RSC 2009 – What to expect

I’m not attending the IBM Rational Software Conference (what used to be RSDC, RUC etc. etc.) this year however since it started today for partners and tomorrow for delegates so I thought I’d cast my opinion on what to expect this year. Of course I could be wrong since it’s just assumption but I suspect the main themes will be:

A vision of one notion of process for all Rational tools, made explicit in the relevant tools, surfaced through process rules and defined in practice libraries allowing easily composable and customisable processes based on the Jazz Process architectural elements.

So to tie  it all together the Process Library (which of course is practice based probably driven by Rational Asset Manager) feeds definition of processes in RMC, which is measured by MCIF and delivered by the Rational Software Development Platform. So what does that really mean:

Rational Team Concert 2 beta – because it’s a lot better than RTC 1 which was pretty good to begin with!

Rational Tara -  a Jazz based PPM (Project Portfolio Management) tool. Think MS Project by IBM on Jazz with better Resource Management stuff. It’s part of the replacement suite for Rational Portfolio Manager (RPM).  Should be interesting to see how it ties into the other products (inc. some of the Telelogic ones). I expect this one to be big news – it should be. Gantts, bubble charts, resource utilisation views, agile dashboards etc. will abound. (Now known as Focal Point for Project Management)

Rational Insight – used to be codenamed Vega and is a data warehousing and RTL solution on top of Jazz. Cross project reporting goodness. Of course I’m sure there will also be integration through to the “classic” rational tools. Interestingly I read a bit of blurb recently from somwhere that referred to their old tools as the “classic rational toolset” I wonder if they borrowed that from me

MCIF – Measured Capability Improvement Framework – It’s been around for a while but with more emphasis from IBM now on practice based process the story between a more practice orientated Rational Method Composer, Health Assessment tools and Self Check tools is a bit tighter.

Telelogic – I expect there to be some announcements about the integration of the Rational and Telelogic brands. Especially around FocalPoint.

I’d also expect some stuff on other Jazz based tools like Requirements Composer, Quality Manager, Ensemble, Governor and stuff like that.

As I said due to other commitments I’m not there myself, but if you are there then please stop by the Ivar Jacobson International stand in the Exhibit Hall downstairs when they let you in. Grab a free beer and talk to my colleagues about how to achieve tangible process improvement with the use of effective practices in a proven framework. Also talk to them about achieving “Agile for Grown Ups” (TM of the MacDaddy) in your organisation. Ivar, Ian Spence, Kurt Bittner are all speaking at the conference and a bunch of other IJIers will be there so go along and say hi.

And ask for a free bag, they’re great for carrying around your exhibit hall swag

How to avoid Fragile Agile, Flexibility in Context

A presentation I gave at the UK RUG Annual Meeting on what can make agile development fragile and how to avoid that fragility.

Unfortunately animations don’t work and slideshare’s screwed up the agenda slides but you can still follow it

Rational, Telelogic and Jazz roadmap

There’s a lot of interest in the IBM Rational space about the future roadmap of Telelogic products like DOORS and Rational Requisite Pro and some murmurings of new shiny future things like Tara, Vega, MCIF, FocalPoint, Rational Change Management etc. etc.

I’m sure as the year continues we’ll learn a lot more about these things (or at least be able to talk about what we already know under NDA as IBM Rational and Telelogic are bound to make some statements and showcase the future at RSDC09. This year the RSDC is combined with the Telelogic User Conference (Innovation) which is a public sign of how integrated IBM want the Rational and Telelogic brands to become in the future.

All of this is very important for existing Telelogic and Rational customers, as well as people interested in Jazz or using Jazz. So I noticed a presentation from RSDC in Italy that covers some high level information on the joint product roadmap:

RSDC 2009 Call for papers

So it seems like RSDC 2008 has only just finished. In fact RSDC 2008 UK was only a few weeks ago! But things are starting up for RSDC 2009 already. I hear that call for the papers will open tomorrow. The website isn’t up yet so I don’t know what the theme will be but you can expect more stuff turning up at www.ibm.com/rational/rsdc over the next few months.

This will be the 4th year in a row for the Rational Software Development Conference (May 31 – June 4) at the Swan and Dolphin in Orlando, and I heard somewhere that the next 6 will be as well! Not surprising really as it’s a great venue for the conference.

It seems call for papers starts earlier every year, but that’s no surprise seeing as there are more people submitting and going every year. Technically I expect this year to be about the maturation of the Jazz platform, and I would speculate that we will see some cool things like the Visual Studio integration (since screenshots have already been released). There should be some interesting uses of RTC out there (I’m planning to talk about this myself). I’d like to see something about Bluehouse, Focalpoint, Telelogic and Rational Jazz stuff.

I think that the words Tara, Vega and MCIF will be extremely prominent

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

Free Webinar series for October 2008 from IJI

IJI will be running a bunch of FREE (that’s right not even a hidden cost!) series of webinars over the winter. Some of these webinars will be hosted by yours truly (the first two and maybe the last one). Since these things are free I really hope you’ll sign up and see some of the exciting things that we’re working on at IJI. Go Register!

