Content Bridge for VSTS allows you to move your RUP content to VSTS. If you have chosen to augment your TFS server with IRIS Process Live, you can enact your team projects using the second generation enactment features introduced by IRIS Process Live.

Here is a video that gives an overview of Content Bridge for VSTS:
http://www.osellus.com/resources/videos/content_bridge_for_vsts_video.html

IDC has released a new study that profiles ten relatively small, emerging software companies in Canada that it deems particularly worthy of note. These companies have overcome internal challenges, and have successfully contended with the ever-changing ICT industry, evolving regulations and standards, and large competitors with even larger marketing budgets. They have the potential to impact the ICT market in Canada and beyond.

We are listed as one of the ten companies !

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prCA20741607

As the Software Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM) version 2.0 moves towards adoption as an available specification, I wanted to share some background on SPEM in general and version 2.0 in particular. SPEM 2.0 is currently available as a final adopted specification and is expected to be finalized as an available specification by end of 2007.

Osellus was one of the earliest adopters of SPEM. Realizing early, the value of a standard process meta-model that results in interoperable process models across methodologies and mixed-technology enactment environments, its flagship product IRIS Process Author is built on SPEM 1.1. Most organizations adopting SPEM 1.1 move forward from a “no-standards” approach to modeling to a methodology agnostic industry standard approach to modeling. As process mature organizations started adopting SPEM 1.1 they uncovered many areas of improvement in the metamodel. Many of these deficiencies became the basis for a SPEM 2.0 RFP - re-using process elements and process workflow, support for process enactment, support for process metrics, better explanation of terms used in the metamodel. The final adopted specification has been able to address many of these areas of improvement and is expected to attract a wide industry support.

As I understand Osellus is committed to making IRIS Process Author SPEM 2.0 compliant as soon as the specification is finalized as an available specification. Currently available as a final adopted specification, SPEM 2.0 is expected to be finalized as an available specification by end of 2007.

Osellus plans to support SPEM 2.0 and go beyond it. In adopting SPEM 2.0, Osellus will choose to redress the concerns around the over-complexity and the lack of enactment in the metamodel. This will result in a wider participation and successful adoption by process practioners as well as support mixed-technology environments such as Microsoft VSTS and IBM Jazz.

Rather then forcing users to struggle with over-complicated terminology and unnecessary packaging such as the concept of method plugins, configurations and the variability mechanisms, IRIS Process Author will abstract this complexity through a simple user interface. IRIS Process Live will provide full enactment support for the modeled software processes enabling successful delivery of software projects. As I have noted in the past, it is not possible to come up with a sustainable process definition without enacting it in real projects. Unless project teams try to enact the defined processes, they cannot uncover process gaps. It is during process enactment that teams would uncover what is missing in their processes. Lessons learned as part of a successful or unsuccessful implementation would provide rich data to improve these processes and institutionalize the lessons across the enterprise. Compliancy reporting would mean teams can self-audit how far/away are they from meeting the compliance points as laid out in the defined process. Finally, with data-based process interventions and the empowerment of project practioners the chances of project success keep getting higher with successive implementations.

Ajoy has blogged about our participation at the IBM Rational Conference and our solution allowing enactment of RUP in VSTS.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ajoyk/archive/2007/06/10/visual-studio-team-system-and-rup.aspx

I hear a lot from folks who are interested in enacting RUP and OpenUP/Basic in VSTS. Here is my earlier post that discussed our approach on enactment in a mixed-technology development environment using IRIS Process Live. IRIS Process Live is built on top of the Team Foundation Server.

In my opinion Jazz is the star of this years rational conference. Take a look at some of the pictures from the conference and the keynote introducing jazz. Erich Gamma did an excellent presentation on jazz during the keynote and later during a dedicated technology session on Jazz.

Me next to the Jazz Live poster

The Jazz show begins…

(From left to right) Chandra, Payman and Dave

(From left to right) Dave, Payman, Me, Chandra

There were many exciting things I saw that vindicated some of our fundamental beliefs in the software process automation domain. First with Microsoft’s VSTS and now with IBM Jazz there is overwhelming evidence that low-fidelity software development process models are the cornerstone of collaborative friction-free process enactment. This enactment is not only helpful (just-in-time, just-enough) for developers and other project practioners but is also essential for compliance requirements as well as ultimately, feedback to improve processes. The end goal is “continuous”, successful project delivery. Although there are still a lot of unanswered questions on the Jazz strategy, one thing that is clear is that it is a fundamental shift in the way IBM rational has been building and deploying its developer tools.

We are getting ready to participate at the IBM rational software development conference 2007 in Orlando from June 10-14th, 2007.

