Agile SCM January 2006: Looking Ahead

the need for "virtual" information  radiators and visibility & status-reporting. An interesting project to keep an  eye on in this space is BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools)  - another Eclipse-based way of extracting and reporting on all the CM data.

Distribution also raises issues of how to either unify (into a datamart) and/or gather data from  multiple sites and/or distributed repositories to meet the needs of SOX and  other  compliance requirements.

The Rise of ITIL (BS15000 and now ISO20000)

In the world of IT Service Management, the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has grown from something created by the UK  Government which was rapidly adopted across Europe as the standard for best practice in  the provision of IT Service, and has became a British and ISO Standard .

Although the ITIL covers a number of areas, its main focus is on IT Service  Management ( ITSM). The major  ITIL disciplines are:   

• Configuration Management (the  CMDB is at the heart of ITIL)    
• Problem Management    

• Change Management    

• Help Desk    

• Software Control and Distribution    

• Service Level Management    

• Capacity Management    

• Contingency Planning    

• Availability Management    

• Cost Management for IT Services

One of the things that ITIL has been doing very well is getting its message  across to the business which has bought in in a big way. Business managers can  see the resulting benefits. ITIL Certification is ramping up very quickly and  becoming a requirement for sub-contractors in many areas. CMM certification has  become a marketing weapon and competitive edge, particularly for off-shore development over the past few years, and  ITIL is fast achieving a similar status.

The challenge ahead is to integrate ITIL with software development and ALM,  particularly in distributed environments.

Microsoft's Team Foundation Server

Microsoft managed to release Visual Studio 2005 in November, although they  pushed back the introduction of Team Foundation Server to Q1 of 2006. This is  definitely an event that can't be ignored by both other vendors and the rest of  the industry. It is part of Visual  Studio Team System and includes tools for:   

• Class/UML Design    
• Unit Test Coverage    

• Load Testing    

• Performance Testing    

• Defect Tracking    

• Configuration Management

among others. In addition they include workflow support and fully  customizable process frameworks including out of the box "Agile" flavours. It  will be very interesting to see how it fares in the market. Microsoft's  reputation for getting things right with version 1 of new product may not be too  high, but they look like they are committed (whereas they have shown less  commitment to Visual SourceSafe over the years) and thus it is bound to carve  out a significant share. Various aspects may also "raise the bar" for other  tools in terms of user interface and integration, areas where Microsoft is  traditionally stronger.

Conclusion

An interesting year gone by: some new trends appearing but lots of old issues  still to be addressed.

All in all, plenty of  challenges to keep us busy and on our toes as Agile SCMers going forward - Happy  New Year!