Creating a development stream for testing baselines

When you make a new baseline, lock the integration stream so that you can build and test a static set of files. Otherwise, developers can inadvertently cause confusion by delivering changes while you are building and testing. Locking the integration stream for a short period of time is acceptable; locking the integration stream for several days can result in a backlog of completed but undelivered activities.

To avoid locking out developers for a long period of time, you may want to create a development stream and use it for extensive testing of baselines. If your project uses feature-specific development streams, you may want to create a testing stream for each feature-specific development stream so that you can test the baselines created in those streams.

If the development stream is configured to be read-only, you can build and test the new baselines, and developers can deliver changes to the integration stream without being concerned about interfering with the building and testing process.