Behavior Driven Development is not Domain Driven Design?

I had been aware of behavior driven development for a while, but researching my previous post on Test Driven Development I came across something that really had me scratching my head. The general view of BDD is an evolution or refinement of TDD with the goal of making TDD more natural and easier to understand. A big part of BDD is a change in mindset from thinking about testing to thinking about behavior and class design. To this end doing BDD has behavior classes, not test cases. BDD also has methods that specify behavior with names that clearly describe the expected behavior and begin with "should" instead of "test". All this is well and good and I expect will make things easier to understand, especially for developers new to agile development.

What has me more than a little bothered is the linking of BDD with "domain driven design" and the "ubiquitous language" as described by Eric Evans in his excellent book. The Behaviour-Driven Development web site and Wikipedia entry read as if BDD is somehow a logical extension of domain driven design. I read everything I could find and saw nothing to backup the claim. Maybe the site is incomplete, or perhaps it just shows the weakness of implementing the Behaviour-Driven Development site as a wiki. So far I am not convinced that BDD has the depth to accomplish domain driven design. From Domain-Driven Design -

"Domain-driven design is not a technology or a methodology. It is a way of thinking and a set of priorities, aimed at accelerating software projects that have to deal with complicated domains."

Stories will not produce the rich domain model that is needed. Here is the template for a story -

Title (one line describing the story)

Narrative:
As a [role]
I want [feature]
So that [benefit]

Acceptance Criteria: (presented as Scenarios)

This is just an variation on the agile user story and is still too simple, low level, to narrow in focus to result in deep domain knowledge. BDD may give you a well crafted set of classes that implement a feature or story. But how will those classes look in the context of the domain? Will the result superficial or insightful? Will the object connections and interactions be deep and rich, full of meaning, or shallow and empty?

Will the developers following BDD understand the vision of the domain model? Will they understand that changing the code is changes the model and the changing the model requires changing the code? It's an issue of the old saying "not seeing the forest for the trees". How do you see the big picture when the focus is so tight on a story and feature and the classes that implement them.

"Getting the Words Right" and method names that start with "should" and read like sentences won't guide anyone toward a ubiquitous language for the domain. Getting the language right requires a thorough understanding the the problem domain and that does not come from coding user stories.

Don't get me wrong I'm a big believer in agile development and unit testing. I understand that TDD and BDD are as much about design as they are about testing. I been using JUnit since something like 1999. I know how much better unit tests make my code and how much they can improve the design of the classes being tested. But I don't use tests to for domain modeling.

References

DanNorth.net » Introducing BDD
Beyond Test Driven Development: Behaviour Driven Development (Google Video)
In pursuit of code quality: Adventures in behavior-driven development
Test Early » Using BDD to drive development

Test Driven Devlopement Reality Check

Over the last few months I've been reading blogs and articles evaluating the scope and scale of TDD -

Scaling Test-Driven Development
Unit testing; how far do you push the envelope?
TDD Proven Effective! Or is it?
What's more important: TDD or acceptance testing?

But what really got my attention was a blog by James Coplien, "Religion's Newfound Restraint on Progress", and a debate about the value of TDD between Coplien and Bob Martin recently posted at InfoQ. James Coplien has been on the forefront of software development trends for a couple decades. He is an object oriented and design patterns guy from way back and an agile coach today. His opinion is worth is paying attention. That's why it was quite a surprise to read how opposed he is to TDD. Whether you agree or not it's certainly worth some consideration. All the quotes below are by James Coplien from his blog or his comments on several other blogs (you'll need to read the blog comments for the full text of some of the quotes below).

'The answer, I think, is to focus on Quality and to find the techniques that work best and are the most cost-effective for your project. Just answering "both" to the "TDD-or-acceptance" question is not only at the wrong scope, it is missing the whole point.'

I think Coplein's objections come down two main points, cost effectiveness and the effects that TDD may have on a system's architecture. Further he is concerned that the procedural nature of TDD just does not fit well with the object prardigm.

'Most of TDD is based on xUnit, and the unit of any given test is a procedure.'

'Testing the functionality of object member functions causes one to focus on the functions and lose sight of the objects ...'

I've been programming with objects since the late 1980's so this hits home. The overall quality of an object oriented application is much more than the quality of the individual objects. It's about how the objects interact and fit together. We need to look at a higher level than a method or even a class to understand that interaction and create a good design.

