popular companies on kununu. We are very pleased that our applicants and/or employees have rated us so positively. In addition, it fills us with even more pride that our team members are so satisfied at Cloudogu GmbH.

02/02/2022 in Technology

XML-Parser Expat – All you need to know

Daniel Huchthausen

Recently, a vulnerability was discovered in the XML-Parser library Expat. It allows attackers to inject malicious code into systems and execute it there. Since the library is wide-spread, many systems are potentially affected by it. We have all the important information on this here.

01/06/2022 in Technology

How AI is taught to be agile

Axel Lütgering

In 2020, we received a very interesting request for a "Hands-on-Agility" training for employees of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), which electrified us. It offered us the chance to approach the booming topic of AI and to see to what extent the use of AI technologies can bring about a change in the corporate culture in the direction of "more agility".

12/14/2021 in Insides

The new myCloudogu Community

Maik Krause

2021 is and was an exciting and eventful year in many respects - despite or even because of the ongoing pandemic situation. A lot has happened at Cloudogu as well. But one of our big highlights was certainly the launch of our new myCloudogu forum, which gives our community a home.

12/14/2021 in Technology

Log4j, Log4Shell, LogJam – All you need to know

Daniel Huchthausen

Recently, the Log4Shell or LogJam vulnerability in the Apache Log4j library was discovered and the story has even made the mainstream news. Since millions of systems are affected and attackers are actively exploiting this vulnerability, affected systems need to be secured immediately. We have all the important information about it here.

11/30/2021 in Technology

SCM-Manager – Frontend and release for my first plugin

Eduard Heimbuch

Learn how to develop your own plugin for SCM-Manager. In this final part of our series we want to finish our plugin by creating the frontend, connecting it to the backend and finally releasing it. To connect the backend to our frontend we will use the REST API and HAL-Links. Also, we will integrate our custom links into the footer and add a new config to manage them with frontend extension points.

11/08/2021 in Technology

SCM-Manager – How to start my first plugin?

Eduard Heimbuch

This is the second part about plugin development in SCM-Manager. After finding out how SCM-Manager plugins work in general, let's go one step further and create a completely new plugin step by step. We will show you how to set up your first plugin and how the different layers in SCM-Manager work. Starting with the backend, we will look at persistence and the REST-API.

09/17/2021 in Quality

DevSecOps Report – Proactively prevent vulnerabilities

Daniel Huchthausen

Terms like DevOps or DevSecOps have become an integral part of our industry. In other words, agile software development that is focused on security is one of the most important approaches to modern development. Or is it?

09/17/2021 in Insides

Our visit to the Java Forum Nord 2021 – an event visit in times of Covid-19

Tatjana Ksienzyk

Until the very end, the implementation of this year's Java Forum Nord was uncertain. The organizers waited for the current handling regulations of Lower Saxony to fight the pandemic. Then at the end of August the decision: It will take place!

09/08/2021 in Quality

Want developers to code with security awareness? Bring the training to them.

Matias Madou

These are exciting times, with digital transformation bringing new disruptive technologies that impact the way we work, sleep, eat and how we spend our personal time. For developers, this fast paced world offers plenty of opportunity to be part of something great. The chance to make their mark on a project that would affect others for decades to come. But as these new opportunities emerge, so do new risks.

09/07/2021 in Technology

SCM-Manager - Why Plugins?

Eduard Heimbuch

If you have installed SCM-Manager before, you may have noticed how simple and small it is compared to other source control management solutions. One main reason for this is that tons of features are excluded from your default installation and can be easily added as plugins. But the currently available plugins are just the tip of the iceberg as you can simply write your own plugins using the powerful plugin API.

09/02/2021 in Quality

Is it possible to shorten release cycles and improve security at the same time?

Daniel Huchthausen

The world’s reliance on software is already great and will continue to grow. That's why the security of applications will also become increasingly important. This development is further reinforced by the global pandemic, as more businesses and services have increased their online availability. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), for example, has reported a 300% increase in cybercrime since the beginning of the pandemic: This shows that with the growing reliance on software and applications, the risk of attacks is also increasing.

07/28/2021 in EcoSystem

Cloudogu EcoSystem documentation (docs)

Philipp Ahrendt

The principle of good software is to present as many complex relationships as possible in an easily understandable way. Thus, our Cloudogu EcoSystem looks pretty simple even though it hides extensive operations under the surface. Nevertheless, the Cloudogu EcoSystem provides a surprising number of user interfaces. Even though we observe usability conventions to the best of our ability, yet some functionality requires explanation. Therefore, we decided to build a comprehensive, public documentation and guide as docs.cloudogu.com.

