Catapult Public Relations

TASKTOP TECHNOLOGIES ENJOYS BREAKOUT YEAR IN 2011 AS AGILE ALM INTEGRATION HITS CRITICAL MASS

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:17:09 +0000

Enterprise IT organizations turn to Tasktop to synchronize ALM tool stacks and improve productivity, collaboration and software delivery velocity

VANCOUVER, BC, Dec. 20, 2011 â�� Tasktop Technologies (www.tasktop.com), creators of the Eclipse Mylyn open source tools and a leader in Agile ALM integration and productivity, experienced strong organic growth during 2011 as maturing Agile development practices mandate tighter integration of project management, quality assurance, release management and development tools to achieve success at the enterprise level. Tasktop responded to this growing need with the launch of Tasktop Sync, the most powerful and broadest reaching synchronization server that unifies ALM tool stacks and provides team members working throughout the application lifecycle the ability to collaborate across functions within their tool of choice.

â��By focusing on the needs of the developer and creating the Mylyn open source frameworks, we long ago established ourselves as the leaders of ALM integration. But it was not until this yearâ��s release of Tasktop Sync that we were able to meet the ALM integration needs of mid and large scale Agile deployments and ALM modernizations.â�� said Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop and creator of the open source Eclipse Mylyn project. â��The interest and adoption of Tasktop Sync since that release has been tremendous, and indicative that integration has now become a leading concern of ALM deployments. For a growing number of industries like banking, insurance, healthcare, and manufacturing, software is becoming a core aspect of what they do, and many organizations need the cross-vendor traceability, visibility and collaboration that Tasktop provides.â��

Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Tasktop now has offices in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, and has seen its staff grow to more than 30 employees. In 2011, it was named a Best Company to Work for in British Columbia and Best Employer by Small Business British Columbia, was a finalist for the prestigious software industry Jolt Award and received the 2011 AllianceONE Partner of the Year Award from HP. Tasktop now offers integrations with more than 80 leading open source, Agile and enterprise ALM suites recently adding or expanding integrations with Borland StarTeam, Accept360, Microsoft Visual Studio, and IBM Rational Team Concert.

Both Tasktop Sync and Tasktop Dev (for desktop productivity and integration) are built on the industry-standard, open source Eclipse Mylyn ALM interoperability framework. Tasktop Sync provides real-time synchronization, automatic and configurable conflict resolution, and support for more than two dozen ALM tools. It unifies heterogeneous ALM stacks by allowing developers, testers, business analysts and managers to work within their best-of-breed tools of choice, while automatically maintaining traceability across ALM artifacts. Built on the companyâ��s Task Federationâ�¢ technology, Tasktop Sync brings task federation to ALM servers, by providing the only real-time, bi-directional and fully automated synchronization between ALM servers. Tasktop Dev supports Tasktop Sync by federating tasks and other ALM artifacts on the developerâ��s Eclipse and Visual Studio desktops.

The companyâ��s thought leadership also was very strong during 2011, with Kersten and other Tasktop experts presenting more than 30 times at leading industry events, including CeBIT, EclipseCon, JAX, JavaOne, IBM Innovate, Agile2011, Microsoft ALM Summit, SQE East and HP Discover. Kersten also is sought-after source for media and industry analysts, and contributes to a widely read blog at (http://tasktop.com/blog/). In 2011, Tasktop was active in the open source community with contributions and support for more than a dozen open source projects.

â��Tasktop is helping a growing number of enterprise IT customers build better software faster and more efficiently,â�� said Neelan Choksi, Tasktopâ��s president and chief operating officer. â��Over the past year, we made significant strides, nearly doubling our revenue and headcount. In conjunction with our ever-growing and deepening ecosystem of partners, we are advancing the productivity of software teams and IT organizations. The next year will be even more exciting and rewarding as we roll out new, innovative technology that helps bring teams together by expanding not just across the software development stack but beyond to an even broader set of constituents.â��

For more information on Tasktop Sync or Dev please visit: (www.tasktop.com).

