Catapult Public Relations

SPARKFUN ELECTRONICS ANNOUNCES NEW DEVELOPMENT HARDWARE FOR ANDROID

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:04:00 +0000

Electric Sheep Gives Customers USB Access to their Android-based Devices to Develop Their Own Accessories and Applications

BOULDER, Colo. Nov. 16, 2011 â�� SparkFun Electronics (www.sparkfun.com), a provider of parts knowledge and passion for electronics creation, today proudly announced a new product designed to help inventors create new custom Android accessories.

The new product, aptly named the Electric Sheep, is designed to take advantage of the Android systemâ��s open accessory protocol. By communicating via USB, Electric Sheep gives users complete dynamic access to the phoneâ��s systems and enables the easy creation of custom applications and accessories such as controls for an autonomous vehicle or coupling your phone with a microcontroller such as an Arduino. These boards are not restricted to only Android phones, but can be used on any platform with the Android operating system and a USB port.

â��The Electric Sheep is a product we are really excited to announce,â�� said SparkFun Director of Marketing AnnDrea Boe. â��This product represents months of prototyping and design by the SparkFun engineers and will give its users free reign to create accessories for the Android system.â��

On the technical side, the Electric Sheep is based on the ATMega2560 microcontroller and bootloader and features a USB-host connector on-board for quick connection to Android devices. The board allows for the creation of accessories for Android using the Arduino IDEA and HandBag and is Arduino-shield compatible. Even if you don't have an Android device, the Electric Sheep can double as a development platform with all the functionality of the host microcontroller and a USB shield. The Electric Sheep is priced at $79.95 per unit and is now available on SparkFunâ��s website (www.sparkfun.com).

About SparkFun Electronics

Founded in 2003, SparkFun shares its passion for electronics by providing parts, knowledge, and innovation for those looking to explore the world of embedded electronics. It helps anyone discover their inner inventor and enables individuals to create their own electronics projects. SparkFun currently offers more than 1,800 products, ranging from simple components, like capacitors and resistors to GPS units and Bluetooth modules. The company employs 130 people and is based in Boulder, Colorado.

Media Contact:

Jeremy Douglas

Catapult PR-IR

303-581-7760, ext. 16

jdouglas@catapultpr-ir.com

SPARKFUN HOLDS FIRST PUBLIC OPEN HOUSE

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 22:27:23 +0000

More than 600 attendees flocked to Boulder HQ for first-ever event

BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 9, 2011 â�� On October 22, 2011, SparkFun Electronics (www.sparkfun.com), a provider of parts knowledge and passion for electronics creation, hosted the first-ever SparkFun Open House. The company invited fans of SparkFun, members of the community and individuals from the general public to come to its Boulder headquarters for a day of family-friendly fun and learning.

The event was originally conceived as a way to show the public the inner workings of SparkFun while also rewarding loyal members of the SparkFun community. For the event, SparkFun brought in a bouncy castle, an obstacle course, a circus artist and had activities and games led by the various departments of the company.

In addition, SparkFun offered tours of the facility and held workshops on basic electronics. Food was provided by Top of the Hill Grill West, cupcakes were brought in from The Tasterie Truck and Paws Off Bakery provided pastries and cookies. All activities, food and workshops were provided free of charge.

â��The SparkFun Open House was a great success,â�� said SparkFun Director of Marketing AnnDrea Boe. â��We wanted this to be a fun event for people of all ages and we really feel that we met that goal. It was outstanding to see so many smiling faces here at SparkFun.â��

The event attracted nearly 650 people to the SparkFun campus, far exceeding initial attendance estimates. All in all, the event was seen as a resounding success and SparkFun had a fantastic time meeting customers new and old and sharing a bit of what SparkFun is all about.

About SparkFun Electronics

Media Contact:

Jeremy Douglas

Catapult PR-IR

303-581-7760, ext. 16

jdouglas@catapultpr-ir.com

GORILLA LOGIC LAUNCHES FONEMONKEY FOR ANDROID, A NEW AUTOMATED OPEN SOURCE TESTING TOOL FOR ANDROID APPLICATIONS AND DEVICES

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:49:07 +0000

Latest open source-based automated testing tool fills gap in the Android development tool chain

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (AnDevCon Booth #605) Nov. 7, 2011 â�� Gorilla Logic, (www.gorillalogic.com), a leader in enterprise application development services and creators of open source test tools for mobile and Rich Internet Applications (RIA), today announced FoneMonkey (http://www.gorillalogic.com/fonemonkey) for Android, its latest open source automated testing tool for mobile applications.