06/17/2021 in Quality

More security thanks to micro-learning and gamification – Secure Code Warrior plugin for SCM-Manager

Daniel Huchthausen

The regularity of media reports on cyberattacks shows that security is, or should be, a key issue for software development teams these days. Learning methods like micro-learning and gamification help to raise awareness and knowledge about security issues. The new Secure Code Warrior plugin for SCM-Manager integrates these approaches into the review process.

05/19/2021 in DevOps

DevOps in medium-sized companies – Is the hype justified?

Daniel Huchthausen

Is the hype around DevOps justified? Dr. Peer Faßnacht, Head of Customer Services at Cloudogu GmbH, says "yes" – if a few prerequisites are met. Read the interview with the magazine "IT Mittelstand" here.

04/21/2021 in DevOps

Coding Continuous Delivery: CIOps vs. GitOps with Jenkins

Johannes Schnatterer and Daniel Huchthausen

Continuous delivery (CD) is an agile software development approach that has proven to be a suitable way to reliably and repeatably produce high-quality software in short cycles. The use of containers and the cloud, e.g., on platforms such as Kubernetes (K8s), offers many opportunities to make CD processes more robust and simpler. One such option is GitOps. This article provides some concrete examples to illustrate the differences between classic CD pipelines (CIOps) and GitOps processes.

03/17/2021 in DevOps

Automation assistants: GitOps tools in comparison

Johannes Schnatterer and Philipp Markiewka

If you want to switch from classic CI/CD environments to GitOps, then you can choose from any of a large number of available tools. However, it is not always easy to tell which features they support and how suitable they are for your project at first glance. Help in making a decision.

03/04/2021 in Methods

Software Prototyping

Daniel Huchthausen

Prototyping is a great way to get an impression of how a product or idea could look like. In manufacturing you can use e.g. 3D printers to create prototypes. In software development you still have to code but you can apply different principles compared to developing a "real" product. We want to give a short introduction into software prototyping, because it can help you to develop better software, faster.

02/23/2021 in EcoSystem

DevOps Basics (2/2): Phases and Processes

Christopher Hablitzel

DevOps combines previously assigned tasks and roles at a company on the basis of agile working methods, automation and cross-functional cooperation in order to create a common basis for value creation. This post describes the phases and processes of this so-calles “DevOps life cycle“.

01/27/2021 in Methods

Remote event storming with Miro – hands-on tips, techniques, and evaluation

Axel Lütgering

Event storming is an interactive, group-based, dynamic brainstorming method based on the ideas of domain-driven design. The method calls for experts, developers, stakeholders, and customers to come together and jointly articulate a large picture of a business process and through the process of lively discussions arrive at a common language and common understanding.

12/16/2020 in EcoSystem

DevOps Basics (1/2): Advantages & Best Practices

Christopher Hablitzel

Shortly after you first start learning about DevOps, it becomes clear that there is no single clear definition of the term. It is not, as is often assumed, a tool or a programming language. Rather, to put it in a nutshell, it is a collection of procedures, practices, and methods to deliver new software features faster. The aim is therefore to shorten the time from the idea phase to publication in order to create satisfied customers.

11/26/2020 in EcoSystem

Advantages of a Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

Daniel Huchthausen

ince companies have very different requirements when it comes to data security, maintenance costs, security, legal compliance, etc., various cloud models have been developed. A basic distinction is made among “public”, “private” and “hybrid” cloud architectures.

10/28/2020 in Software Craftsmanship

Kubernetes AppOps Security Part 6: Pod Security Policies (2/2) - Exceptions and Troubleshooting

Johannes Schnatterer

Pod Security Policies (PSP) allow to use cluster wide settings that are used for all new containers. In comparison to the Security Context, the usage of PSPs not as easy, but especially for large organizations with large clusters it can be beneficial to use them, because they reduce the necessity for manual configuration.

09/30/2020 in Software Craftsmanship

Kubernetes AppOps Security Part 5: Pod Security Policies (1/2) – Good Practices

Johannes Schnatterer

Pod Security Policies (PSP) allow to use cluster wide settings that are used for all new containers. In comparison to the Security Context, the usage of PSPs not as easy, but especially for large organizations with large clusters it can be beneficial to use them, because they reduce the necessity for manual configuration.

09/17/2020 in Methods

Scrum vs. Kanban – How to select the best agile methodology for you

Daniel Huchthausen

During the last years it became common to use agile methods in software development. The most widespread ones are Scrum and Kanban. The 2020 "State of Agile" survey found that a vast majority of companies (~65%) uses Scrum or Scrum hybrids. The second place is held by Kanban and "Scrumban" with about 15%. That is why we want to compare those two methodologies.

