Screenshot of Visual Studio Client for Jazz Rational Team Concert

VS Client for RTC

Excellent news! Some info about the Visual Studio client for Rational Team Concert! Apparently early builds may  be available as early as November. Sign up for jazz.net and read more info here.

RSDC UK 2008 Review

So RSDC UK is over and I’m finally getting a chance to blog about it. It was cool to meet so many old friends and new make new connections. There were even some blog readers that were able to recognise me IRL by mentally adding 6 years and a beard on to my blog picture Very impressive!

I think it was the best UK Rational event for a long time, and there were some great speakers. Unfortunately the chairs were uncomfortable, some of the rooms too small and the venue would do well to invest in some air conditioning. I suspect that going to an event at the Royal College of Phyicians in the height of summer (assuming we ever have one in this country again) would be enough cause to need a doctor. Regardless of that, and the amount of walking up and down stairs I did, I think it was a great event. The buzz was mainly about the Jazz platform and associated tools (RTC, RQM, RRC).

Day 1

The conference was opened by Graham Spittle (IBM SWG UKISA VP) and Danny Sabbah (IBM Rational Worldwide VP) who set the scene well for Erich Gamma (in real life) and Grady Booch (in Second Life). Unfortunately the Second Life link went belly up and we did’t get all of Grady’s keynote. Which must have been extremely annoying for Grady since it was 3:30am for him! Erich then took over and gave an excellent Rational Team Concert demo (RTC). When he started his demo I was a bit worried he was going to cover all of my planned demo too, but fortunately it didn’t overlap completely. Since he did the Monday keynote and I did the last slot on Tuesday there was enough time and quantity of information for the delegates so a little overlap didn’t hurt. Erich also did a panel discussion on Agile development in the context of Geographically Distributed Development along with Scott Ambler and Julian Holmes moderated by Anthony Kesterton.

The great TQ (Terry Quatrani) was also present speaking on Agile Modelling, I had a meeting to attend so unfortunately didn’t get to see her speak which is a shame because she’s always great. I did speak to people that did go who just confirmed that I’d have rather gone than have a meeting!

Following the break it was then time for me to speak along with Linda Weedon of PwC and Matt Archer (also of IJI) on “CUPID – Implementing the IBM Rational Unified Process at PricewaterhouseCoopers” which is all about our experiences in deploying UP using a practice based approach. I think the session went really well, we had some pertinent questions which is always a good sign of people staying awake and listening To close the day Ian Spence gave an excellent (as usual) talk on “Conversations in Context: Using Use Cases on Agile Projects”. Following an excellent dinner and a few glasses of wine kindly provided by a competitor it was time to commute home and eventually get to sleep at around 1am. It’s much easier at conferences when you’re staying at or really close to the venue! During the dinner there was a caricature artist or two wondering around who came to our table. Naturally we volunteered Ian to be caricatured and I managed to take a quick pic with my phone of him with his Mad Scientist caricature.

Ian Spence - the Mad Scientist

It’s a little known fact that Ian is also a Kung Fu master which is why his hand appears blurred in this pic. Fractions of a second later my phone was whisked from my hand at the speed of lightening.

Day 2

Day 2 was for some peculiar reason started 30mins earlier than day 1. This didn’t impress me, especially since like most people I hadn’t noticed until I was texted while on the train on the way in. Fortunately I was early enough anyway to get there on time. Mike O’Rourke opened the day with some description of the Rational 2.0 Roadmap (Jazz and future products). Rumours were confirmed about Rational Project Management and Rational Enterprise Reporting being released Q1 next year.

Ivar Jacobson then gave an excellent keynote on “Back to basics: Getting Good Software Quickly and at Low Cost” which focussed on using practices in a smart way, not following processes. I’ve seen Ivar speak many times, and many times on practice based development, which isn’t that surprising since I work for him but it’s always entertaining to hear the man speak.

I also had some meetings on Day 2 but the sessions that really stood out for me were Peter Eeles talking on “The Rise of the Development Environment Architect” which was based on his paper on DevelopWorks. This is an excellent formalisation of something that has been part of my job for some time. I also enjoyed Derek Holt’s talk on “RTC and the Agile Development Strategy”.

Finally to wrap up Day 2 I presented on own this time on “Live Jazz: Process Execution in IBM Rational Team Concert”. This started off with a demo of EssWork in Eclipse, shell sharing with RTC and creating a new process by composing practices as described in Ivar’s slideware at morning keynote. I then started executing my new process in RTC. It was the end of a long two days in a really hot room so I kept it quite light and I think it went well – and hopefully the audience got something different and new from the talk. If you are now kicking yourself that you missed this talk, fear not I’ll be repeating most of it as part of a webinar I’m doing in October – more details here.

