Linux News: Developer : Eclipse Adding Tools to Manage App Life Cycle

This project is still "on the way" but is a very interesting development if the different development products can be brought together. ITIL, PRINCE and RUP have all got strengths, but none are really open source. The Institute of Government Business has made a key point about ensuring that the business process reengineering is properly addressed in the development process. If there is any information on how Eclipse will handle this, please let me know:

Linux News: Developer : Eclipse Adding Tools to Manage App Life Cycle: "The Eclipse Foundation detailed plans to expand its traditional focus on individual open source development tools by adding a project for managing the entire application life cycle.

During its EclipseCon conference, which took place in late March in Santa Clara, Calif., officials of the open source community provided further information on the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Project under development by several of its members.

The Eclipse ALM system promises to tie together development tools from multiple vendors without requiring point-to-point integration.
Single Platform

Eclipse is targeting users like Loren Larsen, chief architect at World Wide Packets in Spokane Valley, Wash.

Larsen said he would be interested in using Eclipse's ALM project to help his company avoid having to buy an integrated suite from the likes of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft or IBM's (NYSE: IBM) Latest News about IBM Rational Software unit. Larsen said he would prefer to use best-of-breed tools for the elements in the life cycle.

'[Open source ALM] is the only way we will get a lot of the different tool vendors to come to the table and provide a single platform everyone can use,' he said.

Larsen said his company, which provides Ethernet products to telecommunications carriers, now uses incompatible requirements management, scheduling, defect-tracking, compiler and software configuration management tools.

The Eclipse Foundation planned to roll out proof-of-concept code for ALM at the EclipseCon conference, said Ian Skerrett, the organization's director of marketing.

More than 30 vendors have signed on to support the project, which was launched by Eclipse member Serena Software last spring. The completed ALM code is expected to be available in October, Skerrett said."