The new Android testing capabilities complement the popular FoneMonkey for iOS (iPhone and iPad) automated testing tool and extends Gorilla Logicâ��s comprehensive open source automated testing solution set by bringing Android developers and QA testers the same recording/playback and test script generation already enjoyed by iOS developers. It benefits developers by providing rapid creation of functional testing scripts; allows testers without in-depth Android Software Developer Kit (SDK) knowledge to easily and quickly create testing scripts; and, offers increased application quality and faster time-to-market.

Specific features contained in FoneMonkey for Android include:

â�¢ Records and plays back user interface interactions with native Android applications

â�¢ Scripts are readable, maintainable and also can be created from scratch without recording

â�¢ An Eclipse-based control console provides easy creation and editing of automation scripts

â�¢ Scripts can be created and ran on an emulator or actual device

â�¢ Supports virtually all Android SDK UI components and gestures

â�¢ Is free and open source

â�¢ Provides automatic generation of extensible test scripts in either Java or JavaScript

â�¢ Offers ability to run tests in continuous integration environments

"With an explosion of mobile applications in the market and a number of automated software quality offerings existing (and more evolving) for performance testing for mobile applications, the manual effort involved in functional testing remains significant and very costly," said Melinda Ballou, project director for IDC's Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) service. "As companies increasingly put their brand out on mobile platforms and as business critical apps "go mobile," automation of functional testing across mobile platforms â�� including both iOS and Android â�� becomes key for business innovation and success."

Gorilla Logic's passion for delivering quality software applications for enterprise customers led to the creation of FoneMonkey. It is the only test tool for iOS and now Android that records all actions with the iPhone, iPad and Android phone while in use and plays them back as a test script at any time. It enables the interactive creation, editing and playback of automation scripts that exercise an application's user interface. Using FoneMonkey, developers and quality assurance team members can create suites of tests that automate and perform user operation sequences, and then verify results. FoneMonkey supports development as well as QA testing, and tests can easily be incorporated into continuous integration environments.

â��FoneMonkey for Android addresses a major gap in the Android development tool chain,â�� said Stu Stern, president and CEO of Gorilla Logic and co-creator of FoneMonkey. â��The FoneMonkey family of tools is the only record/playback functional testing tool for iOS and Android. With the addition of FoneMonkey for Android, Gorilla Logic has established its position as the pre-eminent provider of next generation functional testing tools for the mobile market.â��

Learn more about FoneMonkey for Android at (www.gorillalogic.com/fonemonkey4android).

About Gorilla Logic

Gorilla Logic provides custom enterprise application development services to many of the worldâ��s leading software-driven organizations. It has a rich history of applying software engineering best practices to reduce the time and cost of delivering high-quality, full-featured applications with advanced functionality. Its technical leadership in mobile, rich Internet and enterprise applications showcases its broad platform expertise and exemplifies its commitment to software development best practices and quality. Its innovative work with emerging development platforms led to the creation of industry leading open source tools for automated testing, FlexMonkey (Flex applications) and FoneMonkey (iPhone/iPad Apps/Android). To download Gorilla Logicâ��s open source tools, and to learn more about the company and its services, please visit (www.gorillalogic.com).

# # #

Contact:

Christie Denniston

Catapult PR-IR

Office: 303-581-7760, ext. 13

Mobile: 303-827-5164

cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com

SPARKFUN’S CHRIS TAYLOR TO GIVE KEYNOTE SPEECH ON OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPMENT AT CREATE. ART & TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE IN BERLIN

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:49:08 +0000

Taylor to present his thoughts on new technologies, ideas and channels of information that are enabling creative progress at a rate unheard of until now

Â WHO: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Chris Taylor

Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Project Manager, Engineering

SparkFun Electronics

(www.sparkfun.com)

Chris Taylor is a project manager at SparkFun Electronics. Taylor started working at SparkFun Electronics in 2006 and received his Electrical and Computer Engineering degrees from the University of Colorado in 2007.

Founded in 2003, SparkFun shares its passion for electronics by providing parts, knowledge, and innovation for those looking to explore the world of embedded electronics. The company helps anyone discover their inner inventor and enables individuals to create their own electronics projects.