08/27/2020 in EcoSystem

Backup and Restore with Cloudogu EcoSystem

Daniel Huchthausen

With the Cloudogu EcoSystem you can easily and efficiently create backups for your entire toolchain, without any additional work. The backup and restore Dogu secures the data of your tools and allows you to easily restore it in case you need to.

07/30/2020 in Insides

Impulses, Exchanges and Visions of the Digital Transformation

Daniel Huchthausen

On July 17th the Digital Transformation Forum took place for the very first time. In 18 sessions, the almost 100 participants had the chance to get a taste of, learn about and swap ideas on the versatile topics of the digital transformation. The goal of the event was to offer impulses, exchange and visions for the digital transformation of companies.

07/23/2020 in Methods

Remote Scrum: So close, and yet so far away

Axel Lütgering

The general challenges of working from home and beyond seem to have been considered in detail from all perspectives. That's why in this post we will focus on how to use the Scrum method for remote work based on the example of our company’s experience. Thus, the article will be very concrete and hands-on: How does Cloudogu address the issue?

06/08/2020 in Insides

The Effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic – An Experience Report

Tatjana Ksienzyk

The team here at Cloudogu has also been put to the test by the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic and the changes that have come with it. The company implemented its first set of sanitation measures in the early days of March. We made employees aware of the situation and distributed disinfectants to them. Everything seemed a bit surreal. But then everything happened very quickly.

05/20/2020 in Software Craftsmanship

Kubernetes AppOps Security Part 4: Security Context (2/2) – Background

Johannes Schnatterer

A container is basically a normal Linux process that runs isolated from the rest of the system via certain kernel components. This makes containers lighter but more vulnerable than virtual machines (VMs). To reduce this vulnerability to attack, the container runtimes offer a variety of settings whose default values strike a compromise between usability and security.

05/19/2020 in Quality

How to use Clean Code Development effectively in 2020

Artur Klosek

You can find out here how Clean Code Development can help you and what hurdles the integration of the approach entails in everyday life

04/21/2020 in Methods

How to define software requirements in 2020

Daniel Huchthausen

Whenever you start a project, the first step is to find out the initial requirements. Sometimes there is already a detailed functional concept, sometimes just a vague idea. The importatnt thing is that the requirements are explicit so that the final product will be able to meet them. If requriements are vague it is hard to be sure that they are being met.

04/15/2020 in Insides

SCM-Manager now part of Cloudogu

Daniel Huchthausen

We are happy to announce that the Cloudogu GmbH is now officially the owner of the SCM-Manager project. This step is the consequent development of the cooperation between Cloudogu and SCM-Manager.

04/07/2020 in EcoSystem

IT compliance in practice – correctly containing and deleting data and projects in B2B software development

Daniel Huchthausen

Since compliance is about adhering to regulations of any kind, this is very complex and individual issue. That's why this post will be dealing with a very specific topic: the deletion of data when the contract ends. In B2B software development, it is customary for contracts to contain a clause on the delivery or destruction of all records and documents related to the project.

03/17/2020 in Software Craftsmanship

Kubernetes AppOps Security Part 3: Security Context (1/2) – Good Practices

Johannes Schnatterer

The virtual construct of a “container” is a normal Linux process at its core that largely runs in isolation from the rest of the system using certain kernel components. This makes containers lighter but more vulnerable than virtual machines (VMs). To reduce this vulnerability to attack, the container runtimes offer a variety of settings whose default values strike a compromise between usability and security.

02/11/2020 in EcoSystem

Docs As Code – Continuous Delivery of Presentations with reveal.js and Jenkins – Part 2

Johannes Schnatterer

The first part of this series demonstrated the use cases and benefits of delivering presentations with reveal.js. They are Docs As Code, and therefore they can be subjected to versioning management and of course delivered via Continuous Delivery. Furthermore, we demonstrate how the Jenkins pipelines can be used to deploy to GitHub Pages using a model concrete implementation. This article demonstrates additional alternatives for deployment (Sonatype Nexus and Kubernetes), while the general structure of the `Jenkinsfile` remains the same.

01/20/2020 in Software Craftsmanship

Kubernetes AppOps Security Part 2: Using Network Policies (2/2) - Advanced Topics and Tricks

Johannes Schnatterer

In a Kubernetes cluster, everything (nodes, pods, Kubelets, etc.) can communicate with each other by default. If an attacker succeeds in exploiting a security vulnerability in one of the applications, he can easily expand his attack to all underlying systems in the same cluster. You can restrict this vulnerability using the on-board network policy features found in Kubernetes.

12/19/2019 in Methods

Agile facilitation – The toolbox for making everyday work fun

Axel Lütgering

Are you a scrum master, manager, or employee in the middle of a transformation process? Do you want to avoid uncertainties in the distribution of roles and responsibilities, for instance? Then this blog series is just the thing for everyday work facilitators!