About Tasktop Technologies

Tasktop Technologies aims to transform the productivity of software delivery by unifying Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and empowering developers with task-focused tools. Tasktop invented the task-focused interface and created the popular Eclipse Mylyn project, which transformed the developerâ��s IDE experience to center around ALM tool-based collaboration. Building on top of Mylyn, Tasktop has been unifying the ALM landscape with its broad ecosystem of ALM partnerships that connect disparate tools from leading Agile, enterprise ALM and open source offerings. Tasktopâ��s Task Federationâ�¢ technology builds on this ecosystem to unify heterogeneous ALM stacks by allowing developers, testers and managers to work within their best-of-breed tools of choice, while automatically maintaining traceability and visibility across ALM artifacts. The companyâ��s Tasktop Sync provides the only real-time bidirectional and fully automated synchronization between ALM servers. Tasktop Dev is the developer-centric ALM interface for the Eclipse and Visual Studio IDEs, making it dramatically easier for developers to work and collaborate, while keeping ALM tools up-to-date with development activity. For more information visit http://www.tasktop.comÂ

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Media Contact:

Christie Denniston

Catapult PR-IR

cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com

O: 303-581-7760, ext. 13

M: 303-827-5164

TASKTOP’S MIK KERSTEN PRESENTS WEBINAR ON MODERNIZING ALM ARCHITECTURE WITH TASKTOP SYNC

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:09:25 +0000

Webinar provides in-depth overview of Tasktop Sync 2.0 WHO: Mik Kersten â�� CEO and founder of Tasktop Technologies (www.tasktop.com) Kersten is the creator of the Eclipse Mylyn open source project and inventor of the task-focused interface. At Tasktop he provides the technical vision behind Tasktop Dev for developer productivity and tool integration and Tasktop Sync for enterprise ALM synchronization. WHAT: Modernize Your ALM Architecture with Tasktop Sync 2.0 In this must-see webinar, Tasktop CEO Mik Kersten will provide the first in-depth view of Tasktop Sync 2.0. The latest version of Tasktop Sync 2.0 provides a set of industry-first facilities for connecting an ALM stack. Kersten will highlight the new features of Sync 2.0 which connect all stakeholders with real-time traceability and collaboration. The webinar will conclude with a conceptual overview of Tasktop's Task Federationâ�¢ technologies and best practices for connecting and modernizing the ALM stack, from business analyst to developer. An overview of what's new in Tasktop Dev 2.2 will show attendees how to bring this new connectivity and traceability to developers. For example, Tasktop Dev 2.2 builds on HP's Application Lifecycle Intelligence feature to provide instant workspace provisioning for developers using Eclipse. No matter what mix of developer, QA, Agile and requirements management tools, Tasktop Sync and Tasktop Dev empower developers and other stakeholders to use the tools that make them most productive while ensuring that the ALM artifacts are automatically and seamlessly connected to ease collaboration, reporting and traceability. WHEN: Tue., Dec. 6 - 9 â�� 10 a.m. PST INFO: To register for this webinar please visit: (http://tinyurl.com/6lsj8zs). Updates from the webinar will be available by following the live Twitter feed at #TaskSync. To learn more about Tasktop Sync please visit (http://www.tasktop.com/sync). To arrange an interview with Mik Kersten please contact Christie Denniston at 303-581-7760 or by email at (cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com).

TASKTOP’S MIK KERSTEN TO SHARE LESSONS LEARNED FROM LATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN OPEN SOURCE ALM AT MICROSOFT ALM SUMMIT

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:34:10 +0000

Kersten to outline why ALM architectures must be untangled and legacy systems connected for modernization in ALM to occur

WHO: Mik Kersten â�� CEO and founder of Tasktop Technologies (www.tasktop.com)

Kersten is the creator of the Eclipse Mylyn open source project and inventor of the task-focused interface. At Tasktop he provides the technical vision behind Tasktop Dev for developer productivity and tool integration and Tasktop Sync for enterprise ALM synchronization.

WHAT: â��ALM in the Jungleâ��

Tue., Nov. 15 at 2 p.m. Pacific

Over the past decade, many ALM stacks have shifted from vertically integrated silos to tangled and disconnected systems reminiscent of the London tube map. Layer upon layer of legacy, piecemeal Agile deployments and open source tools have brought traceability to a halt, forcing us into overloaded email inboxes and lengthy meetings for tracking delivery. The path forward is to either standardize the entire ALM stack, or to embrace heterogeneity. Either way, the ALM architecture must be untangled and the legacy connected for the modernization to happen. For inspiration, we can look to how ALM strategies have formed bottom-up in the very heterogeneous jungle of open source projects. Open source ALM combines distributed teams, heterogeneous stacks, resource constraints, massive amounts of stakeholder input, and an overload of cross-project dependencies. Despite these challenges, the velocity of many popular open source projects is measurably higher than that of their enterprise counterparts. In this talk, we will examine the key lessons learned from the latest developments in open source ALM, and examine how to apply the practices, ALM architecture patterns and strategies for embracing heterogeneity in order to help pave a path for your Agile and ALM modernization efforts.