Â WHAT:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Keynote Presentation: Open Hardware, Arduino and the Future

We find ourselves living in an incredibly exciting time for innovation and creation. New technologies, ideas and channels of information are enabling creative progress at a rate unheard of until now. Today, people have new ways to access information that allows them to create important, tangible works on an individual scale. We have created whole new communities, new art media, new markets, and new business models in a short few years. With this kind of explosive growth in open hardware development, it's important to remember where it all came from, understand the current state of open design in all its forms, and make steps to protect it while still allowing for true freedom of innovation.

Live Demonstration: Creating a Breakout Board

Even with the existing popularity of D.I.Y. Electronics, many are still intimidated by the idea of creating their own circuit boards for home projects. There is a perceived overhead of information and cost that discourages the non-technically trained from tackling their own designs. This demonstration will prove that this perception is false, and that anyone can create a professional-quality circuit board with a minor amount of practice and a few free programs. We will start with just a chip and an idea, and then walk through the process of going from datasheet to finished circuit board in about a half an hour.

WHERE:Â Â Â Â Â Â Create. Art & Technology Conference

Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â November 4-6, 2011

Planet Modulor,

PrinzenstraÃ�e 85,

10969 Berlin, Germany

WHEN:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Keynote Presentation: Friday, November 4, 2011 at 7 p.m.

Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Live Demonstration: Sunday, November 6, 2011 at 10 a.m.

CONTACT:Â For more information on SparkFun Electronics, or to set up an interview with Chris Taylor, please contact Jeremy Douglas at Catapult PR-IR

(303) 581-7760 or jdouglas@catapultpr-ir.com.

TASKTOP’S MIK KERSTEN TO OUTLINE OPEN SOURCE APPROACHES TO ENTERPRISE AGILE AT AGILE BEST PRACTICES CONFERENCE EAST

Many facets of open source development that align with dynamics and challenges of enterprise Agile processes can be leveraged by development teams

WHO:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 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 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â â��Ten Great Practices Learned from Open Source Projectsâ��

Open source development combines distributed teams, resource constraints and an overload of end-user input. Despite these challenges, the velocity of many popular open source projects is measurably higher than that of their enterprise counterparts. The time has come to take the lessons learned from open source and adapt them to enterprise Agile. Kersten begins with an examination of successful open source projects and their approaches to Agile delivery. He will then outline the overlap of open source approaches and Agile methods, identifying 10 great practices that Agile practitioners can apply to improve their collaboration and productivity. Each practice is grounded in empirical data that Kersten collected from public open source websites. To provide an intuitive appreciation for the open style of Agile delivery, he will illustrate with graphics and visual aids how open source collaboration evolves and grows over time. Attendees will learn novel strategies for connecting the Lean/Agile methodologies and open source development for large-scale enterprise projects.

WHEN:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011, 2:30 p.m. Eastern

WHERE:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Agile Development Practices Conference East

Rosen Centre Hotel, Orlando, FL

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

Gorilla Logic Named to Inc. Magazine Annual List ofAmerica’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies-the Inc. 5000

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:16:37 +0000

Company Ranks No. 2925 on the 2011 Inc. 5000 With Three-Year Sales Growth of 96 Percent

NEW YORK, August 25, 2011 -- Inc. Magazine today ranked Gorilla Logic (www.gorillalogic.com), a leader in enterprise application development services and creators of open source test tools for mobile and Rich Internet Applications (RIA), No. 2925 on its annual "Inc. 5000," an exclusive ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. The list represents the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy -America's independent entrepreneurs. Companies such as Microsoft, Zappos, Intuit, Jamba Juice, Zipcar, Clif Bar, Vizio, Oracle, and many other well-known names gained early exposure as members of the Inc. 5000.

Gorilla Logic continues to lead the industry in developing open-source automated test tools for emerging development platforms. The company's open source testing tools have grown out of its extensive experience providing mobile, web and RIA development services to customers, from Fortune 500 companies to Internet start-ups.

The 2011 Inc. 5000, unveiled in the September issue of Inc. (available on newsstands August 23 to November 15 and on Inc.com), is a group of companies that are smaller but much faster-growing than last year's crop. Aggregate revenue is $10.5 billion, with a median three-year growth of 1,275 percent. The companies on this year's list employ more than 46,000 people and generated over 35,000 jobs in the past three years. Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found on www.Inc.com/500.

