Randy Novick

Randy Novick manages the Horizon Clinicals SCM team at McKesson? Corporation, building hospital informatics software. Before McKesson?, Randy worked for dralasoft, a company that produced an all-java embeddable workflow engine. dralasoft was sold to Verity software in San Diego, California, which was then absorbed by Cardiff, a dralasoft customer from years back.

Randy has a BA in English (writing - CU Boulder, 1991) and an MS (information systems - CU Denver, 2003).

McKesson? is a multi-plaform shop, developing on AIX, HP-UX, Linux and Windows. Randy maintains a dozen different Cruise Control projects across a half-dozen branches.

Randy subscribes to the CruiseControl user and devel lists. Randy opened a wiki in 2002 that was devoted to Cruise Control documentation because he wanted to help users of free XP-oriented SCM tools have an easier time learning and using Cruise Control. Giving developer contributors and end users an easy patch of common ground was also part of the inspiration.

Randy thanks Ward Cunningham for offering up the space for the original wiki (now long gone), and JonathanJulian? for pointing the way towards what Cruise Control documentation should be

You mentioned on the CC Wiki that the content may move by May 2003? Did you find another host? I should be able to get ThoughtWorks to host the wiki if you haven't already planned another location. -- JasonYip

Thanks, Jason. Yes, I have a feeling that the Cruise Control Docs wiki will become superfluous in about six months. I will submit all of the content to sourceforge (integrating whatever new content they have at that time) and suggest an expanded set of headings from the tangential ones currently offered. I'm trying to meet the needs of the new, bewildered users that don't know where to start, and have a hard time appreciating the tool and the community behind it. Once the necessary documentation develops, and I think it will around May of next year (it takes about six months to get a really good FAQ going), my role diminishes. The amount of knowledge to collect and describe starts to taper off, and new people don't need to look outside the project for pointers. So far, Ward hasn't kicked me out, though I have fumbled quite a lot in my presentation. I'm hoping that I can afford to host it myself before May, but I can't expect to live on Ward's good graces forever. Let's do stay in touch. -- R

I'd actually like to keep the wiki going... but we'll see what happens as things progress. Thanks a lot for running with this. I've had setting up a CruiseControl wiki on my todo list for ages... -- JasonYip

Well, I've pretty much abandoned the idea of submitting the documentation to sourceforge. It appears as though the wiki has taken hold and become somewhat of a fixture. People are using it, people are contributing, and that's all that is important. So far, I haven't heard anything from Ward about getting rid of it. It may soon be the right time to get sourceforge to adopt the wiki, or at least link to it as a supplement to the docs they already offer. Just some thoughts. I plan on totally divesting myself from the wiki, anyway, so I leave it to someone else with good intentions to coordinate that. -- R

I've learned that I was wrong about trying to keep the wiki (and the energy in it (and the cooperative spirit)) as a separate complement to the project this past year, and wrong about the goal, and how to best have it served well - building vibrant, helpful, accessible documentation for users and developers. It doesn't matter if it's at the CC wiki or wherever. The benefits of having a more dependable, formalized approach to documentation are really AS SIGNIFICANT as the benefits of having a place like the wiki for all that other creative and instant-grat tanglefoot. I've been a difficult partner to developers up to now, and somewhat lax about my attention to the wiki, but I can change those things. I don't know why I thought that the freedom and ease and responsibility of a wiki could support itself, independently of the project, but it's become clear that people shouldn't have to worry about their stuff being deleted. I grew a year today. -- R 3-17-04

The cruisecontrol wiki, at its new home, is great. The project has moved a long way, and I'm very glad to be a continuous user of CruiseControl for all these years. Recent talk about re-architecting the tool has been pretty exciting, and I hope that the project understands (eventually) that continuous integration tools have an audience beyond our developer-oriented space. Thank You CruiseControl Submitters! --R 4-27-05

I realized that it's been a couple years since I updated this page. I'm still using cruisecontrol and it's been a valuable part of the McKesson? development space. I'm now managing the group that I started working in back in the fall of 2004. As time goes on, I seem to let go of my engineering chops little by little. I'm sure they're still around, and all I have to do is dust them off again, but I find that I'm more occupied with planning and relationships and strategy. It's not so bad. I finally have a chance to shape the engineering "world" I used to work in. Thanks for stopping by! -- R 5-16-07

Welcome! if you haven't yet, check out NewUserPages and TourBusStop.

CategoryHomePage