WHERE: Microsoft ALM Summit (http://www.alm-summit.com/home.aspx) Microsoft Campus Redmond, WA

INFO: For more information and to arrange an interview with Mik Kersten please contact Christie Denniston at 303-581-7760 or by email at (cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com).

TASKTOP EXECUTIVES TO KEYNOTE AND PRESENT AT JAX 2011

Tue, 03 May 2011 01:14:06 +0000

TASKTOP EXECUTIVES TO KEYNOTE AND PRESENT AT JAX 2011

In keynote, Kersten to explore Continuous Integration and how cloud computing is creating a shift in software development and lifecycle management

WHO:  Mik Kersten
CEO of Tasktop Technologies
  Creator of the open source Eclipse Mylyn project
  Tasktop Technologies
  www.tasktop.com

  Steffen Pingel
  Senior Software Developer
Tasktop Technologies
  www.tasktop.com

  Benjamin Muskalla
  Software Developer
  Tasktop Technologies
  www.tasktop.com

WHAT: The following presentations will be given at JAX 2011

Keynote - Mik Kersten
Task-focused Continuous Integration: Bringing Code to Cloud and Back Again
(May 3, 2011 - 8:15 p.m. - 9 p.m.)

The deployment destination for enterprise applications is going through its biggest transition since the creation of Java. Cloud infrastructure is changing the game for both application deployment and lifecycle management. Over the past decade, open source technologies such as Spring and Tomcat have defined how we build and run enterprise Java applications. Recent developments in open source collaboration Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools are now transforming how we evolve and manage those applications.

Kersten will explore connecting enterprise Java stack with cloud deployment via a task-focused continuous integration loop. The SCM, code review, and Agile ALM technologies, based on the Eclipse Mylyn ALM interoperability platform, will be used to demonstrate how to achieve this new level of connectivity and automation between the team and the application. The talk will conclude with a roadmap of how we can apply these new lessons to define the next decade of enterprise Java productivity.

Q & A: State of Continuous Integration - Mik Kersten
(May 4, 2011 - 5:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.)

The latest changes in the Hudson/Jenkins case cause quite a stir. But how important are these changes for Continuous Integration? What is the technical roadmap? Kohsuke Kawaguchi, Steffen Schluff, Mik Kersten and Björn Feustel will give some advice and answer your questions.

Git, Gerrit, Hudson and one Mylyn to Rule Them All - Steffen Pingel and Benjamin Muskalla
(May 5, 2011 - 11:45 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.)

Git, Gerrit and Hudson are being increasingly adopted. While these tools enable exciting improvements for developers, learning how to push, pull and fetch can be daunting. For tasks, Mylyn already streamlines workflow by providing first-class integration with the IDE. The recent project restructuring now enables the same integrated workflows for code reviews, builds and version control systems.

Mylyn 3.6: Agile, ALM and Task-Focused Continuous Integration - Mik Kersten
(May 5, 2011 - 2 p.m. - 3 p.m.)

A decade ago, heavyweight ALM tools did more to impede developers than to support collaboration. With the move to Agile methodologies, the time has come to embrace lightweight collaboration and social coding tools to increase our velocity. For many Java developers, Mylyn has become the tool of choice for connecting team communication with coding. In 2010, Mylyn became a top-level Eclipse project and grew to support the entire Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) stack. This talk will outline how Mylyn can double Java coding output by bringing the entire workday into the place where developers are most productive - the IDE. Demos will showcase how Mylyn's task-focused interface integrates all leading task and Agile tools, SCM tools such as SVN and Git, and build/CI tools including Hudson. We will then review productivity best practices learned from deploying Mylyn at scale both in open source projects and large organizations. The talk will conclude with a vision of how realigning collaboration around a unified notion of tasks can yield a measurable productivity and knowledge capture benefit across the entire organization.