11/26/2019 in Technology

For those who have gone through the pain ...

Boris Schaa

In the first part of this article series, we described how you can easily and quickly make backups using containers with Restic. However, backing up data is not an end in itself. Rather, it is about recovering data if the backed-up system fails. This article is dedicated to this aspect of backup, which is just as simple when using Docker as recovering your previous backup. Finally, we will also cover how to delete backups if you run out of storage space.

10/29/2019 in Software Craftsmanship

Kubernetes AppOps Security Part 1: Using Network Policies (1/2) – Basics and Good Practices

Johannes Schnatterer

If you deploy applications on a managed Kubernetes cluster, operations is responsible for security, right? Not really! Even though Kubernetes abstracts from hardware, its API offers many possibilities for developers to improve security for the applications that are operated on it, by not just using the default settings. This post explains for which attack vectors network policies can offer protection and it will also show pragmatic good practices based on practical examples.

09/25/2019 in Insides

Our impressions from the Java Forum Nord 2019

Artur Klosek

The Java Forum Nord 2019 on September 24th 2019 attracted numerous developers and Java experts to Hanover, Germany. Our impressions.

09/05/2019 in EcoSystem

Docs As Code – Continuous Delivery of Presentations with reveal.js and Jenkins – Part 1

Johannes Schnatterer

Reveal.js allows software developers to use web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to deploy slides for presentations and to display them in the browser. This eliminates the dreaded mouse-driven excursion into the world of PowerPoint/Impress, with its incompatibilities between Microsoft Office, Libre/OpenOffice, problems with Linux, and exclusive access requirements to make editing changes.

07/30/2019 in EcoSystem

Minimize administration effort

Daniel Huchthausen

It is curious that in the field of software development, in which developers create something new every day, the "never change a running system" approach is very widely followed when it comes to the underlying toolchain. Downtime is too expensive, whether something goes wrong when updating an important system and the developers are unable to work for some period of time or if even the most recent work status is lost. This post compares the required effort for the installation and the operation of a toolchain for three different scenarios.

06/28/2019 in Insides

Our impressions of the Developer Week 2019

Oliver Milke

In more than 200 talks by more than 150 experts, the participants could choose between news and innovations in the subjects web, desktop and mobile applications including technologies like .NET, Java, Python, machine learning and JavaScript.

06/18/2019 in Technology

Let’s roll up our sleeves and backup!

Boris Schaa

The word "data backup" does not invoke much cheering and rejoicing for many parties involved. This series of articles about the "restic" software package shows that this does not have to be the case. Restic simplifies many aspects of backup and restore to a great enough extent that you can focus on the most essential part: The underlying system structure. This article describes how to configure restic and back up data.

05/09/2019 in Software Craftsmanship

Continuous Delivery with Sonatype Nexus, Jenkins and the Cloudogu EcoSystem

Johannes Schnatterer

In order to meet the growing demand to release new features at an increasingly faster pace, these features must be implemented faster and faster. But that's just one side of the coin. After all, these features have to be put into production as well. Often, deployments are made manually and prone to errors. They tie up resources, and they may take a long time. The solution is complete automation, which is called Continuous Delivery.

04/09/2019 in Insides

SCM-Manager 2 Development – UI and Plugins

Daniel Huchthausen

Since our last update of the development of SCM-Manager v2 we've spent most of our time with the migration of plugins and main features, but we've also implemented some new features.

03/26/2019 Interview on Informatik Akuell website

Why it's worth it to be DevOps ready

Cloudogu CEO Thomas Grosser was interviewed by the magazine "Informatik Aktuell". Read the complete interview in German on the Informatik Aktuell website.

To the interview on Informatik Aktuell

02/22/2019 in EcoSystem

Why operating multiple Cloudogu EcoSystem instances can make sense

Daniel Huchthausen

Cloudogu EcoSystem is an extremely efficient way to operate a software development infrastructure. Nevertheless, there are scenarios where it might make sense to separate projects into individual instances of the Cloudogu EcoSystem.

01/22/2019 in DevOps

Where is DevOps going?

Jenny Dornberger

A recent study shows where DevOps currently stands and which hurdles are still to be taken. How we tackle the issue, you'll learn in our blog post.

01/18/2019 in Technology

Kubernetes is eating the (Container) World

Oliver Milke

Kubernetes is one of the hottest topics these days in the world of software development. Why is this the case and why is Kubernetes not just another technology that will soon be forgotten again anyway? In this post, we will answer these questions.

12/19/2018 in Insides

SCM-Manager 2 – the next news update

Daniel Huchthausen

With Christmas right in front of our doorstep, we feel like it is time to provide another update about the development of SCM-Manager 2, because there have been many changes since the last post.