'... this implies that TDD doesn’t make sense for a system where objects are the primary organizing principle. I don’t know how to test an object. Objects are about structure; what needs to be tested is the degree to which they map the user’s cognitive model of the domain.'

I'm still trying to absorb this completely, but my take again is that it's not about a single method or class, it's about the whole system and the objects it is constructed from. On the other hand I know from experience that tests inform class design. When a class is hard to test, perhaps I feel the need to make a private method public to test it properly, I take that as a sign that the class probably needs work.

'In the past five years I have yet to run into a single person who is doing it for other than one of two reasons: that it makes them feel good about themself, or that they are a lemming.'

Ouch, seems a bit strong and even hurts a little because I have to admit that good JUnit tests do make me happier. (The rest of these quotes are from "Religion's Newfound Restraint on Progress").

'Discussions in this area inspire passion. Why? ... People have tied their Agile success to their introduction of TDD practices into their work. It's the one thing they can do as individuals rather than as an enterprise.'

It's true, but I think part of it is also that "good" developers have pride in their work. TDD and unit tests in general are a way we get to directly impact the quality of our code without interference.

'On one hand we should be encouraged to use every weapon in our arsenal; on the other hand, we'll never get done if we try to do everything. It then becomes a matter of cost effectiveness. Integration and system testing have long been demonstrated to be the least efficient way of finding bugs. Recent studies (Siniaalto and Abrahamsson) of TDD show that it may have no benefits over traditional test-last development and that in some cases has deteriorated the code and that it has other alarming (their word) effects. The one that worries me the most is that it deteriorates the architecture. And acceptance testing is orders of magnitude less efficient than good old-fashioned code inspections, extremely expensive, and comes too late to keep the design clean.'

'Sorting these things out requires a system view. It used to be called "systems engineering," but the New Age Agile movements consistently move away from such practices. It shows in the quality of our interfaces, in the incredible code bloat we have today relative to two decades ago..'

It seems reasonable to ask if complete unit test coverage is really the most cost effective way to reduce bugs? I know unit testing has improved the quality of the applications I've worked on the last eight years. But could we have written fewer tests and gotten the same level of quality?

I've always been skeptical that TFD or TDD alone can produce a good architecture for the long haul. As much as I love refactoring, I'm not convinced that I can refactor my way to a great design. The idea that there is no need for any overall system design is crap. At the same time the idea that an architect can completely design a system upfront is just as crappy. Some level of system design and vision needed, but we have to learn from the system and adjust the design as we iterate. I'm a big proponent of "domain driven design" and the bottom line is I just don't think a real domain design will just emerge from coding, testing and refactoring. Domain design takes hard work and thinking, design effort not coding. Writing code is too low-level, too focused on details rather than useful domain abstractions.

'Agile is about engaging that user; TDD, about engaging the code. TDD is a methodology. TDD is about tools and processes over people and interactions. Woops.'

That's a pretty stinging indictment. If true if TDD isn't following agile principles. But I wonder if some the power of TDD is the simplicity and explicitness of its method. The best developers can succeed no matter what the process, but we all no that most software is not written by star developers. TDD sems simple enough fpr anyone to understand and follow to at least improve the quality of class level design and that's be worth something.

'It's about thinking, not about checklists.'

I can't disagree here because I've know too many developers who want easy answers or rules to follow. Software isn't like that, it's to much of a craft and takes constant attention and thinking to do well.

Overall I don't agree with James Coplien, but I think the discussion is worth having and hope everyone will keep an open mind. I know that unit testing (and lot's of it) has improved the quality of the my code and code written by my teams over the last eight years. I'm not a believer in one true way for software development or anything else. I think it is necessary to create a software process that works for you, taking the best practices that work for your in you environment.

Big Ball of Mud

This post at Object Mentor reminded me that I'd never actually read the "Big Ball of Mud" paper by Brian Foote's and Joseph Yoder. Quoting from the paper -

"A BIG BALL OF MUD is haphazardly structured, sprawling, sloppy, duct-tape and bailing wire, spaghetti code jungle. We’ve all seen them. These systems show unmistakable signs of unregulated growth, and repeated, expedient repair."

I'm sure everyone has seen one, worked on one, and even created one. I'm also certain that in general things aren't much different since that paper was first published in 1999. Here is a link to a "Big Ball Of Mud" Google video presentation by Brian Foote from August 2007. I guess that since the authors are still talking about the pattern we should expect it to be around for a while longer.