"It is an honor to receive recognition as an Inc. 5000 company," said Stu Stern, CEO and co-founder of Gorilla Logic. "It is a testament to our people and products and we look forward to continuing to provide excellent services and automated testing tools that help our customers and the communities we serve meet their software development needs."

More about Inc. and the Inc. 500|5000

Methodology

The 2011 Inc. 500|5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2007 through 2010. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2007. Additionally, they had to be based in the United States, privately held, for profit, and independent-not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies-as of December 31, 2010. (Since then, a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired.)

The minimum revenue required for 2007 is $100,000; the minimum for 2010 is $2 million. Revenue figures given in the company profiles are for calendar years, as are employee counts. Full-time and part-time employees are included in the employee counts; independent contractors are not.

As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Companies on the Inc. 500 are featured in Inc.'s September issue. They represent the top tier of the Inc. 5000, which can be found at www.inc.com/500.

About Inc. Magazine

Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures LLC, Inc. (www.inc.com) is the only major business magazine dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies that delivers real solutions for today's innovative company builders. With a total paid circulation of 710,106, Inc. provides hands-on tools and market-tested strategies for managing people, finances, sales, marketing, and technology. Visit us online at www.inc.com.

About the Inc. 500|5000 Conference

Each year, Inc. and Inc.com celebrate the remarkable achievements of today's entrepreneurial superstars-the privately held small businesses that drive our economy. The Inc. 500|5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony brings together members of the Inc. community, both a new class of Inc. 500|5000 honorees and the list's alumni, for three days of powerful networking, inspired learning, and momentous celebration. Please join us September 22-24, 2011, at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, located minutes from downtown Washington, D.C. For more information about the 2011 Inc. 500|5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony and to register, visit www.inc500conference.com or call 866-901-3205.

About Gorilla Logic

Gorilla Logic provides custom enterprise application development services to many of the world's leading software-driven organizations. It has a rich history of applying software engineering best practices to reduce the time and cost of delivering high-quality, full-featured applications with advanced functionality. Its technical leadership in mobile, rich Internet and enterprise applications showcases its broad platform expertise and exemplifies its commitment to software development best practices and quality. Its innovative work with emerging development platforms led to the creation of two industry leading open source tools for automated testing, FlexMonkey (Flex applications) and FoneMonkey (iPhone/iPad Apps). To download Gorilla Logic's open source tools, and to learn more about the company and its services, please visit (www.gorillalogic.com).

###

Media Contact:

Christie Denniston

Catapult PR-IR

Office: 303-581-7760, ext. 13

Mobile: 303-827-5164

cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com

GORILLA LOGIC, INC. NAMED TO THE MERCURY 100 LIST OF FASTEST GROWING PRIVATE COMPANIES IN BOULDER COUNTY

Wed, 18 May 2011 02:21:50 +0000

BROOMFIELD, Colo., May 17, 2011 - Gorilla Logic, (www.gorillalogic.com), a leader in enterprise application development services and creators of open source test tools for mobile and rich Internet applications, Gorilla Logic, was named to the Mercury 100 list this week. The distinguished listing by Boulder County Business Report, recognizes the 100 Fastest-Growing private companies in Boulder County based on two-year growth.

The Mercury 100 award criteria were based on years 2009 and 2010. These were tough years in the overall economy and Gorilla Logic was one of the few companies to experience growth while many other companies remained flat or experienced a dip.

This year, Gorilla Logic is growing once again, hiring nearly 10 percent more staff in just Q2. "We are on a significant trajectory as we continue to bring value to existing clients and expand our portfolio of software services into the mobile space," said Stu Stern, Gorilla Logic's CEO.

Gorilla Logic also is growing in another community; it is the cyber community known to technologists as the open source eco-system. The company is the creator of numerous free open source functional testing tools, including FlexMonkey, FoneMonkey and FlexMonkium. Its expanding business has been fueled by the demand for these open source functional testing tools.

"We have needed to add a dedicated support engineer to respond to the hundreds of requests on the forums and will soon be adding another. The response to our open source tools has ignited our consulting practice and created a trickle down effect with hiring. We are excited to be employing local software engineering talent and contributing to the expanding high-tech community that is becoming a main component to the Boulder business community and surrounding areas. It's all good stuff." said Stern.