11/23/2018 in EcoSystem

Update for the Git Wiki

Daniel Huchthausen

Not long ago, we released a new version of our wiki » Smeagol«. The differences might seem to be a lot on the outside, but you could say that we changed almost everything » under the hood«.

10/25/2018 in Insides

SCM-Manager 2 news update

Daniel Huchthausen

Some time ago, we announced that we would keep you posted about the latest development. Of course we want to keep our promise and that is why we are now posting the first update about the latest changes.

10/01/2018 in Software Craftsmanship

Java Annotation Processors – Generating Code

Sebastian Sdorra

In the third and final blog post of this series, we will demonstrate how you can generate source code with the help of an annotation processor, while in the intro part we have learned how to write, register and use a simple Annotation Processor and in the second part we created configurations.

09/25/2018 in Insides

Open Source Involvement

Daniel Huchthausen

Ever since the Cloudogu project has started, we were closely connected to Open Source. This connection is based on our strong believe that Open Source is the best way to develop software.

09/14/2018 in Insides

Java Forum Nord – For the first time with Cloudogu

Jenny Dornberger

The annual » Java Forum Nord« took place on September 13th 2018 and Cloudogu was there for the first time. In addition to our Gold-Partner sponsoring, 5 of our team members were in Hannover, but not just as guests; Oliver is involved with the organizing committee of the conference.

09/04/2018 in Quality

DevSecOps and GDPR – Why Open-Source Governance is so important

Shane Close

In an economy that is shaped by applications, software development teams face the challenge to release new versions faster, improve the quality and to expedite innovation.

08/06/2018 in Software Craftsmanship

Java Annotation Processors – Creating Configurations

Sebastian Sdorra

In the second section, we would like to focus on generating configuration files for a simple plugin library. To do this, we will write an annotation processor that exports all classes which are annotated with an `@Extension` annotation to an XML file. In addition to the full name of the class, the Javadoc for the class is also written to the XML file. Additionally, we will write a class that allows us to read these files from the classpath.

07/13/2018 in Software Craftsmanship

Coding Continuous Delivery — Static Code Analysis with SonarQube and Deployment on Kubernetes et al. with the Jenkins Pipeline Plugin

Johannes Schnatterer

Jenkins Pipelines were subject to three former blog posts. This last part one is dedicated to the integration of SonarQube, Kubernetes and CD on other platforms.

06/15/2018 in Software Craftsmanship

Java Annotation Processors – An introduction

Sebastian Sdorra

Java annotation processors are a very powerful tool in a developer’s toolkit. They can be used for many things, such as logging information during the build, aborting a build with an error message, creating configurations and documentation, altering classes or creating new classes.

06/06/2018 in EcoSystem

Private Software Development Cloud

Daniel Huchthausen

Due to the recent announcement of the acquisition of GitHub by Microsoft and the (sometimes very emotional) discussions about possible ramifications, it becomes obvious that people, teams or companies use services like GitHub for many different reasons. That is because they all have different prerequisites and requirements. GitHub hosts code for 100% Open Source developers as well as for companies with private repositories only and everything in between.

05/24/2018 in Software Craftsmanship

Coding Continuous Delivery — Helpful Tools for the Jenkins Pipeline

Johannes Schnatterer

After the first two parts of this series discuss the basics and the performance of Jenkins Pipelines, this article describes useful tools and methods: Shared libraries allow for reuse for different jobs and unit testing of the Pipeline code. In addition, the use of containers with Docker© offers advantages when used in Jenkins Pipelines.

05/10/2018 in EcoSystem

The Smart Wiki that Lives with the Code

Daniel Huchthausen

In software development it is crucial to share information; no matter what kind of information. Whether it is about technical or functions details or about requirements; good knowledge management helps you to focus on your work and to prevent mistakes. Probably you know this first hand: it is easy to start documenting something, but the difficult part is to keep it consistent, in a central location and up to date. Once a project has been running for some time you often spend quite some time to search folders for some specific document or you create new documents, because you didn’t know there was already a similar one.

05/02/2018 in Software Craftsmanship

Coding Continuous Delivery — Performance optimization for the Jenkins Pipeline

Johannes Schnatterer

If you’ve ever used a conventional CI tool to set up a Continuous Delivery pipeline by chaining individual jobs without any direct pipeline support, then you’ll know just how complicated this can get. In this article series, we’ll explain how a pipeline can be defined as code in a central location using the Jenkins pipeline plugin. In the first part of this article series, we’ll take a look at the basics and share some practical tips for getting started.

04/25/2018 in Quality

Crypto 101 basics

Oliver Milke

Especially in DevOps-environment like ours, developers are increasingly coming into contact with cryptography. This post layes out practice-oriented fundamentals for everyday development work without diving too far into security-related aspects.