WHERE: JAX 2011 - The Conference for Java, Enterprise Architecture & SOA
Rheingold Halle Mainz
Rhein Strasse 66
55116 Mainz
Germany

CONTACT: For more information or to set up an interview with Mik Kersten please contact Christie Denniston at Catapult PR-IR 303-581-7760, ext. 13 or (cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com)

TASKTOP ENTERPRISE 2.0 OFFERS NEW LEVEL OF ALM INTEROPERABILITY AND CROSS-TOOL AGILE PLANNING

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:28:39 +0000

TASKTOP ENTERPRISE 2.0 OFFERS NEW LEVEL OF ALM INTEROPERABILITY AND CROSS-TOOL AGILE PLANNING

Innovative new Task Federation capabilities leap-frog point-to-point integrations to unify disparate ALM tools within the developer IDE, connecting developers, testers and management

VANCOUVER, BC, March 22, 2011 - Tasktop Technologies (www.tasktop.com), creators of the Eclipse Mylyn open source tools and a leader in Agile Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) integration and productivity, today announced Tasktop Enterprise 2.0, which features new Task Federation^TM capabilities. Task Federation includes bi-directional task synchronization between ALM components (such as HP Quality Center and IBM Rational Team Concert) and cross-repository Agile planning. Additionally, this release includes several new Mylyn connectors and the general availability of Tasktop for Visual Studio.

"When moving to Agile or modernizing the ALM stack, many organizations are finding that the lack of integration between vendors' tools has put their Agile and ALM deployments at risk," said Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop and creator of the open source Eclipse Mylyn project. "The ability to view plans that span repositories, and to federate tasks across a wide variety of them with full fidelity bi-directional task synchronization, is a major breakthrough in solving the challenges of integrating Agile methodologies, legacy systems, departmental silos and open source tools. By connecting these tools not just to the IDE but also to each other, Tasktop is creating opportunities for collaboration between teams and between departments that is resulting in significant returns for the enterprise, ranging from increased productivity to more predictability in software delivery to improved application maintenance over its lifecycle."

Tasktop created its task management tools to help developers be more productive by making it effortless for them to organize their work around tasks. Serving as an ALM interoperability suite, Tasktop Enterprise has become the standard for integrating disparate development tools and platforms that are the reality for today's enterprise software development organizations. By providing traceability and knowledge sharing between tools and platforms that are often provided by separate companies, Tasktop helps reduce the complexity and challenges of successfully scaling Agile programs beyond small teams. Organizations using Tasktop are able to integrate and gain added value from heterogeneous systems, improve the happiness and productivity of development teams, and integrate and manage emerging technology platforms, such as cloud computing and mobile applications, into existing development practices.

Task Federation for ALM Interoperability
Tasktop's Task Federation can be deployed to unify an ALM stack. Currently, Task Federation supports IBMs Rational Team Concert (RTC) and HP's Quality Center (QC). Additional federation support will be added for other Tasktop Certified connectors in future releases. Task Federation provides bi-directional synchronization of all key tasks and fields between RTC and QC. In a common use case, RTC has the state needed for planning, while QC remains the system of record for quality management.

Since each Tasktop client has full federation functionality and uses Mylyn's hardened bi-direction synchronization functionality and user interface, the solution can be deployed in a scalable and secure fashion without requiring any new servers. A Task Federation broker can be added to the solution for companies requiring additional capabilities that a server solution can provide.

Task Federation for Agile Planning
The most significant new feature in Tasktop Enterprise 2.0 is the release of the Tasktop Agile Planner for the Eclipse IDE. The Tasktop Agile Planner provides an offline-capable Scrum task board and release planner that can span repositories. For instance, user stories within an Agile planning tool can be shared, tracked and displayed directly in HP Quality Center or a popular open source issue tracker. Cross repository dependencies are displayed in release plans, and Tasktop Enterprise can display and reconcile task status across repositories. All relevant content from a Web-based planning tool, such as burn down charts, are available when connected via Tasktop's embedded Web UI gadgets. All of the cross-repository state is stored in existing ALM tools - there are no new servers needed.

Currently, Agile plans can be displayed from HP's Agile Accelerator and Rally Software (more tools will be supported in upcoming releases). Cross-repository linking is supported for all Tasktop Certified connectors. The Tasktop Agile Planner for the Eclipse IDE is available as part of Tasktop Enterprise. For product owners and project leads, the planner is also available as part of the standalone Tasktop desktop application.

Task-Focused Continuous Integration
As always, Tasktop's commercial efforts have been driving framework and open source tool improvements in Eclipse Mylyn. A notable example is new Hudson tooling, which also supports Jenkins. Developers can now work with Hudson day-to-day entirely from within the Eclipse IDE, monitor and run builds, and inspect results. Accessing build information is instant and available offline from Mylyn. Added automation features include the ability to run tests that failed on the server within the workspace, with just one click. Finally, developers using Tasktop Enterprise's task activation and automatic change set tracking features, resulting in traceability between Hudson builds and the tasks that changed for a given build, providing an unprecedented level of traceability between tasks, source and builds.