Psst There will be some more FREE webinars later in the year too

	Ivar Jacobson International – Webinar Series Autumn 2008 We are very pleased to announce a series of FREE webinars for the software development industry. We will be sharing the latest market trends, ideas, products and ideas of how software delivery can be improved in terms of cost, quality and time. Here is the schedule for October. Register free at http://www.ivarjacobson.com/upload/webinar.html What’s new from IBM Rational ? October 3rd The UK Rational Software Development Conference will showcase many of the new Rational Tools. If you cannot make this event then this Webinar will provide you with the information that you need. We will be featuring Jazz, Rational Quality Manager and Rational requirements composer. (me!) Building successful software with Rational Team Concert.  October 10th Jazz provides a platform for collaborative software delivery. This unique environment takes software development to the next level, but, what is it? How does it work and where is the value? Hosted by our Jazz expert Mike MacDonagh (me!) this Webinar will provide you with an overview of this revolutionary technology. Practices: How they provide an Agile approach.  October 17th Practices help provide an Agile approach to process adoption. If you need a minimal level of governance but want to move to a more Agile approach then the IJI Practice based approach will provide you with what is needed. Minimal process for maximum value is a key concept that is explored while presenting an overview of the IJI Practices. Sustaining change with practices. October 24th Implementing change within an organisation provides a unique set of challenges, sustaining that change can provide an even greater challenge. This presentation looks at this particular issue and identifies a number of successful strategies to ensure that positive change is sustained. This ensures that your return on investment is maximized. Ensuring that you have good requirements. October 31st It is claimed that a high number of software solution failures are linked to badly described, gathered or managed requirements.  IJI promote the use of Use Cases as the key method that results in successful projects.  Use Case Express helps provide a level of consistency and sustainability that no other tool can provide. Register free at http://www.ivarjacobson.com/upload/webinar.html

Edit: It seems that the fine folks that laid out this press release didn’t consider the effect on my blog theme. Oh well…

Rational Quality Manager Beta 2

I hear that there will be a Rational Quality Manager Beta 2 released in about a week and half. Here’s my review of Beta 1

More info

See my first look at IBM Rational Requirements Composer here

See more stuff about Jazz in general here: What’s all that Jazz?

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

Knowledge Centered Support in my project

Kelly Drahzal recently published this great presentation on Knowledge Centered Support which made me think a bit on the nature of support mechanisms. I’m currently engaged in rolling out a large and complex enterprise tool (Rational Portfolio Manager) and associated governance, portfolio management and project management practices in a large and complex client.

One of the things we need to do to get these pracitices and the tool embedded in an organisation is manage support. Our support takes two forms, tools support and process support. Normally when a person thinks they’re asking for one of them they’re actually asking for the other One of the interesting things about the support that my rollout team provides to the practitioners is that ultimately it’s a transient function – we won’t be the long term support team on this product, in fact support will be handed over to the centralised support function and the rollout team (comprised of external consultants (some IJIers, an IBMer and some independents) and contractors) will dissapate into the ether from whence it came. So obviously, as per Kelly’s presentation we’re very keen on knowledge centered support – we don’t want to waste our time, effort and brain power by re-recreating the answers to people’s problems.

So what do we actually do to try and avoid some of these problems and do some knowledge based support? We’re a transient support function so we don’t have and super tools or even specialist knowledge base management skills. What we do have is a highly skilled team and a number of communication channels.

We capture all support requests in a humble excel spreadsheet, regardless of their communication channel and categorise the requests into a number of categories. (Of course this gave me an excuse to write some cunning macros to keep everything updated automatically).

As well as providing lovely graphs the spreadsheet captures the issue and the response. As a result the team can all see who had what problem and how it was resolved. As problems are solved knowledge is created, capturing it in a spreadsheet is all well and good, and can be searched on by the support team but it’s not great in terms of sharing that knowledge broadly. (As it happens the support spreadsheet is publicly accessible via a guest account on our config management repository – but that doesn’t mean anyone is looking!)

To share the knowledge we communicate it through many channels. Sometimes it’s apparent that our education has been lacking some good guidance so we update the education programme (training courses, open surgeries, lunch ‘n’ learns). We have a wiki where we can post new bits of information, a message board/forum, emailing lists, laminated desk drops, a FAQ on the wiki and also some mentoring guides. One of the functions of our team is to mentor practitioners in the adoption of practices and tools and to do that we have a number of mentoring packages that we give to adopting teams. Ensuring that the mentors are all saying the same thing, giving the same solution to the same problem is important. One of the best ways of doing this it to get the mentors together to talk to each other, run through scenarios and gain consensus on the common answers. We also document these scenarios, sometimes in the practitioner facing User Guide and sometimes through mentor guides.