04/19/2018 in Software Craftsmanship

Coding Continuous Delivery — Jenkins pipeline plugin basics

Johannes Schnatterer

If you’ve ever used a conventional CI tool to set up a Continuous Delivery pipeline by chaining individual jobs without any direct pipeline support, then you’ll know just how complicated this can get. In this article series, we’ll explain how a pipeline can be defined as code in a central location using the Jenkins pipeline plugin. In the first part of this article series, we’ll take a look at the basics and share some practical tips for getting started.

06/30/2017 in Methods

Reality check for another agile approach

Daniel Huchthausen

Some time ago we introduced the lean methodology #NoEstimates. We showed the basic principles and how to get started with it. Now, after some time, we want to comment on how to use this approach in reality. The time has come to figure out whether #NoEstimates is applicable in the real world and with real projects and we want to share some tips what you should focus on.

06/08/2017 in Methods

What does a Scrum Master do all day?

Daniel Huchthausen

Scrum Masters… What do you need them for? Those guys don’t help to develop the product, they are redundant! Worst case, the Product Owner can do his job! That is what many people think when they learn about the Scrum Master role. The quick answer to that question is simple: The Scrum Master is the guardian of the Scrum process, he keeps everything together. But what does that really mean? That’s what we will find out in this post.

03/30/2017 in EcoSystem

Source Code Management with SCM-Manager

Daniel Huchthausen

Over the years we talked a lot about SCM-Manager, but we never officially introduced it as one of the Cloudogu EcoSystem. Since SCM-Manager had its 6th anniversary not long ago, we want to catch up on that.We mentioned SCM-Manager the first time about 4 years ago, when the current version was 1.28. These days version 1.52 was released. That is reason enough to give an update on SCM-Manager, to sum up the changes and improvements that were made in the meantime.

02/28/2017 in Methods

First Steps Towards Test Management

Daniel Huchthausen

If you develop software it is inevitable to test the code that was programmed and there are several different ways to do that. For instance you can automate your tests or execute them manually. No matter how you carry out your tests you have to ensure that you test the right thing and that you test everything that is relevant. That is where test cases and scenarios come into play.

02/01/2017 in Technology

SCM-Manager Plugins – Redmine

Daniel Huchthausen

SCM-Manager can be connected to several issue tracking applications like Bugzilla or JIRA©. The basic functionality of those connections is the same: You can change the status and add comments to issues by using keywords in your commit messages. In this post we will show you how to use the scm-redmine-plugin to connect SCM-Manager to the popular Open Source issue tracker Redmine and thus improve your documentation.

01/17/2017 in Quality

Functional Testing with Gauge

Daniel Huchthausen

Gauge is a lightweight behavior driven testing framework that allows you to automate end-to-end tests. In this post we will show an example of how to write a test framework with Gauge in Java code. If you want to learn how to install and get started with Gauge, you should read this introductory post from our partner blog.

12/20/2016 in Methods

Software Prototyping – Rapid Application Development

Daniel Huchthausen

Prototypes are a great way to get feedback on design ideas and the feasibility of technical solutions. RAD (Rapid Application Development) is a methodology that focuses on starting development asap instead of writing rigorous design specifications. In contrast to the advice from the first post on software prototyping, to never use a prototype in production, RAD does exactly that. That is why we want to take a closer look at it.

11/04/2016 in Methods

How about a new agile approach?

Daniel Huchthausen

#NoEstimates is a lean and agile methodology that focuses on the delivery of customer value. To reach this goal it tries to minimize non-value-creating actions like the estimation of implementation effort for User Stories. In the first part we introduced the basic ideas of the methodology. In this part we want to provide some tips on how you can get started with #NoEstimates.

11/04/2016 in Methods

Just Another Agile Methodology

Daniel Huchthausen

In the » Lean way of thinking« effort to estimate the implementation time for tasks, user stories or features, is waste, because it doesn´t produce value to the customer, it just makes people feel better. Therefore time spent on such activities should be reduced as much as possible. #NoEstimates is an agile methodology that helps you to focus on creating customer value instead of spending time on things that don´t create value.

post icon Testing Docker© Infrastructure with Serverspec

10/06/2016 in Quality

Daniel Huchthausen

It is already quite common to describe infrastructure in code with e.g. Puppet or Chef. These days there is another option for that: Docker©. Especially for Docker© it is important to keep track of the infrastructure’s configuration, because sources for your containers might have changed or vanished. Therefore you should test your infrastructure to ensure that it is as expected. Serverspec offers you the ability to do exactly that.