New Mylyn Connectors
Tasktop continues on its mission to improve the lives of developers through integrations with the leading ALM tools in use today. Tasktop Enterprise 2.0 includes the following new integrations:

HP Agile Accelerator: This builds on existing support for HP Quality Center and HP ALM to provide both Task List integration and IDE-based Agile planning facilities.
Accept 360: This full-featured Mylyn connector brings requirements and other product management artifacts to the developer's desktop in order to better connect development to planning activities.
SmartBear CodeCollaborator: Tasktop's first code review integration is for SmartBear's popular peer code review tool, CodeCollaborator.
Polarion ALM: Tasktop now offers full support for the Polarion's Track & Wiki and ALM solution.
Hudson/Jenkins: Tasktop has contributed a full-featured Hudson integration to Mylyn, on top of which Tasktop provides traceability with ALM tools such as HP Quality Center. This Hudson connector also supports Jenkins. The integration is currently available in Tasktop Pro and Tasktop Enterprise and will be released in Mylyn later this year.

Tasktop for Visual Studio
Tasktop Enterprise 2.0 includes the general availability of Tasktop for Visual Studio, which brings the ecosystem of Tasktop Certified connectors into the Visual Studio IDE. .NET Developers now can harness Mylyn's functionality, including instant opening of tasks, offline access to the Task List, and a full-featured task editor.

Pricing and Availability
Tasktop Enterprise 2.0 is available now and pricing starts at $199 per-user per-year. To read more about Tasktop Enterprise 2.0 please visit: (http://tasktop.com/blog/news/tasktop-2-0-release) or attend Kersten's Tasktop Enterprise 2.0 webinar on March 31, 2011 by registering at (http://tasktop.com/about/webinars/).

About Tasktop Technologies
Tasktop Technologies is the company behind the Eclipse Mylyn ALM integration framework and its revolutionary task-focused interface technology. The task-focused interface is proven to make developers more productive by showing only the relevant information for each task, dramatically reducing search time and facilitating multitasking. Tasktop Enterprise is the company's commercial product based on Mylyn, with task-focused support for web browsing, time tracking, documents, email, calendars and commercial ALM components. Tasktop also provides consulting, connector development services and training to the growing number of companies adopting the task-focused paradigm and tools. For more information, please visit (www.tasktop.com).

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Media Contact:
Christie Denniston
Catapult PR-IR
cdennistion@catapultpr-ir.com
O: 303-584-7760, ext. 13
M: 303-827-5164

TASKTOP TECHNOLOGIES’ EXPERTS TO PRESENT LATEST MYLYN UPDATES AND BEST PRACTICES AT ECLIPSECON 2011

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 02:00:06 +0000

TASKTOP TECHNOLOGIES' EXPERTS TO PRESENT LATEST MYLYN UPDATES AND BEST PRACTICES AT ECLIPSECON 2011

Six presentations look at the continued adoption of open source development tools in the enterprise and how Mylyn drives ALM productivity

WHO: Mik Kersten
CEO of Tasktop and creator of the open source Eclipse Mylyn project

Neelan Choksi
President and COO, Tasktop

Benjamin Muskalla - software developer, Tasktop
Steffen Pingel - software developer, Tasktop

Tasktop Technologies
(www.tasktop.com)

WHAT: With Mylyn now a top level project within Eclipse there is continued innovation and thought leadership around the Tasktop task-focus interface and ALM integrations that are available through the Eclipse IDE. At EclipseCon 2011 in Santa Clara, CA, March 21 - 24, the following six presentations will be conducted by both Tasktop team members and contributors to the Eclipse Mylyn project.
Monday, March 21 13:30 - 13:50

Tired of CVS? Pimp your productivity with Git, Gerrit, Hudson and Mylyn
by Tasktop's Benjamin Muskalla and Tasktop's Steffen Pingel
Tuesday, March 22 14:00 - 14:20

The Mylyn Reloaded
by Tasktop's CEO Mik Kersten (and Chris Aniszczyk and Wayne Beaton)
Tuesday, March 22 14:30 - 15:10

The Business of Selling Free Software
by Tasktop's Neelan Choksi
Tuesday, March 22 19:30 - 20:30

Mylyn - Application Lifecycle Tools BoF
with Tasktop's Kersten, Pingel, Muskalla, and Choksi
Tuesday, March 22 10:40 - 11:00

Case Study: Shipping Mylyn Reviews for Software Development in Air Traffic Management
by Mylyn Review lead Mario Bernhart as well as Stefan Reiterer and Killian Matt
Tuesday, March 22 11:10 - 11:30

Mylyn meets Intent : Documentation made fun and useful
by Cedric Brun

WHERE: EclipseCon 2011
Hyatt Regency Santa Clara
Santa Clara, Calif.