The next time you need to wade into the swamp, you might want to take a copy of the book "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" with you.

The Discipline of Agile

An article by Scott Ambler at Dr. Dobb's does a nice job refuting the idea that agile development is not disciplined. I think some of this might come from the lack of ceremony on agile development projects. Things get done and no one makes a big deal of it. Software is normally usable (and very likely releasable) at the end of every iteration, so the actual release can be anti-climatic. Contrast that with traditional methods where every phase or milestone is a big deal and release is often an earth shaking event. Maybe the traditionalists are just mistaking all their ceremony for real discipline.

Never Start With the Data Model

My bias is for object oriented design and domain modeling. I am convinced that you don't build great software by starting design with a data model. I think starting with the data model is just about the worst idea and pretty much guarantees mediocre software. The best systems start with a domain model and work through the various layers of the system down to the database, not the other way around.

The database should be left until as late in development as possible. Experience shows this is not the case because creating the database is usually one of the first things on a project task list. Instead we should be asking how soon do we really need a database? The unit tests will be better and faster when they don't need a database. You know that data access should be encapsulated behind an interface. Why not leave the database until we know what the data requirements of an at least partially working system are?

Honestly, I can't think of a harder way to try to conceptualize a system than through a data model. Do your users understand a database schema? Is a database schema the model of your system you want to carry around in your head? Great software requires a model that can be used to communicate with users, developers, product owners, and domain experts. I don't think a data model is how any business person conceptualizes their business processes. What you need is a consistent coherent domain model that can can be used to make sense of a system at any level. You must be able to "peel the onion" to discover details as needed. Design by data model immediately forces all the nasty gnarly implementation details front and center. It is a well understood user interface design principle that bad designs expose details of the data model via data entry screens. The worst designs percolate the data model from top to bottom.

The best software solutions model a problem in the problem domain. A data model is a solution in the database domain not the problem domain. So why is the database schema where design so often starts? Maybe it's the mainframe mentality in big corporations, or naive developers who don't really understand object orientation, or just a general ignorance of object oriented design and domain modeling. Eric Evans wrote great book on domain driven design that is not as widely read as it deserves to be. In that book he talks about the "ubiquitous language" of a software project -

"A domain model can be the core of a common language for a software project. The model is a set of concepts built up in the heads of people on the project, with terms and relationships that reflect domain insight. These terms and interrelationships provide the semantics of a language that is tailored to the domain ..."

I don't see such a language ever coming from a data model.

What prompted me to write this was a post touting the new release of an "active record" object relational mapping framework for Java and some controversy it generated in this post. As you can probably guess, I'm not really a fan of the active record design pattern. But reading the posts and the comments, and knowing how popular Ruby on Rails is, it's clear that lot's of developers are very big fans.

I don't get it. Maybe it's because active record is so easy to understand. I suppose active record might work for small systems. But I would never want to use it on any even moderately sized enterprise software project. I see enough ugly code, highly coupled, tangled classes, and mangled hierarchies without database access code mixed into my business classes and immediately coupling my design to the database. I shudder to imagine the maintenance headaches it would cause. At least I'm in good company -

"Another argument against Active Record is the fact that it couples the object design to the database design. This makes it more difficult to refactor either design as a project goes forward."

Martin Fowler, Patterns of Enterprise Application Integration

"In an object oriented program, UI, database, and other support code often gets written directly into the business objects. Additional business logic is embedded in the behavior of the UI widgets and database scripts. This happens because it is the easiest way to make things work, in the short run.

When the domain-related code is diffused through such a large amount of code, it becomes extremely difficult to see and to reason about. Superficial changes to the UI can actually change business logic. To change a business rule may require require meticulous tracing of UI code, database code, or other program elements."

Eric Evans, Domain Driven Design

I hope the fans of active record know what they could be getting themselves into, but as usual I doubt that is the case.

There Aren't Any Rules

I know a lot of programmers won't agree but there are few, if any, "rules" for writing good code. It doesn't matter what platform or language or type of software you are writing. If you think someone can hand you a set of rules that you can follow to write good code you are mistaken. I try not to call anything a rule anymore. Now I call them guidelines or principles. The difference is that a guideline needs to be interpreted and judged to know when it should be applied. A guideline might also apply to more than one case.

