The Times They Are a-Changin’ ? Maybe Not

Published March 8th, 2010 Under Software Development | 2 Comments

I will rather say that history repeats itself. By the way, this is a quote from Hegel and Marx added that first time was tragedy, and the second time farce. Yet this post is not about a Bob Dylan against Marx debate, but about a thought that came when, after following a conference presenting some of the IBM Rational products, I discovered the Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration initiative. OSLC defined itself as “a community effort to help software delivery teams by making it easier to use lifecycle tools in combination. The OSLC community is creating open, public descriptions of resources and interfaces for sharing the things that software delivery teams rely on, like change requests, test cases, defects, requirements and user stories.” I first thought that Rational Jazz, self-defined as “an open platform designed to support any industry participant who wants to improve the software lifecycle and break down walls between tools” would be the place for tool integration. Apparently building this platform was not enough to foster tool collaboration.

I was traveling back 20 year back in time when IBM already tried to combine multiple tools data in a single repository, an initiative called AD Cycle. The grails (without groovy) of having different vendors tools communicating has been since then attempted again by some other “standards” like CDIF (Common Data Interchange Format) or PCTE (Portacle Common Tool Environment). I am sure that you have all heard about these initiatives and that they are one of the key factors when you make a tool acquisition decision. Aren’t they?

One of the problems of these initiatives for uniting tools is that vendors mostly favor bilateral alliances and create integration with selected partners. However, the most important issue is that except for IBM, most of the industry players have a (very) short life expectancy. Most of them will disappear before the time needed to define and implement such standards. Anybody remember of Knowledgeware’s ADW, Index Technologies’ Excelerator or Arthur Andersen Method/1? If yes, it means that you have some gray hairs … and a good memory (let’s see the positive points). The current list of tool partners of OSLC is far from being impressive and the probabilities that this initiative will have the same fate than its predecessors are high.

Review of 2009 for Software Development: Many Acquisitions and a Funeral

Published January 21st, 2010 Under News, Software Development | 2 Comments

Last year has certainly been busy for the software development tools industry. We have seen many companies merging together and also the funeral of one of the oldest brand in the software development industry. Read more

The Consultant, the Coach and Delivering Value

Published January 4th, 2010 Under Software Development | 3 Comments

The Winter 2009 issue of Methods & Tools contains an interesting article from Rachel Davies about Agile Coaching Tips. She shares her experience that is also available in the excellent book that she wrote with Liz Sedley. When I reviewed her book this summer, I started thinking about the coaching role that external people are now assuming versus the traditional consultant position. On the same question I saw a recent blog post discussing the utility of agile coaches. The author said that you should accept advice only from people that had achieved themselves something big, citing personalities like John Carmack or Linus Torvalds. Read more

More than 1000 Videos and Tutorials on SoftDevTube.com

Published August 13th, 2009 Under Links, Software Development, Videos | Leave a Comment

I am glad to celebrate that there are now more than 1000 software development related videos and tutorials categorized on SoftDevTube.com. It is also the time to thank all the conferences and independent producers that allow us to offer this knowledge to the software development community.

A (Mostly) Agile Java Day at Jazoon

Published June 26th, 2009 Under Conferences, Methods & Tools, News, Software Development | 3 Comments

Methods & Tools is the sponsor of a large number of software development conferences, but I cannot find the time and budget to visit them. This year I managed to find some time after the publication of my summer issue to visit Wednesday the Jazoon, an important Java event located in Zurich. Besides the global morning keynote, the conference has five parallel tracks, so the first thing in the morning is to make your choice between 30 presentations. This is easier for me, because I am not a Java specialist and so I focused on talks with content that could reach outside the Java community. Read more

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