In my experience I have seldom come across large enterprise organizations that mandate the use of a specific IDE while putting a blanket ban on any other IDE. Even within the same sub-organization, different development teams may have own their favorite IDEs. Moreover, the decision to use a particular IDE is often tied to the platform on which the application is being developed. For example if building a .NET based application one is likely to use Visual Studio. If developing a J2EE application one may choose to use the eclipse as the IDE.

Having made a considerable investment of time and money in coming up with a process model – whether using COTS methodology such as RUP or your own in-house methodology – you would like all projects, irrespective of the IDE they use, to follow this process. This also includes getting access to the lessons learned across all projects enacting this process model.

All of this makes the already tough task of enacting software development processes in this mixed-technology development environment even more difficult. Rather than trying to convince developers to leave (step out to another interface) or at worse abandon (in favor of another IDE) their IDE simply to follow a process, it would make more sense to build process awareness into the tool they decide to use. The lack of a low-overhead process enactment interface should not become an excuse in not enacting the chosen process model.

The IRIS Plugin for Eclipse injects this process awareness into the eclipse IDE. Developers can now access the relevant process content without needing to leave the eclipse environment to dig through cumbersome process documentation. More importantly this information is available in a just-in-time manner when the project work items assigned to the developer are ready to be started. This means that there is zero additional overhead on part of the developer to lookup the process guidance associated with a project work item they are executing. In fact, if the process author has chosen to build a low-fidelity model prescribing a workflow based on activity state or work product state change events, the developers even get notifications when their work items are ready to be started. Developers see all project work items (with status) assigned to them and are able to distinguish pending work items. If needed they can create related work items as they progress in executing the work items assigned to them. When finished they can assign the work items to the next developer or other practioners that are part of the project being enacted using the defined process model.

IRIS Process Live acts as a unifying enactment platform across the enterprise. Here is an example of how with IRIS Process Live at the backend, the same process model can be used by developers and other practioners in disparate environments. In Figure 1a and 1b, the eclipse environment to view all project work items as well view a process links tab for one of the work items is shown. In Figure 2a and 2b, the same information is provided in a Visual Studio environment. Finally in Figure 3a and 3b, the same information is presented in a web view that may be used by practioners who don’t have desktop IDE clients on their machines.

Figure 1a - Eclipse

Figure 1b - Eclipse

Figure 2a - Visual Studio

Figure 2b - Visual Studio

Figure 3a - Web view

Figure 3b - Web view

The investments made in commercial methodologies such as RUP are realized by providing the rich method content to its intended audience. This low-impedance way to access process guidance - such as steps, guidance documents such as templates, best practices and patterns - without leaving the IDE environment increases the chances of project success.
The Osellus team is ready to share the work it has done in this area at the upcoming rational conference in Orlando. Come see us at booth 427 from 11-13 June 2007.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 5:14 pm and is filed under Processes & Methodologies, Products. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.