Sorry, but I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow about what I told you today was the right thing. This profession is too young, changes too fast, and is too much of a craft for rules written in stone. I've been doing this long enough to know that many things we consider best practices today are likely to change tomorrow. Remember hungarian notation? At one point you would have flunked a code review if you didn't use it, now you'd be more likely to flunk if you did. How about object oriented design? I remember when inheritance and polymorphism were going to save the world. Now too much inheritance is a sure sign of bad design. How about unit testing? We're still discovering the best techniques for things like mock objects.

Much of what makes good code depends on situation and context. Michaels Feathers says it very clearly -

"Good programming is contextual. Practice is contextual. We can articulate rules about how to use language constructs correctly, but they're just guidelines. Context is king."

When Good Code Looks Bad, Michael Feathers

I'd like to add that it is also about having the knowledge and judgment to know which guideline to apply when. There aren't any shortcuts, it takes judgment, practice, and study to write good code. Becoming a good programmer is hard work and you won't be one by following a set of rules. But you might become one if you practice and study the art of programming.

Metrics To Improve Unit Testing

At Test Often Joe Ponczak lists seven metrics that you can use to make your methods more testable, "Seven Metrics to Improve Your Unit Testing". Experienced unit testers will probably be familiar with the metrics but it never hurts to review. I mainly mention this because it is the blog for CODIGN Software which makes some nice reasonably priced Eclipse plug-ins for writing JUnit tests and analyzing code coverage.

p.s. I sure don't like the white on black color scheme on the blog though.

What makes software so hard?

Great article in the August issue of The Rational Edge, "What makes software so hard?". I have been convinced for some time that software is a design and not a manufacturing process. The article clearly describes the difference in explaining where in each type of process lie -

"On the other hand, for software projects, the relationship between
architecture and design versus production is not only inverted, but in
fact approaches infinity: since the production or manufacturing costs
for software are almost nil, almost all cost for a software
project comes from the workflows dealing with the creative parts --
that is, the invention and design of software."

Another great quote is the author's comparison of software to writing a novel. The metaphor fits so well -

"In a sense, creating software is far more closely related to writing a novel than to any traditional engineering effort -- an author is free to construct whatever type of story, limited only by his imagination and whatever facts may be necessary to the narrative. Furthermore, the author must construct the architecture of the story in his head, and to make sure the design and implementation of the story is consistent with the overall architecture. The quality of the author's product is to a high degree based on whether he succeeds in keeping the details of the story consistent with the architecture."

It is the notion that software is like manufacuring that has really turned me against big process improvement efforts like CMMi that are pushed from the top down. Anyone in a corporate environment has likely lived through at least one such effort. They usually seem so to be attempts to create predictability that does not exist in software and turn developers into interchangeable pieces that can be shuffled around a Gantt chart.

The Mysteries of Debugging?

Why do so many programmers find debugging so hard? Sure there are exceptionally wicked bugs, but most of the time we make debugging harder than it needs to be. The only secret I know of is having the right attitude and using the right approach.

How Not to Debug

Trial and error

Just guess at what the problem is. Add lots of print statements to the code and hope one of them shows you what the problem is. Make changes until the problem goes away. You don't need to know the cause as long as the bug is fixed.

Blame it on the ...

That's impossible, certainly it can't be a mistake in my code. It must be the compiler, database, network, and so on and so on.

Don't Understand the Problem

Don't dig deep enough to understand the cause. Fix the first and most obvious thing you find. Then fix the next most obvious thing when the same bug shows up again later.

Gentlemen Start Your Debuggers

That's what the debugger is for so fire that sucker up and start stepping. We'll just step through every line of code until we find the bug. You've got nothing but time right?


The Right Approach to Debugging

First don't panic! Programming is about solving problems and a bug is just another problem to solve. Of course you must approach debugging in a logical and organized way. The first thing you need are some some clues. Using the clues you can develop a theory and tests to validate the theory. Once your theory is validated you can implement a fix. This is very similar to applying the scientific method :

1. Gather data
2. Form a hypothesis
3. Perform experiments that test the hypothesis
4. Prove or disprove the hypothesis
5. Rinse and repeat as needed

Techniques for Successful Debugging

Repeatability

You need to reliably reproduce the bug. If you can't reproduce it when needed you can't test it or know when it is fixed. Reproducing a bug can be the hardest part of debugging.

