developerWorks: This is a developerWorks podcast. I'm Scott Laningham. I'm here with Kartik Kanakasabesan, product manager for Rational® Team Concert. Welcome again, Kartik.

Kanakasabesan: Glad to be here, Scott.

developerWorks: Also joining are Matt Pomroy from Ascendant Technology, and Carson Holmes from Noble Star. Both are Rational Team Concert beta partners and are here to talk about their experiences with Rational Team Concert. Thank you both for being on today.

Pomroy: Thank you.

Holmes: Yes, thanks.

developerWorks: Now, before we jump into this, Kartik, maybe you should bring us up to date on the latest with Rational Team Concert.

Kanakasabesan: Oh, I'm glad to do that here, Scott. So, a couple of things. So now, we'd been telling the market the fact that we were going to be GA'ing Rational Team Concert on June 30. As a matter of fact, we lied. [LAUGHTER] We GA'd Rational Team Concert on June 26, kind of a little surprise there for the market, as it were. So we went ahead and released it ahead of schedule, not necessarily by several, you know, like within months, but at least several days before that. And again, that's one of the things that we've gone ahead and done.

The last few weeks, what was happening, which is, again, unprecedented in the case of Rational, was the fact that prior to GA, one of the things that we're doing from a quality standpoint was on a weekly basis we actually had a release candidate coming out. So every Friday, had you gone to Jazz.net, you would have actually seen new release candidates being posted up on there for customers to try and give us feedback. And we wanted to make sure that we put our best foot forward. Some other things I can actually say, the fact that Rational Team Concert from a quality standpoint actually does what customers have actually asked us to do through Jazz.net, as it were.

Along with that, what we've also gone ahead and introduced as part of this effort is something called open services for life-cycle collaboration. And what this is, this is more in the premise of what Jazz. The Jazz story comes along with. But what we're trying to go do is lay down the foundations, if you will, to allow us to exchange information back and forth from different types of tools using very loosely coupled REST-type interfaces with third-party products. So we've also gone ahead and launched that along with the RTCGA to allow us to grow our ecosystem with Jazz-based products as the platform and the product evolve going forward.

developerWorks: This is all great. Now, Matt and Carson obviously have been an important part of getting us to this point, and that's why they've ... we're excited to have them on today and why they've joined.

I want to turn to you guys and Kartik, of course, interact with them as you want to around some of this stuff. But I wanted to ask you guys about what you were doing with RTC in the beta-test period. And maybe we should start with Carson, if you don't mind, Matt, because I know Carson is just about ready to run down the runway to catch an airplane, so ... [LAUGHTER] I want to give him a chance to jump in here quickly. Carson, talk about what you all were doing.

Holmes: Certainly. Our goal with the beta program of RTC and the Jazz server was to basically do a proof of concept so that we in our R&D lab could get the tools up and running and provide demonstrations to clients that were interested at how well these tools work together. And we had great success. It was easy to get the tools up and running. And we kicked off a sample project in Java™ and developed that iteratively using the tools, and it worked very well for us.

developerWorks: What did you learn from that beta experience? What would you describe in that regard?

Holmes: Well, having this platform and allowing the small team to collaborate during the development and interact and keep track of status and metrics without ever having to do those manually was a huge plus for us. And having the testing and the building integrated all in basically the same environment was very handy for us, so.

Kanakasabesan: So, actually just a quick question here, too, Carson. This is Kartik. You know, would you also say that there were some significant productivity gains that you saw in, during the whole beta process, of [instantiating] Team Concert in your R&D labs?

Holmes: Yes, definitely. I mean, when the developers would come in to continue working on the sample project, they didn't need to ask someone, what was the next thing they needed to code. You know, it was right there in their work items and they just picked that up and do what they needed to do. And the built in source control worked well, and we were quite pleased with that.

developerWorks: What about feedback, Carson and Kartik, when you guys were interacting on this? Were there some things that you were able to come back to Kartik's team with that were helpful in and around Rational Team Concert?

Holmes: Oh, definitely. We're really looking forward to some of the advancements that are coming when we can get requirements composed or hooked into this solution suite also, as well as the quality-manager tool. And we're also looking forward to having RMC plug into here, and so that we can define our process and have that feed into RTC and the Jazz server. So we're really looking forward to some of the future of these tools.

Kanakasabesan: And I mean, one of the things to also add here, too, is the fact, Scott, unlike before, this is again something that was unprecedented because both Carson and Matt were essentially part of the so called inside track, if you will, because any kind of development initiatives or marketing initiatives that we would actually go ahead and plan out, we would actually run it by these folks and kind of get their perspective on whether that particular type of messaging resonates or not as well.

So this is way above beyond. I mean, if you were to look at it from beta perspective, it was way above and beyond just code sharing and getting perspective on code. But also coming out, making sure that we had the holistic message available and that validated from customers like Carson and Matt, on that end as well.

developerWorks: Well, you know, speaking of that, we should turn to our other insider, then, Matt. And Matt, can you talk a little bit about what you guys were doing?