If you are at the conference, please do stop by our booth (#427) to see some of the second generation tooling we are going to be demonstrating.

We will reach Orlando Monday afternoon (11th June) and I will be blogging live from the conference on all the exciting action.

The solutions offered by Osellus have always been methodology-agnostic. We continue to have the same approach going into the second generation process authoring/automation tooling introduced by us. 

One example of this is our ongoing efforts to create and offer an OpenUP/Basic VSTS process template. This will be helpful to teams that are using VSTS as the development platform of choice and would like to use a methodology such as OpenUP/Basic during enactment. As you know, Content Bridge for VSTS already offers an easy low-overhead way to move RUP content into VSTS. 

I believe that by extending Content Bridge to support EPF processes customers will have a choice that results in significent cost saving while ensuring wider inter-operatibility between processes and execution environments. Stay tuned for more announcements on this in the coming weeks.

We are moving to a new blogging platform! Our software of choice - Wordpress. The blog already looks and works so much better but please bear with us for the next couple of weeks while we smith Osellus blogs to make your reading experience more enjoyable and engaging.

There were 1548 attendees at the SEPG event this year. Most of them are involved in some kind of process - definition, management or improvement - activities in the organizations they represent. Many of the visitors to the Microsoft booth were already aware of advanced process-specific capabilities introduced by Visual Studio Team System (VSTS). This was a good opportunity for the partners in the VSTS eco-system to showcase their offerings in this area.

For Osellus this meant highlighting IRIS Process Author with its collaborative, enterprise-grade process architecting capabilities. The feedback received from visitors to the booth was a good validation of the single-minded focus we have in providing a team-based un-complicated way to author or tailor processes. Our methodology-agnostic approach means we support processes based on homegrown methodologies or well-known methodologies and frameworks such as MSF, RUP, Macroscope, EssUP, ITIL and others. To give you an idea of the change I noticed in this domain, I never once had to say that “one process does not fit all projects”! This is a given. All I had to do was show how this can be done in a low-cost, collaborative team based environment. Oh and by the way, using IRIS Process Author, the cost of creating VSTS Process Templates is almost zero as we support out-of-the-box generation of these templates ! I had a lot of questions on how these processes, once modeled are consumed. This was a good plug for me to show our second-generation enactment solution.

It seems that the days of a single monolithic dominant methodology are truly over as users realize that these printed tomes or published websites are relegated as shelf-ware by most practioners in real projects. This is where the second generation tooling offered by IRIS Process Live comes into play. We have offered the first generation of this tooling for a few years now, and based on the lessons learned we have made a significant change to this tooling. Offered with an underlying platform such as VSTS, we have sucessfully bridged the gap between the theory around process improvement pattern of author-enact-measure-improve with actual tool based implementations in real projects. This would also deliver on the promise of data-based process improvement initiatives as well as help interested organizations in areas such as project simulations, project forensics and skills and competency improvement initiatives. Watch this blog for more information on this area over the next few months…

Here are some pictures from the conference:

From left to right: Serge (Fujitsu), Eric (Ivar Jacobson), Kamal (Osellus), Juan (Personify Design), Ajoy (Microsoft), Clementino (Microsoft), Chandra (Osellus)

Kamal, Chandra

Monday, 26th March was the first day at SEPG 2007, Austin. A quick dash from Austin airport to be in time for the exhibitor hall opening at 5 PM !

After a very bumpy (lot of turbulance) ride over to Austin the Osellus team - represented by Chandra Bhople and I started setting up our booth at the exhibitor hall. As I had mentioned earlier, we are sharing a booth with Microsoft along with two other partners. Ajoy and Clementino are representing Microsoft. Serge from Fujitsu Consulting and Eric from Ivar Jacobson Consulting are in kiosks next to us within the overall Microsoft booth. Juan from Personify Design is also here. I knew Ajoy, Clementino, Serge and Juan from earlier interactions and it was nice to meet Eric. All I can say there is a formidable process-specific brain trust residing in booth 515 over the next 3 days…..We got the booth setup before the exhibitor hall opening at 5.00PM on Monday evening.

The first day saw many familiar faces visiting the Osellus kiosk at the Microsoft booth. It was nice to get the opportunity to update them on the next generation tooling we have built with new versions of IRIS Process Author and IRIS Process Live and Metrics. This being an SEI event, it also gave a chance to show some of the CMMI specific functionality including reporting functionality built within our tools and also get some feedback on extending and adding more report formats to get out-of-the-box reporting from our tools.

The buzz I got from the day was a need to get processes out there, in the field, in a quick manner, preferably in a way that supports incremental development of these processes on getting feedback from practioners rather than a herculaen or big-bang approach in creating/introducing processes….more on this later.