Find the simplest test case that demonstrates the bug. You want to make it quick and easy because you will need to recreate the bug many times. The harder the bug is to recreate the less sure you will be of the cause and your solution. It is often worth the effort to create the smallest simplest program with the least code and clutter that shows the bug.

Analyze All the Available Data

Before rushing into a theory about the cause of a bug you need to make sure you have completely analyzed all the data that you have about it. Don't jump to conclusions because your first instinct will often be wrong. Look at the problem from as many directions as possible first.

Make sure you understand what the data is saying about the problem. We've got a great new technology called an exception that holds enough information all by itself to tell you the exact problem and the line of code where it occurred. Take the time to read and understand the full exception output. Time and gain I find myself pointing out to a programmer that the exception is telling them exactly what the problem is and all they need to do is read the exception output.

Turn on as much application logging as possible and take the time to thoroughly examine the log or trace files. There are so many freely available open source, high quality, easy to use, logging and tracing frameworks available for every platform that there is no excuse for any application not to generate high quality error and debug logs.

Narrow Things Down

Use a binary search or divide and conquer technique to zero in on the problem code. You need an organized hunting expedition not a haphazard ramble through the code to find bugs.

Look at what has changed recently. If things worked fine last week then figure out what has changed in the code or its runtime environment and look there first.

Explain the Bug to Somebody Else

When you aren't making any progress, stop, take a breath and find someone else to talk the problem over with. So often the simple act of explaining a problem generates an insight before you are even finished with the explanation. If just explaining things doesn't work then the other person may have a great idea of their own.

Fix the Real Problem

The symptom you see may not be the actual bug. You need to find and fix the root cause not the symptom. Be sure you are fixing the problem and not just treating a symptom. When you find the problem look around for any similar problems. We all tend to make the same mistake more than once.

Write a Test Before You Fix

First, The test will be a good demonstration of the bug and when the test succeeds it can be proof that the bug is fixed. Second, you just spent valuable time finding and fixing the bug and a test will help ensure that it does not come back to waste your time again.

The Compiler is Not Broken

The compiler, database, wahtever is not broken. There could be bug there, but don't start from that assumption it will just waste time. Believe me it is not a bug in the compiler, compiler writers are way smarter than you or me.

One Change at a Time

Never make more than one change before testing the bug again. If you make two changes how will you know which one fixed the bug and if which change is actually needed.

Check the Simplest Thing First

Bugs are often caused by some silly mistake or oversight and the simple things are easy to check and fix. The unlikely things are hard to check, so save them for later.

Use the Debugger

I saved this one almost for last because it should be a last resort. Debuggers are wonderful and powerful tools! But debuggers can also be tedious, time consuming, and confusing. Sometimes they are the only way to figure a problem out, but to use a debugger effectively you first need to narrow down the code that needs to be checked. Don't let the debugger be the first tool you reach for.

Use Tools to Find Bugs Before You Deploy

The best way to fix a bug is to never let it get deployed. It should not be necessary to remind any programmer to turn on as many compiler warnings as possible, but unfortunately, I know it is. When you have all the compiler warnings removed from your code, run a static analysis tool aver it too. There are many open source and commercial code analysis tools available so get at least one and use it to analysis ALL of your code for bugs.

References

"The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master" by Andrew Hunt, David Thomas
"Code Complete" by Steve McConnell
"The Practice of Programming" by Brian W. Kernighan, Rob Pike
Debugging strategy: easy stuff first
Fix The Bug, Not The Symptom

Discpline and Software Development

Jeff Atwood writes over at Coding Horror that "Discipline Makes Strong Developers". Discipline is important and the best developers are certainly disciplined. But what sort of discipline are we actually talking about? Let's start with what sort of discipline we are not interested in -

• Not imposed discipline.
• Not about drill sergeants or enforcers.
• Not about being able to code in low level languages like C or assembler.
• Not about being anal-retentive.
• While I have great respect for Watt's Humphrey, it's not about recording and reporting every minute detail of your work day.
  