Thanks to all those who attended my talks and came and said hello, especially those that read the Mac Daddy! I’ll post the slides in a few days

RSDC UK Agenda Published

The IBM Rational Software Development Conference UK (RSDC UK) will be held in (22 – 23 September 2008 Royal College of Physicians, London). At the moment the banner on the RSDC UK main page is misspelt Perhaps a little less “devlopement” and a bit more “testing” might be useful

Anyway, this promises to be a great event with some great speakers. On Monday the keynote will be given by Erich Gamma in real life and Grady Booch in Second Life. Then on Tuesday the keynote will be given by Ivar Jacobson. Another colleague some of you may have heard of, Ian Spence, will also be speaking. I’ll also be speaking at the event, once with my client presenting a case study.

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CUPID – Implementing the IBM Rational Unified Process at PricewaterhouseCoopers P05 Monday 15:50 – 16:50, Presented by Mike MacDonagh (Me! Principal Consultant, IJI) and Linda Weedon (Methods & Tools Manager, PwC)

PricewaterhouseCoopers UK IT chose to adopt the IBM Rational Unified Process (RUP) as part of a Capability Uplift and Process Improvement Deployment (CUPID) program. This presentation focuses on the use of RUP to manage a large-scale deployment of RUP and the effective adoption of the IBM Rational tools when facing challenges such as geographically distributed development, the requirement for process governance, and the tailoring of RUP to an organizational change management process.

Live Jazz: Process execution in IBM Rational Team Concert PPM05 Tuesday 16:30 – 17:30, Presented by Mike MacDonagh, (Me! Principal Consultant, IJI)

This session covers bringing software development practices to life using IBM Rational Team Concert. The demonstration includes kicking off a new project making use of Work Items, Agile Planning, Jazz SCM, Team Reports and other Jazz components in a seamless configured environment. I’ve posted a lot about Jazz and Team Concert on this blog so follow some of the links to look around – this session at the RSDC UK is basically a big demo so it’s your chance to see RTC and get a really good understanding of what it can do.

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I suppose I really should get around to uploading a new pic of myself. The one’s on this blog and all over the internet are about 6 years old… these days I’ve got a goatee beard and a lot more grey hair!

This conference is going to be a great gathering of thought leaders in the world of software development, an opportunity to see what’s coming in the future from IBM Rational and an opportunity to network with peers, partners and hassle friendly IBMers. So make sure you register and come along

When can you get the Jazz based Rational Tools?

I’ve seen some comments about the fact that at the RSDC2008 Rational announced 22 products. I think many bloggers and article writers may have got a little confused by all the hype. Rational certainly made some very important product announcements and the Rational Labs in the exhibition centre were fantastic in terms of showing us some previews of what’s coming in the future. These announcements and lab previous are the primary reason why I said it was the best RSDC in years. However there weren’t 22 new products announced! It breaks down like this in terms of what the analysts have been writing/bloggin:

IBM Rational announced pricing and availability for a swath of 22 products:

• There are 6 new IBM Rational products that are native Jazz products (6)
• Updates to five existing Rational tools that add Jazz enablement/capabilities (5)
• plans for certified add-in products from 11 Rational partners (11)

6+5+11 = 22

Personally I’ve struggled to put these numbers in context. I think I’m fairly aware of the new Rational stuff that’s coming along but I can’t quite get the numbers to add up, so the rest of this post is about what I’m aware of, please comment if you have any more/contrary information: (Edit: see the comments on this post for a clarification on the numbers from IBM)

New Jazz based tools:

1. IBM Rational Team Concert (may not count as it’s been announced for 2 years)
2. IBM Rational Quality Manager
3. IBM Rational Requirements Composer
4. IBM Rational Financier
5. IBM Rational Governor
6. IBM Rational Tempo
7. IBM Rational Ensemble (not to be confused with the IBM Rational Ensemble that is a business partner collective!)
8. IBM Rational Enterprise Reporting
9. IBM Rational Project Management

I’m counting 9 not 6

As for the 5 updated, these will be ClearQuest, ClearCase, ReqPro, RPM (arguably) and…? I’m not sure where AppScan fits in with this stuff. It’s great tool and will clearly integrate with Rational Quality Manager but I don’t know where it fits in with the 22? announcements. Similar questions can be asked about the Telelogic tools.

Anyway here’s what I’m tracking in terms of the new IBM Rational Jazz tools:

Rational Team Concert

Release Candidate 4(Jazz.net registration required) is currently available for downloading, the production release is sceduled for mid 2008 with the enterprise release scheduled for October 2008 (that’s the one I’d use for piloting)

Also

IBM Rational are running a number of open betas for some of the new tools that were announced at last weeks RSDC. They’re not generally available yet but will be soon. Specifically:

Rational Quality Manager

This open beta program includes two new Rational products and three enhanced versions of Rational products that you already know:

• NEW* IBM® Rational® Quality Manager v8.0
• NEW* IBM® Rational® Test Lab Manager v8.0 Extension**
  **This extension is included in Rational Quality Manager for the open beta but will be available under separate license for GA.
• ENHANCED* IBM® Rational® Performance Tester v8.0
• ENHANCED* IBM® Rational® Functional Tester v8.0
• ENHANCED* IBM® Rational® Service Tester for SOA Quality v8.0

Open Beta pre-registration – get emailed when the open beta gets released on (currently) June 24th 2008

There will also be some open web demos on June 24th so you can get an overview without pre-registering for the beta if you wish.