CONTACT: For more information or to set up an interview with any of the speakers listed above, please contact Christie Denniston at Catapult PR-IR 303-581-7760, ext. 13 or (cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com).

TASKTOP’S MIK KERSTEN TO KEYNOTE ON CLOUD DEVELOPMENT AND PRESENT ON MYLYN/JAVA IDE AT THE SERVERSIDE JAVA SYMPOSIUM

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:54:39 +0000

TASKTOP'S MIK KERSTEN TO KEYNOTE ON CLOUD DEVELOPMENT AND PRESENT ON MYLYN/JAVA IDE AT THE SERVERSIDE JAVA SYMPOSIUM

Kersten joins VMware's Rod Johnson for keynote session to outline latest developments in cloud development, separate presentation focuses on Java and Eclipse Mylyn

WHO:  Mik Kersten
          CEO of Tasktop Technologies
          Creator of the open source Eclipse Mylyn project
          Tasktop Technologies
         (www.tasktop.com)

WHAT: Keynote: Wed., March 16, 1:05 p.m.
Bringing Code to the Cloud and Back Again

Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop Technologies and creator of the Eclipse Mylyn open source project
Rod Johnson, creator of the Spring framework

The deployment destination for enterprise applications is going through its biggest transition since the creation of Java. Cloud infrastructure is changing the game for both application deployment and lifecycle management. Over the past decade, open source technologies, such as Spring and Tomcat, have defined how we build and run enterprise Java applications. Recent developments in open source collaboration and Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools are now transforming how we evolve and manage those applications.

During this keynote, Kersten and Johnson will explore a turnkey approach that marries enterprise Java with cloud deployment and Agile/ALM. They will provide an overview of new technologies at the intersection of these three areas and demonstrate how they radically simplify the Java developers' workday by creating a new level of connectivity between the team and the application. The talk will conclude with a roadmap of how developers can apply these new lessons to define the next decade of enterprise Java productivity.

Presentation: Thurs., March 17, 10 a.m.
Mylyn 3.4 and the New Face of the Java IDE

Mylyn has become the tool of choice for connecting team collaboration with coding. In 2010, Mylyn grew to support the entire Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) stack. This talk will provide an overview of how Mylyn can double Java development output by bringing the entire workday into the place where developers are most productive - the IDE. Demos showcase how Mylyn's task-focused interface integrates all leading task and Agile tools, SCM tools such as SVN and Git, and build/CI tools, including Hudson, then show how Mylyn's frameworks can run outside of Eclipse on the server side. The talk concludes with a vision of how realigning collaboration around a unified notion of tasks yields a measurable productivity benefit across the organization.

WHERE: The ServerSide Java Symposium
Caesar's Palace
Las Vegas, NV

CONTACT: For more information or to set up an interview with Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop, please contact Christie Denniston at Catapult PR-IR 303-581-7760, ext. 13 or (cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com)

TASKTOP TECHNOLOGIES BENJAMIN MUSKALLA TO PRESENT AND DEMO LATEST ADVANCEMENTS OF ECLIPSE MYLYN AT CEBIT 2011

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 22:06:16 +0000

TASKTOP TECHNOLOGIES BENJAMIN MUSKALLA TO PRESENT AND DEMO LATEST ADVANCEMENTS OF ECLIPSE MYLYN AT CEBIT 2011

Presentation looks at the rebirth of Mylyn for Agile ALM, demos shows latest advancements with Eclipse Mylyn and Tasktop Enterprise

WHO: Benjamin Muskalla
         Senior Software Developer
         Tasktop Technologies
         (http://tasktop.com)

WHAT: The Rebirth of Mylyn: Eclipse, Agile and ALM
Mylyn was recently promoted to Eclipse top level project status, cementing the role of Agile and ALM as a one of the core pillars of Eclipse. During this talk, users of the Eclipse IDE will learn about new tools that will simplify tasks performed during the workday. Managers of software development activities will learn about the latest breed of Agile and ALM integrations and interoperability tools that are built on the new Mylyn APIs. Anyone building on or deploying Eclipse will learn about the new tasks, contexts, version, builds, reviews and docs frameworks that define the new Mylyn project and its integration opportunities. In addition to conceptual overviews, this talk will feature numerous demos of new features coming in Mylyn, including new support for activities such as Agile task management and code reviews, as well as new integrations with popular open source tools, such as Git and Hudson. The talk will conclude with a roadmap for the future of the IDE and developer-facing ALM tools.
In addition, Muskalla will demonstrate the latest versions of Eclipse Mylyn and Tasktop Enterprise, Tasktop's task management and Agile ALM integration suite, throughout the CeBIT 2011 conference in the Eclipse Island.. Hall 2, Stand D44.