09/09/2016 in Methods

Requirements Engineering Part 2

Daniel Huchthausen

Finding out about all requirements of a product and ensuring their implementation is the key to a happy customer and to satisfied stakeholders. Therefore it is advisable to invest enough time into investigating and finding out about requirements. In the first post about requirements engineering we introduced the "Requirements Traceability Matrix" that allows you to keep track of your requirements. To fill this list with content we now want to take a closer look at possible sources and the classification of requirements.

02/24/2016 in Technology

Daniel Huchthausen

SCM-Manager can be connected to several issue tracking applications like Bugzilla, Redmine or JIRA©. The basic functionality of those plugins is all the same: They enable you to change the status and add comments to issues. Beyond that the scm-jira-plugin offers several additional options which we want to explain.

02/24/2016 in Quality

How to improve software quality

Daniel Huchthausen

In the last post we defined quality as » the degree of conformance to explicit or implicit requirements and expectations« and took a closer look at the different terms of the definition. During this examination it became clear that quality starts with thoroughly defined requirments. In this post we want to go one step further and show which steps can be taken to improve quality.

02/24/2016 in Quality

Understanding Software Quality

Daniel Huchthausen

People often talk about high quality software products, but what is that? How can you measure or compare the quality of an application? Let´s take a closer look at this topic and discuss what quality is all about and how it can be improved.

11/12/2015 in Technology

Automatic Cloud Provisioning with Terraform – Part 2

Daniel Huchthausen

Using standardized rollouts for virtual machines in a cloud infrastructure has several benefits in software development to improve your performance. In the first part of our post we introduced the general advantages and explained the basic setup of Terraform. Now we will show you a basic configuration for the infrastructure and access rules that you can use as a basis for your first instances.

11/06/2015 in Technology

Automatic Cloud Provisioning with Terraform – Part 1

Daniel Huchthausen

In software development it is very useful to have the ability to make certain systems available on demand, for example for testing, deployment or additional build servers. The important thing about the systems is that they are available quickly and that their configuration and setup is as expected. One way to achieve this is by implementing automated provisioning of CloudStack instances by using the application Terraform.

08/31/2015 in Methods

Agile Contracts

Daniel Huchthausen

Agile approaches and methodologies are being used more and more, because the benefits of using them can be huge, e.g. improved quality of products. But often an issue arises that makes adopting agile in companies difficult: the contract with the customer. Clients often prefer fixed prices and demand a fixed set of requirements which is totally in contrast with the principles of agile approaches. This prevents that the development team can take advantage of the full potential. Lately, the awareness for this issue rose and efforts for creating contracts that support agile working are undertaken.

06/30/2015 in Cloud

Software Development in the Cloud

Daniel Huchthausen

It is predicted that the cloud market will keep on growing for the next years and that more and more businesses will start moving to the cloud. That's why we want to take a closer look at the pros and cons of this subject, especially focused on advantages and disadvantages for software development with cloud services.

05/28/2015 in EcoSystem

Artifact management with Nexus Repository

Daniel Huchthausen

Nexus Repository is a repository manager that serves as a central point for managing binary software components and their dependencies. In Cloudogu EcoSystem we use Nexus in combination with Apache Maven to manage dependencies.

04/28/2015 in Software Craftsmanship

Automated Release Management

Daniel Huchthausen

Use SCM-Manager Universe to implement an automated release-management for your projects. You can do that by using Jenkins and Sonatype Nexus. In this post we will show the necessary configuration for Maven projects with an automated deploy of snapshots and release of new versions.

03/06/2015 in EcoSystem

Static Code Analysis with SonarQube

Daniel Huchthausen

An easy way to implement continuous code inspection to software development projects is by using SonarQube. It offers various code inspection rules for a large number of programming languages. The application can be connected to continuous integration servers like Jenkins, Hudson, Gerrit, Bamboo or TeamCity via plugins. It provides you with a dashboard that tells you about the code quality of your projects. SonarQube is installed and ready to use on Cloudogu EcoSystem.

02/03/2015 in Methods

Code Conventions

Daniel Huchthausen

80% of lifetime costs goes to maintenance and hardly any software is maintained for its whole life by the original author. Therefore it is crucial that code is written in a comprehensible manner. Code conventions help to achieve this.

12/22/2014 in EcoSystem

Group Permissions in SCM-Manager Universe

Daniel Huchthausen

Depending on your team size, project structure and requirements, it can be very useful to grant permissions on the basis on groups, not for single users. Using user groups can save a lot of time when setting up a new project, or when a new member joins a team. Therefore we want to show you how you can implement your own groups in SCM-Manager Universe.

09/11/2014 in Quality

Automatic Code Review with SonarQube and Jenkins Part 2/2

Daniel Huchthausen

Subsequent to the first part of this post you can improve your code quality by implementing an automated code review system to your projects. You only need to perform a few modifications to SCM-Manager, Jenkins and SonarQube. In the first part of this article we already showed you the necessary configuration of SCM-Manager and Jenkins. Now, in the second part we will show you the necessary modifications to integrate SonarQube to the automated process.

