Agile 2010 Conference – August 2010
VDC attended the Agile 2010 Conference in Orlando on August 17th and 18th and held face-to-face meetings at the conference with over 15 exhibitors.
VDC’s attendance at the show was very much in recognition of the growing convergence between development requirements of embedded and enterprise systems. The commoditization of many tool and software components in the embedded market has led engineering organizations to reevaluate the role of automation in the development process as a means to drive engineering efficiencies and allow for efforts to be focused on differentiating software layers.
Although lifecyle management tools have been used for years in the embedded market in a relatively peicemeal fashion, the varied nature of embedded systems has led to the development of heterogeneous ecosystems of hardware, software, and tools that are often specialized for specific vertical markets and applications. As these various devices have gained additional system resources and increasing requirements for interconnectivity, some of the previous system constraints and dedications are dissolving and allowing solutions once targeted at enterprise/IT software development to gain relevance.
Similarly, while the implementation of agile development processes has become standard within the enterprise world, the specialized nature of embedded device requirements and development standards has maintained embedded’s alignment with waterfall methods. However, VDC expects that, as with lifecycle management solutions, embedded engineering organizations will increasingly look toward agile methods as a means to extract engineering efficiencies and combat the acceleration of requirement changes during the development process.
The major hurdle for widespread adoption of agile methods in embedded, however, will again be caused by the specialized nature of these devices which has traditionally led to the implementation of very siloed development workflows. With many engineers having developed affinities for specific tools primarily aligned with their own core disciplines, we anticipate that it will remain a challenge in some embedded verticals for lifecycle management tool vendors to gain widespread support of their solutions, beyond just their adoption as point solutions.
Next up, VDC will be attending the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston, September 20-23, at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston and be presenting our annual Embeddy Award for Best in Show live at the conference.
WALKING THE FLOOR
Sterling Barton introduced their AlgileEVM product, which aims to add an additional layer of pragmatism to portfolio management through mathematically verifiable metric aggregation.
In addition to discussing its recent acquisition of and integration with Danube, CollabNet unveiled three new product offerings at Agile 2010: Version 5.4 of TeamForge; Subversion Edge, a certified stack that combines Subversion, the Apache Web server, and ViewVC with into a singular web offering; and a TeamForge SCM licensing option that allows organizations to scale and gain additional control of Subversion to use as an enterprise-wide source code management system.
Hansoft, a Swedish project management tool vendor whose solutions have been primarily used by video game developers to date, attended Agile 2010 to demonstrate what it deems to be a differentiating level of usability in its solution as it looks to expand the general community’s awareness of its tool.
IBM also used the conference as an opportunity to discuss the use of Rational Team Concert as the cornerstone to agile system development with IBM’s products as well as its continued efforts in developing the Jazz platform.
MKS, which has continued to increase its presence in embedded over recent years, also attended the conference to help promote its solutions for agile development management.
In addition to announcing new features for its AgileZen Kanban product, Rally Software unveiled a range of new features for its Agile development management solutions including enhancements to its customization options, full traceability with build and source code, as well as the improved ability to share the information within corporate dashboards.
TaskTop, a company founded in 2007, offers an Eclipse-based platform aimed at enhancing the integration between organizations’ existing tools and infrastructure with those being added as companies add new lifecycle management tools and agile processes.
ThoughtWorks, initially a professional service organization, announced the further expansion of their agile ALM solution offerings available through its ThoughtWorks Studios subsidiary. Its new Go Mobile offering providescontent, best practices and technical solutions to IT organizations building and deploying enterprise-grade mobile applications for the iPhone/iPad, Android and BlackBerry platforms.
In addition to releasing a maintenance update to its flagship AnthillPro platform that included the addition of a real-time feedback monitor, UrbanCode launched its Deployment Pack which is designed to bring help further Agile deployment processes to the enterprise by increasing integrations with and automation through leading server technologies.
Userlytics is another young company that used the show as an opportunity to ramp up market awareness for their solution, which is targeted at providing increased visibility into web and software user experience testing through synchronized, queryable video and screen castings.
WIPROalso attended the conference and discussed how their business process consulting expertise can help organizations effectively and efficiently adopt agile processes and any necessary lifecycle management tools.
Other leading software and system lifecycle management solution vendors in attendance at Agile 2010 included Accurev, Atlassian, Fabasoft, IBM, JetBrains, Microsoft, Perforce, qaSignature, QSM, VersionOne and others.
TRADEMARK ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Many names of companies, associations, technologies, products, and product types, etc. mentioned in this bulletin comprise Trademarks, registered or non-registered, owned by various entities. These are too numerous to mention individually. VDC acknowledges that ownership of these Trademarks exists and requests that readers acknowledge this as well.
ABOUT VDC
The Agile Systems Bulletin is published as part of VDC’s Software and System Lifecycle Management Tool Service. VDC has been providing embedded systems and tools market intelligence for over 20 years.
Published by VDC Research Group, Copyright 2010, all rights reserved.
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Posted by: Nathaniel @ project management certification | 10/21/2010 at 05:02 AM