WHERE: CeBIT 2011 conference
              (http://www.cebit.de/home)
              Hanover, Germany
              Hall 2, Stand F40

WHEN: Sat., March 5, 2011
10 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. (CET)

CONTACT: For more information or to set up an interview with Mr. Muskalla, please contact Christie Denniston at Catapult PR-IR 303-581-7760, ext. 13 or (cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com).

Prediction #4: The single vendor ALM stack becomes extinct in organizations with more than two developers

by Mik Kersten, February 14th, 2011

Development managers at large organizations with monolithic application lifecycle management (ALM) stacks once had it good. ALM components were well integrated, played nicely with one another, and when they didn't, there was someone to call. But lightweight issue trackers started to move into the organization, popularized by the need for developer-centric collaboration facilities. At a cheap or free price point, these were often deployed without the corporate IT department's knowledge or approval. Then the Agile project tracking tools moved in, and with the excitement around Agile, team and product leads pushed them through without consideration of standardizing across the organization. In the meantime, quality management tools like HP Quality Center remained so entrenched in their domain and so valued by management that they did not budge when the newer tools moved in. As a result, the large organization's tool stack resembles an ALM history museum, ranging from the old in-house defect tracker that's still running, to the freshly-installed Kanban tools intended to address disillusionment with Scrum.

No two ALM stacks look alike. The success of open-source ALM components has driven diversity into even the smallest software shops, and the new norm for the ALM tool stack is heterogeneity. While this brings the benefits of choosing your best-of-breed solution, it also means dealing with new complexity in terms of navigating the landscape of tools and options when considering how to modernize your ALM stack to support Agile. This post is a brief guide to helping you navigate that complexity by focusing on the options you have for modernizing the most core part of your ALM stack: the issue, project and change management layers. Tool support on this front boils down to capturing different stages and granularity levels of software development tasks, much as Salesforce has succeeded at capturing and tracking tasks across the various stages and stakeholders in the sales process. At the base level, we have tasks related to the code itself, consisting of defects, feature requests and tests. This is the realm of the issue trackers. At the next level, tools abstract over development-specific items to capture tasks relevant to management and planning, such as user stories and requirements. The new breed of Agile tools is popular here. Then, there are the enterprise ALM tools that can capture and track across products, releases and portfolios of projects.

In 2010, some ALM surveys included over 100 different issue trackers and change management tools to choose from. This enormous diversity has driven innovation, as vendors strive to differentiate their offerings in order to win over customers and to add value over the steadily rising bar of commoditization coming from open source. Last year we saw the price points of basic issue tracker support for small teams drop to dumping levels in an effort by vendors to displace their competition. In terms of feature sets, issue trackers are starting to look very much alike and, as with cars, their most visible differences are colour combinations and dashboard designs. In 2011, the issue tracker will be well on its way to becoming a commodity. The key thing to look for is that your issue tracker supports developer collaboration along with good ease-of-use for comments and updates, and that it is integrated with the workflow of the developer. The issue tracker also needs to be integrated with your planning loop. If you are a small team or organization, that may be as simple as managing a field with your release or iteration or setting up a wiki-based Kanban board with hyperlinks to the issues. But once you start scaling beyond a small team, tool-based planning features are required to scale your planning process across teams and geographical locations.

The next layer in the ALM stack is the project planning and tracking tool. With Agile starting its move into the enterprise, competition between vendors in this area is becoming fierce. Numerous ISVs are clamouring to lead the trends, implementing the latest Agile and Lean fashions as quickly as the books and blogs defining them are published. A few vendors, including Rally, VersionOne and ThoughtWorks Studios, have differentiated themselves by combining Agile tools with thought leadership and training. This helps organizations adopt the cultural aspects of Agile while bringing the vendor's tool-based support for Agile practices along for the ride. These vendors have been key to many of the Agile rollouts to date, and have driven much of the management level adoption of Agile and Lean methodologies. New players have appeared in this space, introduce a wide range of expertise, and provide a spectrum of tools from simple layering of functionality on top of the issue tracker to full-blown enterprise ALM solutions. Picking the best solution here often depends on the size of your development organizations, how opinionated you want your Agile tool to be in terms of enforcing a particular Agile workflow, and selecting a tool that integrates with the rest of your diverse ALM stack. The latter often proves to be the greatest challenge.