Pomroy: Yes, sure. So we were really looking for a tool to be the backbone of our deliver platform. We have kind of a challenging environment where we deliver various types of projects from portal to WebSphere® Commerce to business integration. And so really we were looking for a way to define these processes and make them actionable. And we really found that RTC with the process templates and work items and what not was a way to make our intellectual property around portal and commerce development actionable.

developerWorks: So, Matt, talk about lessons learned, you know, as Carson was, from the beta, and maybe some thoughts that you had in your interaction with IBM around RTC.

Pomroy: Yes. I mean, so the lessons learned where from our development shop, we have about 150 developers and trying to move from an open source environment with [subversion] and track and things like that to a Rational, you know, to more of a robust Rational environment was a little bit of a challenge. But Team Concert made that quite a bit easier because of the simplicity of the install, to have source control and work items and process and build management like Carson mentioned all wrapped into one in a real kind of Agile environment.

So kind of our lessons learned was that a lot of folks from history may think that, you know, that Rational is not suited for Agile development or small development shops. And so we've learned that there is a way to ... you know, with Team Concert, provides a way to implement the best practices that Rational has always promoted in an agile and very lightweight fashion. So we learned that there is a way that you can have process enforcement and tie activities to change such, and to have auditable builds in a lightweight environment. So that was a big win for us.

And in terms of interacting with the RTC team, leveraging the forums on Jazz.net, we got great quick responses from the RTC development team. And just having a kind of a window into the status of the development project in terms of, you know, where are they in the life cycle and what things are they working on, what kind of bugs are out there, was really kind of a ... used a really solid collaborative experience working with the RTC team.

developerWorks: Were there some things or some suggestions you guys came back with, maybe some features or things that you're looking forward to and that you were able to provide feedback on?

Pomroy: Well, you know, yes, some of the feedback we had was around simplifying the usage model for different roles. So we kind of took a project-management aspect to Team Concert, to basically to be able to, you know, as we grow, to be able to scale our ability to deliver on these projects. So the kind of suggestion that we brought to the table was to create usage models for different roles — a roadmap, if you will — to help folks get enabled quickly. And I think that that's coming out, you know, with the process templates, as those grow, and the interaction or integration with Method Composer going forward, is going to be, I think it will help out a lot in that area.

And then also as Carson mentioned, integration with ClearQuest® and Requirements Composer and Build Forge®. And I think the future is just really bright for this technology.

Holmes: I know, Matt, you guys are also looking and working with some of the Case and Quest ... Quest work as well, so do you have any feedback on that front as well, with the connector experience and being able to reach out to virtually anyone in the development team to kind of get your questions answered?

Holmes: Yes. I mean, you describe it as though, you know, access to the Jazz.net forums if we had questions about connectors. And our customers do, and our internal folks as well have questions. You know, can you interact with Subversion? Can you interact with ClearCase® Can I leverage my investment in ClearQuest and to be able to pass those questions on to the team that really knows what's going on was invaluable to communicate that back to not only our internal organization, but also to our customers.

Kanakasabesan: Right. And mind you, Scott, not everything was rosy, as much as ... [LAUGHTER] Carson and Matt would like to go and say. We did have some challenges. You know, case in point: Some of the issues around, you know, our strategy around Visual Studio and so on and so forth. But as I said, it was not as if we were trying to go after each other's throats here, but it was actually just saying, "OK, guys — this is the reality, we've looked at it from a scope management perspective.

And actually, it was a very candid exchange of ideas going back and forth on how we planned to evolve this going forward. I mean, we were from a Jazz perspective and from Rational Team Concert perspective, we were literally practicing what we preach when it came to transparency as it were.

developerWorks: That's what I was going to say. I mean, I would think that that type of enhanced beta experience you've been describing, didn't it make it a lot easier to deal with those problems as they were coming up when you had this more open dialog?

Kanakasabesan: Absolutely. At least from my end. i don't know, Matt, Carson ...

Pomroy: Definitely from my end, as well. I mean, having that Jazz.net basically collaboration environment for the teams was great. And being able to get such quick feedback and support was amazing.

Holmes: Hey, Kartik — along those lines, I mean, did you guys find kind of patterns in the questions or issues that were popping up that kind of led you to focus on particular features within Team Concert?

Kanakasabesan: Absolutely. [LAUGHTER] Absolutely. I mean, that's one of the things that we ... you know, one of the greatest flexibilities that we provide, at least for the Team Concert capabilities, are just being able to make sure that the right people get subscribed to some of the high-interest work items that are there. And that's one of the things that we, you know, what we do amongst ourselves and along with the Jazz PMC is kind of look at what are the most frequently requested features, and so on and so forth.