The company will be recognized on May 17 at a reception held at Flatirons Park.

About Gorilla Logic:

###

Media Contact:

Christie Denniston

Catapult PR-IR

303-581-7760, ext. 13

cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com

Prediction #2: ALM tools become the gateway drug for hooking developers on cloud and PaaS

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 02:31:25 +0000

Prediction #2: ALM tools become the gateway drug for hooking developers on cloud and PaaS

by Mik Kersten, March 3rd, 2011

The productization of DOS by Microsoft in the 1980s kicked off the trend of platform vendors clamouring for developer mindshare. Apple's App Store may only generate 1% of the company's profit, but it drives the platform that sells Apple hardware. One of the best examples of the value of a developer platform is Microsoft's Visual Basic (VB), which is yet to see a rival in terms of breadth and pace of adoption. In 2010, VB ranked as the 5th most popular programming language on the Tiobe index, still well ahead of iOS's Objective-C. Microsoft's investment in developers goes well beyond paying homage to the company's roots, since Microsoft knows the sheer number of Windows license sales that can be attributed to each developer that they won over with VB.

Developers drive the success of platforms. Whenever a platform shift occurs, such as the shift from proprietary to open source or from desktop to mobile, interest in gaining developer mindshare is renewed. While we may all be overloaded with atmospheric-condition-related acronyms, we are in the middle of a fundamental shift in enterprise software platforms. The VMware hypervisor has replaced Dell blade server as the hot new technology. Application architectures are being transformed by REST-based services. Over the course of the year, support for multi-tenanting Java applications will result in more significant changes to the programming model that any of the incremental features coming in Java 7. The shift to cloud and Platform as a Service (PaaS) has ramifications beyond the change in the deployment model. One of the most important changes coming down the pipeline is the convergence of open source, PaaS and ALM. The continuous integration and delivery loop, becoming increasingly popular in Agile deployments, will put a new set of requirements on both ALM tools and the connection between the running application and the developer's workbench.

All of this is good news for developers. There will be an increase in competition, choice, and budgets which are dedicated to bringing developers to new application hosting destinations and PaaS solutions. Over the course of the year, early adopters of PaaS will help to harden these new offerings in order to get them ready for the on-premise and private cloud primetime. If you are an early adopter and running a greenfield project, you're bound to see some cool hosting and services thrown your way. But there are a few things you will need to watch out for when migrating to the bleeding edge. Beware the snake-oil pitch that moving your Java app into the cloud will be as easy as choosing a hosting provider. When migrating existing applications, you are likely to discover that achieving a scalable and cost effective architecture will involve significant efforts such as reconsidering your data storage, implementing multi-tenancy and porting the application to new ready-made services. This migration is similar to moving from a rural homestead to a downtown condo-it will take more than just a moving truck, your lifestyle will change, and you will spend less time worrying about your plumbing.

We have transitioned from thinking about applications as static entities that we build and deploy to living entities whose evolution is punctuated by releases and sprints. Given the turnkey automation promised by PaaS, developers will demand integration between the running application and the lifecycle tools used to manage it. This will drive one of the most important developer-centric trends in ALM, the convergence of application hosting and monitoring with ALM. The core ALM services of change management and continuous integration will become the hub between the developer's desktop and the running application, with tasks as the unit of abstraction. An application failure or problem will automatically create a defect that includes the application state that is related to the problem encountered. The product owner will schedule that defect into the appropriate sprint, and when the developer picks it up, all of the code relevant to the defect will be instantly retrieved from the SCM system and brought into focus. The commit of the fix will automatically spin up a build in a staging environment, deploy it, and then pass it on to production or Ops when tests pass. This future needs a new level or coordination between the core services of the ALM stack and PaaS offerings.

Vendors that tie together the programming model, frameworks, virtualization, hosting and ALM will be the winners in the battle for developer mindshare. To capture a meaningful snapshot of a hosted application, the runtime must understand the programming model. To present this to the developer, the IDE tools must be capable of be effective in displaying that information alongside the code. And at each step of the way, it's the ALM tools that will facilitate communication between the various stakeholders in the process: monitoring by Ops identifies a problem, that problem's state is captured in the issue tracker, the issue pops up on the developer's desktop, and then all subsequent changes are attached and captured on the corresponding task and reported in the build that was triggered. Workflows of this sort will require significant changes from ALM stacks, which have generally ignored the details of application build and deployment to date.