If your development process needs to plug into a project, product and portfolio management loop, and also requires a connection to quality and requirements management, you need to reach one more level up the stack into the realm of enterprise ALM. Just as lighter-weight tools offer increasing benefit the closer you get to the developer's desktop, the visibility, predictability and planning needs of a large organization with thousands of developers are addressed by these more heavyweight enterprise ALM tools. When you have a team of five developers, requirements management can often be handled by a shared understanding of the customer and the problem space. When you have a team of five thousand developers, many of whom are remote or outsourced, it's almost impossible to be effective at managing delivery without this level of tool support. For large organizations the crux of the problem tends to be that the open source, lightweight issue trackers and Agile tools they have deployed do not provide this level of ALM support. This is the reason why enterprise ALM tools such as IBM Rational Team Concert (RTC), Microsoft Team Foundation Server, and more recently HP ALM, are providing support for the entire change management cycle. The trouble with getting the full benefits of those tools is, once again, the heterogeneity in your stack.

At each of these levels of the ALM stack, the key is ensuring that in the presence of heterogeneity, the code being produced and deployed from the development level is connected to the goals and product strategy determined at the planning and management levels. Failing to automate the connectivity between these layers means that the organization falls back to less reliable communication formats such as excessively long email threads, more tedious meetings, and the wearing new channels into the office carpets as you walk back and forth between cubicles.

What's needed to bring sanity to ALM stacks is a "task federation" layer. At small organizations, the top-most system of record for the planning loop becomes the issue tracker. At medium-sized organizations it's the Agile project tracking tool. Issue tracking facilities in Agile planning tools will increasingly displace the standalone tracker, or in the cases where the issue tracker is sticky or provides additional value, a task federation layer will provide linking between the tracker of choice and the Agile planning tool. At large organizations, task federation will become a critical part of the planning loop. For example, if you are deploying IBM RTC as your ALM tool you probably have HP Quality Center deployed already and do not want to lose its benefits for quality management. Task federation provides you with the bi-directional synchronization of tasks between the two systems, while ensuring that a tool like RTC has all the information needed for planning and that the quality management tool is the system of record for tests and defects. Or you could deploy HP ALM's Agile features in combination with open source issue tracking and change management. What's important is that task federation provides you with the options needed to modernize and streamline your best-of-breed stack, while ensuring that development is connected to your ALM solution of choice. While no two ALM stacks are alike, in 2011 we will start seeing the developer and manager stakeholders insulated from the intricate details of ALM stack implementation, with ISVs taking on the burden of integration.

To learn more about Tasktop or to view more blog entries, please visit: (http://tasktop.com/blog/).

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TASKTOP TECHNOLOGIES’ MIK KERSTEN TO OUTLINE LATEST FEATURES OF MYLYN 3.5 FOR AGILE ALM DURING WEBINAR

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 20:28:38 +0000

TASKTOP TECHNOLOGIES' MIK KERSTEN TO OUTLINE LATEST FEATURES OF MYLYN 3.5 FOR AGILE ALM DURING WEBINAR

Newest version of Mylyn makes it easier for developers to work with Agile, enterprise scale and open source ALM systems

WHO:  Dr. Mik Kersten
          Founder of Eclipse Mylyn
          CEO, Tasktop Technologies
          (www.tasktop.com)

WHAT: "What's New in Eclipse Mylyn 3.5: Agile, ALM and Developer Tools"

Mylyn has morphed from a hot new developer tool to an entrenched top-level Eclipse project that provides the developer integration and ALM vendor federation that's critical for organizations deploying Agile. In this webinar, Kersten will review how the new task management, code review, SCM and continuous integration sub-projects of Mylyn are making it dramatically easier for developers to work with Agile, enterprise scale, and open source ALM systems. Mik will present strategies for deploying Mylyn at your organization to get the most out of the collaboration and traceability tools that it provides. The presentation will conclude with an overview of the growing number ALM integrations for available for Mylyn, and demonstrate the latest productivity features made available as part of Mylyn 3.5 and its ecosystem.

REGISTER: (http://tasktop.com/about/webinars/index.php#feb242011)

WHEN: Thurs., Feb. 24, 2011
9 a.m. /12 noon Eastern

CONTACT: For more information or to set up an interview with Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop and creator of the Eclipse Mylyn open source project, please contact Christie Denniston at Catapult PR-IR 303-581-7760, ext. 13 or (cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com).