Rational Requirements Composer

This Beta features the latest version of Rational RequisitePro for managing your requirements, as well as a new offering, Rational Requirements Composer, enhancing your abilities to elicit and define requirements for business driven-development.

NEW* IBM Rational Requirements Composer Beta focuses on the following capabilities for requirements definition and management:

• Leverage multiple sources for requirements and organize them in rich documents for context
  • Create requirements and link to supporting documents and external sources
  • Supplement textual content with embedded views of diagrams and sketches
• Develop robust use cases
  • Create simple, informative use-case diagrams
  • Elaborate use cases with rich document descriptions, user interfaces sketches, storyboards, and activity flows
• Build comprehensive business glossaries
  • Interact with rich documents to define and share new terms
  • Link to and verify the usage of existing terms
• Sketch business processes
  • Sketch business processes using a widely recognizable and easily understandable subset of the BPMN notation
  • Link business tasks and decision points to use cases, user interface sketches, and requirements
• Visualize results with user interface sketches and storyboards
  • Elaborate the user experience to further elicit and validate requirements
  • Refactor sketches into reusable parts to quickly build storyboards
  • Easily maintain storyboards as sketch changes are propagated throughout
  • Link requirements to any user interface part
• Collaborate in context to validate and clarify requirements
  • Attach comments to virtually any textual or graphical element
  • Maintain comment threads for conversational context
  • Create requirements from comment content
  • Host reviews within the collaborative environment to facilitate requirements validation and approval
• Integrate Rational Requirements Composer Beta and Rational RequisitePro v7.1 Beta
  • RequisitePro integrations provide requirements traceability across the application lifecycle
  • Enhance requirements content to overcome perception, communication, and information gaps across functions, organizations, and geographies.

ENHANCED* Rational RequisitePro® v7.1 Beta focuses on the following new and improved capabilities:

• RequisitePro client for Web enhancements, including:
  • Improved Microsoft® Word integration: create and edit requirements without taking documents offline
  • Additional project administration capability
  • View rich-text requirements content
  • Run and share BIRT-based reports
• Enhanced security model for enterprise deployments
  • Set permissions on package hierarchies and views
• New BIRT-based reporting option
  • Report designer for custom report design
  • Sample report templates aid in report design
• Baseline Manager improvements
  • Explore baseline contents to gain context beyond baseline comparisons

Open Beta pre-registration – get emailed when the open beta gets released (currently) planned for late June/July 2008

Other tools

Some other tools I’m aware of but don’t have any information on dates (some of these are part of the rational labs research and may never make final products):

• IBM Rational Financier – gives project and program managers insight into the financial value of one ore more projects to help identify and manage risks
• IBM Rational Governor – helps IT organisations manage project roles and associates decision rights including managing the polices that constrain decisions and promote compliance with processes
• IBM Rational Tempo – lets project managers understand and mange the variability of schedule overruns, a key source of risk in software development projects
• IBM Rational Ensemble – reduces risks incurred by communication failures by promoting communication between developers doing related work (see here for info on the business partner group called IBM Rational Ensemble)
• IBM Rational Enterprise Reporting – a reporting interface that sits across all of the Jazz tools, more than just a jazz version of SoDa this tool can replace a lot of the executive dashboard features of tools like RPM
• IBM Rational Project Management – a replacement for Microsoft Project???
• IBM Rational Self Check (see MCIF)

Conclusions

There’s clearly a lot going on in this space and the next few years will be critical in the Rational space as Jazz takes it’s ascendency. It seems obvious to me that the “classic” Rational tools (ReqPro, ClearCase, ClearQuest etc.) will converge with the new Jazz based tools in each area and Rational will provide an upgrade path for each tool so eventually more everyone from the classic tools to the Jazz tools. In my opinion this is a good thing for a number of reasons:

• Rather than purchases of point products integrated point to point, the Jazz project is an architectural focus on the needs of the industry. I’d argue this is long overdue and extremely valuable.
• Distributed teams are accepted as the norm not the exception
• The “classic” tools have needed a facelift for a while
• And more importantly there is a growing trend from Rational towards Practice based process and tooling, something that my company, and me personally, have been evangelising for a while now. The new Jazz tools, the MCIF, practice based approach to process and embracing of agile principles demonstrate a genuine effort in right direction