And you know, I know it kind of sounds very similar to the way we did with Eclipse, but you know, the bottom line is with Eclipse we were very successful from a transparent standpoint. We want to actually bring those kind of transparency capabilities on Jazz.net. So if there was a particular pattern that was being manifested in the forums or in through the work items, all the senior leadership across Jazz was already on it trying to make sure that we had some kind of a mitigation strategy in place as well.

developerWorks: It's exciting to hear you all talk about this open development experience around software that's designed to support that very same kind of experience. It's pretty cool.

Kanakasabesan: Well, I mean, the bottom line here, too, Scott, is you know, what we're trying to emphasize here is here we are seeing an example of where IBM's gone ahead and interacted with their end consumers, as it were. But there's nothing precluding our end consumers to actually have the same kind of benefits, if you will, when they want to interact with their customers. As a matter of fact, that's something that we want to encourage our customers to do as well, have their own instances of, you know, of their instance of Team Concert being exposed to their customers and have the same level of transparency that they've benefited out of engaging with IBM with their customers as it were. So, kind of like more of a pay-it-forward model.

developerWorks: Right, absolutely. Hey, Carson, are you needing to run off to the plane? Do you have a closing thought, or do you need to hang up?

Holmes: I still see people boarding, so I think I'm OK. [LAUGHTER]

developerWorks: Why don't I give you a chance to just, any closing thoughts you wanted to share about the experience in general?

Holmes: You know, I think we're going to have a lot of clients interested in this suite, and they need to be, I think, of a certain maturity level to really start rolling this out across the organization. And there's going to be challenges with some teams who are used to doing things a certain way, but I think once they realize the benefits of having this kind of environment for the collaboration and cooperation almost I think that it's going to be, Jazz is going to take off. I really think it's going to be a big [future] for this tool suite.

developerWorks: That's great. And Carson, we all want to thank you so much, too, for making time for this when you're getting ready to head off with your family. And if you hang up on us now, we will not take offense at all, I promise.

Kanakasabesan: Exactly, exactly.

Holmes: No problem. It was no problem at all. Thanks.

developerWorks: Matt, what about you? Did you have any thoughts you wanted to share as kind of a closing thought here?

Pomroy: Yes. Just in terms of collaboration, we're using Team Concert the way that I think that the Jazz team rolled it out, in the sense that we're exposing some of our assets for different IBM technologies to our customers and also internally. So we're using a combination of Rational Asset Manager, and then Team Concert as a way to, you know, once you see an asset that's of interest, to actually have visibility into the development of that asset. And you know, in some cases, even collaborate. So I guess it could be called kind of the next generation of development, but we see it as a very powerful tool just not only internally but also externally. And there will be some challenges — technical challenges as the product matures. But I think that the spirit is right on, and over time, this will ... we're just going to leverage the heck out of this thing.

developerWorks: Kartik, any thoughts from you?

Kanakasabesan: Oh, they've kind of taken my ... stolen my thunder here. [LAUGHTER] And not that I'm offended by it. It's actually pretty ... you know, it's essentially what we wanted to do. But essentially ... what you're seeing here is just a harbinger of things to come. We are going to make ourselves more and more transparent. There will be more Jazz-based products and also evolving some of our existing product sets going forward that will actually leverage a lot of benefit of this collaboration that we're trying to go do. You know, the key thing here is, and as I've said, you've heard this from both Carson and from Matt, the fact that we are changing the development experience, so going away from a whole closed-box notion of doing development to actually making development very fruitful and making ourselves more productive and delivering value to our overall software supply chain is something that's absolutely paramount. And our key underpinning around Jazz and Jazz-based technologies. So the more I hear folks like Matt and Carson say what they're saying, it actually validates our initial assumptions around Jazz and Jazz-based products, as it were.

developerWorks: There's a lot of love on this call today. [LAUGHTER] Hey, and thank you all. Thank you all so much. It's been a very enjoyable chat. We appreciate it.

Kanakasabesan: Thank you.

Pomroy: Thank you.

Holmes: Yes. Thanks for having us.

developerWorks: Kartik Kanakasabesan, Matt Pomroy, and Carson Holmes. Find more on this topic at ibm.com/developerworks. Look in the Rational Zone and find the Rational Team Concert link under Change and Release Management Topics. developerWorks is IBM's premiere technical resource for software developers with tools, code and education on IBM products and open-standards technology. Talk to you next time.

Resources

• Rational Team Concert on developerWorks
  
  
• "Developing extensible applications with IBM Rational Team Concert and the Jazz platform: Part 1"
  
  
• Scott Hebner video: Rational unveils Jazz.net and first Jazz-based product in open beta
  
  
• Podcast blog
  
  

About the author

Scott Laningham, host of developerWorks podcasts, was previously editor of developerWorks newsletters. Prior to IBM, he was an award-winning reporter and director for news programming featured on Public Radio International, a freelance writer for the American Communications Foundation and CBS Radio, and a songwriter/musician.

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