09/09/2014 in Quality

Automatic Code Review with SonarQube and Jenkins Part 1/2

Daniel Huchthausen

A good way to improve code quality is to use code review. Often teams recoil from code review because it demands a lot of time. An alternative could be an automated code review system that checks your code for compliance with certain metrics and rules. With the Cloudogu EcoSystem you can implement such a system based on SCM-Manager, Jenkins and SonarQube. In this first part we will show you how to configure SCM-Manager and Jenkins. The second part will be about extending the system by integrating SonarQube.

04/01/2014 in Software Craftsmanship

SVN Repository Server Load Balancing and Synchronization

Daniel Huchthausen

In our support work of the recent past we saw that the topic of SVN repository synchronization seems to be a current issue. Therefore we want to show you how you can implement a master/slave server structure for load balancing. Slave servers are used for read operations and the master for write operations.

12/06/2013 in Software Craftsmanship

Permission Management with LDAP Groups

Daniel Huchthausen

After you downloaded SCM-Manager Universe the permission management for the development tools is based on individual user permissions. Since there seems to be a great interest in using group based permission management we want to show you how. We will show which modifications you have to perform in the tools and how you can handle groups.

07/22/2013 in EcoSystem

Continuous Integration Server Jenkins

Daniel Huchthausen

We would like to present Jenkins, a continuous integration tool that is part of the Cloudogu EcoSystem. We will introduce Jenkins and continuous integration in general and special circumstances of Jenkins as part of the Cloudogu EcoSystem.

06/05/2013 in Insides

Open Source. A Success Story

Daniel Huchthausen

What comes into your mind when you hear » open source«? Do you think about something that came up several years ago, which is now a trend in software development? Or do you think about something that was there from the early days of the computer age, went through a difficult time and is now celebrating a renaissance? In this post we give a condensed overview on the history of open source, its characteristics and a prospect on where it might go.

05/08/2013 in Technology

Getting started with Subversion

Daniel Huchthausen

Nowadays Git and Mercurial are the most often used version control systems. It can be said that they succeeded the former used CVCS in nearly all areas. Nevertheless there is still a loyal user community of Subversion (SVN). Until today older repositories remain of importance. Subversion, is an open source alternative to the well known CVS.

05/02/2013 in Technology

Getting started with MercurialEclipse

Daniel Huchthausen

Nowadays developer mostly don´t work only with a text editor but with an integrated development environment (IDE). Luckily nearly every IDE can be connected to the version control system of your choice by plugins. This article deals with MercurialEclipse, which is used to work simple and smart with Mercurial repositories out of the Eclipse environment. To facilitate the start, we will show you the installation of the plugin and introduce you to the first steps of Mercurial in Eclipse. The intention of this article is to enable you to configure Eclipse and to check in and out your code. For those of you who prefer to work with Git, we have another getting started article prepared for you.

04/25/2013 in Technology

Getting started with EGit

Daniel Huchthausen

Eclipse is one of the widest spread multi-language software development environments (IDE) that has an extensible plugin system to nearly every existing version control system. This article introduces briefly the installation and the usage of EGit as a standard interface connecting Eclipse and Git repositories. Since we do not want to leave out the biggest rival of Git, a second article focusing on MercurialEclipse will follow.

04/22/2013 in Technology

Git vs. Mercurial

Daniel Huchthausen

With the dawn of DVCS many different systems emerged and their number is increasing. Since the beginning, two major solutions fight for the throne of the "best" DVCS: Mercurial and Git. While both do their job very well there is an almost religious debate which one is THE best.

04/18/2013 in Technology

Source Code Management and the SCM-Manager

Daniel Huchthausen

Nowadays distributed source code management is a must-have tool for every developer and a large number of different implementations compete for attention. So getting started is a complex task. To make the start more easy we want to show you today the development of source code management from centralized to distributed systems and the on top tool SCM-Manager. In following articles we will familiarize you with the different version control systems (VCS) in more depth.

04/17/2013 in EcoSystem

SourceCode Management for Git, Subversion and Mercurial

Daniel Huchthausen

Do you strive for something smart and efficient to manage source code? You are excited about the great tool, SCM-Manager, but you are not an expert in source code management yet? We will explain you, how to get started with SCM-Manager step by step.

04/17/2013 in Insides

Open Source. More Business

Daniel Huchthausen

Open source an option for my business, too? What advantages does open source have? And where are its limits? Find out about the advantages and disadvantages of open source, and discover the risk-free solution to make open source software useable to your business.

Here we share all kind of interesting information and insights concerning these topics:

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