Disciplined software development is about -

• self-discipline
• focus
• attitude
• approach
• organization
• responsibility and accountability

This includes the having the discipline to -

• write the unit tests
• add the Java Doc comments
• find the best name for a variable or method
• leave the code better than you found it
• fix problems not of your making
• improve your skills
• learn new things
• keep the coding standards
• use source control
  
• check-in changes frequently
• run the units often
• run the unit tests before every check-in
• write a test for a bug before you fix it
  
• get your code reviewed
  
• fix the problem not just treat the symptom
• keep code consistent

As a technical lead I struggle with this. I have no desire to be the cop, but there can be too much bad code to ignore. One helpful option is automation. Use analysis tools to identify coding problems, violations of coding standards, and generate test coverage metrics. Automate your builds and do a nightly integration build or preferably a continuous integration build after every change. Run the analysis as part of every integration build. Fail the build if there are to many violations and notify the development team of every failure.

I think that ultimately it is up the individual developer to have pride in his or her work. I think the Pragmatic Programmers said it best. A developer must "Care About Your Craft" and "Think! About Your Work".

What is software design?

Michael Feathers has a recent blog "It's All Design" where he says:

When I think about what we do in software development, I find it hard to imagine similar things happening in other fields.

He goes on to speculate that an auto designer would never be given a requirement such as there must be fifteen drink holders. I think he's wrong and that we operate in the same way as in many other fields. Come on, there really are vehicles with fifteen cup holders and I can't imagine any auto designer doing that without such a requirement.

In the comments Michael says "I try to imagine what happens in conversations with architects.". Well my wife has a degree in Architecture, but worked in the field only briefly before moving into software development. She has found great parallels between the work in both fields. We are currently working with an architect to design an addition to our house and one of the first things our architect did was ask about any features and requirements we had in mind.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that software development is just one big design process. I really hate how the software development process is so often compared to a manufacturing process. In software the manufacturing is not the development of an application it is copying that application to a disk. What we do, even the lowest level coding, is design not manufacturing.

But I don't agree with Michael Feathers that requirements and design are the same thing:

Maybe requirements is just a word that we use because we're dividing our design work between two groups.. a group that determines the higher level design (what the product will do); and the lower level design (how the product will do it).

Requirements frame design but are the same as design. Something like a performance requirement does not say anything about the design of a product. Software development is a design process and requirements are part of the process, but a stating a requirement is not the same as making a design decision.

"Mocks Aren't Stubs" Revisited

Reading the book "xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code" made me take another look at Martin Fowler's 2004 article "Mocks Aren't Stubs". I'm glad I did because the article has been significantly updated (it's practically a rewrite and nearly twice as long) to reflect new thinking about mock objects. The first thing I noticed was the new terminology that is consistent with the "xUnit Test Patterns" book. The second thing I noticed is the new ideas about the different styles of using mock objects. The updated article is definitely worth a read or a re-read.

It looks like we are beginning to develop a shared language around unit testing, like what happened with refactoring and design patterns. It's interesting to watch this kind of thing as it matures and we learn more. It reminds we of how much object oriented development has changed over the last twenty years.

What's Your Build Process?

So what is your build process like? Is simple or complicated? Is it manual or automated? How many of the Five R's of Agile SCM Baselines does it satisfy? I've been doing a lot of work on software build process lately and here is a simple four step process that mostly satisfies those "Five R's" -

1. Get the latest sources from the SCM repository (branch or mainline).
   
2. Execute the build against the latest sources.
   
3. Commit the results of the build back to the SCM repository.
   
4. Label the results of the build in the SCM repository (branch or version as needed).
   

Four steps, looks pretty simple. I can't think anything simpler that would be very robust. So how about automating the process? What would be simplest way to get this fully automated and as mistake proof as possible. There are lot's of build server out there, both open source and commercial, it seems like on of them ought to be able to handle the job.

I've evaluated quite a few build servers recently (I'll post reviews later) and can't find one suitable product. They all easily handle continuous integration builds, but none can automate all four builds steps. Obviously, all the servers can mange step 2, and they all partially handle step 1, i.e. getting the sources from the main line. All the servers can check out source code, but if you want to do it from more than one branch you need a configuration for each branch. None of the servers can commit anything back to the repository without external scripting of some sort let alone branch your project. If I need to write scripts or maintain multiple configurations what have I gained over just doing the four step process manually?

This is for Java application development and Ant is used for the building. I've looked at enhancing the Ant builds and as much as I like Ant, it is just not well suited for this task by itself. It might be possible to write custom Ant tasks, but I really don't want to create a custom build system that needs to be maintained. It's enough work just maintaining the Ant builds as they are. Something seems wrong when it is so hard to automate such a simple process.