Hybrid Approaches
Many commercial tools vendors like IBM are learning to structure themselves much more like their open source counterparts, with full transparency into the defects that are being fixed and tasks being completed. Today, you can see plans for features, defects, and resources all exposed, even while working to compete with other commercial tools vendors in the same space.
Conclusion
Understanding the personality of tools and their vendors, whether they be commercial or open source, is a matter of understanding your organization's behavior. Corporations have personalities, too. As always in psychology, you need to be aware and knowledgeable about your own needs and capabilities. You will succeed if you can align your organization’s personality with the tools and processes that you want to implement. Feel free to drop me a line and let me know about your own challenges with understanding the interaction of personality and tools!
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About the author
Leslie Sachs is a New York state certified school psychologist and the COO of Yellow Spider, Inc. (http://yellowspiderinc.com). Leslie is the coauthor of Configuration Management Best Practices: Practical Methods that Work in the Real World, Addison-Wesley Professional (http://cmbestpractices.com). Ms. Sachs has more than twenty years of experience in the psychology field and has worked in a variety of clinical and business settings where she has provided many effective interventions designed to improve the social and educational functioning of both individuals and groups. Ms. Sachs has an M.S. in School Psychology from Pace University and interned in Bellevue's Psychiatric Center in New York city. A firm believer in the uniqueness of every individual, she has recently done advanced training with Mel Levine's "All Kinds of Minds" Institute. She may be reached at LeslieASachs@gmail.com, or link with her http://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliesachs.