ALM services will also facilitate the migration of applications to the cloud. As we saw from the $212M acquisition of Heroku, supporting developer workflow provides a great on-ramp for application hosting. In the land of enterprise Java this is considerably more complex than a Git-based push and deploy of Ruby apps. But the need to bring this kind of simplicity to the Java application lifecycle is the same, and tasks provide the link necessary to scale continuous integration and delivery to large Java applications with a broader range of stakeholders ranging from dev, to Ops and QA.

Connecting the IDE to an ALM hub and using the hosted source and builds to drive deployment will provide a convenient on-ramp to application hosting offerings, and will significantly reduce the configuration and administrative burden currently placed on developers. While it can be fun to play around with configuring deployment environments and continuous integration servers, this level of busy work gets very tedious after a few months. A new level of automation is needed to help us focus on delivering application features and business value in the face of increasing platform complexity. Source, issue tracking and continuous integration will be a welcome gateway drug to cloud and PaaS application hosting. While having an app store claim 30% of all enterprise application revenues is not something we are likely to see this year, a Steve Jobs-like focus on turnkey simplicity of deployment and lifecycle management will help win the hearts and minds of developers making the move to the cloud.

To view more blog postings, please visit: (http://tasktop.com/blog/)

Click here to Watch Tasktop webinars

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

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 21:41:18 +0000

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 EXTENDS REACH OF ITS OPEN SOURCE, ENTERPRISE, AND AGILE ALM OFFERINGS IN GERMANY

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 20:27:00 +0000

TASKTOP EXTENDS REACH OF ITS OPEN SOURCE, ENTERPRISE, AND AGILE ALM OFFERINGS IN GERMANY

Active and innovative development community around Eclipse Mylyn and Agile methods leads Tasktop to expand German team and sponsorship of W-JAX 2010 community events

VANCOUVER AND MUNICH, Nov. 11, 2010 - Tasktop Technologies (www.tasktop.com), creators of Eclipse Mylyn and the leader in Agile Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) integration and productivity, today announced several initiatives aimed at supporting the growing Agile software development community in Germany and the entire European region. The company now has three representatives based in Germany, including two Eclipse open source committers and a sales and business development specialist. Tasktop also is increasing its commitment to the region with a Gold Sponsorship of the W-JAX 2010 conference and having company founder and CEO Mik Kersten present a keynote session on bringing open source collaboration and ALM tools to the enterprise.

"The European market, and Germany in particular, has long been an innovator in open source adoption and at the forefront of Eclipse innovation," said Tasktop's Kersten. "Tasktop's offerings fill the gap between the developer and ALM system that's needed to get the ROI promised by Agile deployments. To better serve our European customers' needs for integrating their Agile and ALM deployments, we are very pleased to announce our new presence in the region and support of leading events such as W-JAX 2010 and the upcoming JAX 2011."

At the W-JAX 2010 conference slated November 15-19, Tasktop will provide event support through a Gold Sponsorship. Kersten will present a Keynote session scheduled for Wed., Nov. 17, titled: Bringing Open Source Collaboration to the Enterprise. This presentation will look at how during the past decade heavyweight ALM tools tended to get in developers' way by emphasizing process over collaboration. The adoption of Agile and Lean development methodologies was a reaction to this trend, emphasizing people over process, but often leaving the tools necessary to scale collaboration behind. Kersten argues we are now on the cusp of a new phase in the evolution of ALM, being driven by a new breed of tools that successful open source communities have created to support their own collaboration. This keynote will outline how the recent developments in open source collaboration sets the stage to build and improve on Agile principals and how this trend is transforming other areas of knowledge work connected to software development, and beyond. To see the full abstract please visit: (http://jax.de/wjax2010/keynotes/).

Additionally, Kersten will be giving a session scheduled for Thursday, November 18, titled The rebirth of Mylyn: Eclipse, Agile and ALM. This session will focus on the new tools now available and coming soon to developers, architects and development managers who are looking to maximize productivity and accountability in a world where development efforts are growing increasingly complex.

For more information about Tasktop, its products and services within Germany and the region please contact Sigrid Haberkorn at sigrid.haberkorn@tasktop.com or stop by the Tasktop booth at W-JAX.

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 enterprise-ready product based on Mylyn, with task-focused support for web browsing, time tracking, documents, email and calendars. Tasktop Technologies 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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