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November 21, 2006

Featured Bugzilla: EPF Composer Search Facility

Almost the first thing people seem to ask me when they publish content using EPF Composer, or browse OpenUP/Basic is

"Where's the Search functionality gone?"

RMC Composer (from whence the original source for EPF Composer came) has a Search facility. Published RUP has a Search facility. Why not EPF?

Well the answer (I believe) is that this behaviour was provided through a Java applet that was not part of the IBM donation to Eclipse. Fair enough. Surely we can write another one?

A bugzilla got raised on this a while back but doesn't seem to be very high on the priority list yet. If you'd like to see it pushed up the list, you can vote on the bugzilla to indicate your support. You need to register for a bugzilla account but it only takes a few seconds to do that.

The bugzilla is...

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=139906

Posted by epfmonkey at 11:52 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

epfug.org

I have registered www.epfug.org as a place to host the EPF User Group website. There is no content as yet but I hope to be working on this soon with Julian Holmes of Capgemini (Julian chairs the UK Rational User Group).

Posted by epfmonkey at 12:29 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 16, 2006

Death of Bespoke?

I see an increasing trend toward Enterprise Application projects (like SAP, Seibel, MS-CRM etc.) in the profile of new work and less demand for bespoke development. I was musing on this with friends and colleagues in London last week. There was general agreement on this - we were all observing the same trend in mainland Europe, North America and the UK.

If this really is the case, it has interesting implications (IMHO) for Agile development. It is probably fair to say that Agile's biggest audience share over the last few years has been the Java/.NET community, many of whom have embraced new technologies and new working practices at the same time. A move toward ERP-type projects and would imply not only a shrinking market but also demand that Agile scale to enterprise-level issues or wither away.

Now I'm a great believer in the idea that Agile development as a phenomenon has taken too firm a hold to fade away.  I detect a growing demand for agile principles to be applied in a wider context than a "mere" development project. I'll blog more on that particular topic on another occasion.

For now, I'm interested in your experiences in this area. Is anyone else observing a decline in the demand for bespoke development in favour of Enterprise packaged applications?

Posted by epfmonkey at 01:03 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 12, 2006

The Week Just Gone, Part 2 - EPF User Group anyone?

The European Face to Face meeting (Nov 9/10) was another very good session. There were a number of key decisions, probably most significant (to me) was the decision to lauch a European EPF User Group. We have targeted February 21/22 as possible dates for a first meeting, probably around the Heathrow area, and we were able to draw up a strong list of potential speakers very quickly. More work and thought will be needed but if you are interested in taking part please get in touch.

Posted by epfmonkey at 12:50 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 11, 2006

Milking the Cash Cow

One of the speakers at the Agile Business Conference (I think it was Todd Little but I could be wrong) played a very funny clip from Kung Pow. The introduction ran something like "Some customers are cash cows to I.T. Suppliers. It's important to keep these customers happy and above all, don't milk them dry of cash..." I thought that the film clip was even funnier in this context. Enjoy.

Posted by epfmonkey at 07:19 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Week Just Gone, Part 1 - Agile Business Conference 2006

Looking back at the past week I'd say it was a pretty successful conference. It was well attended with a good spread of people in different jobs - both technical and management; private and public sector; industry and academia. Estimates on attendance range between 250-300. The DSDM Plugin for OpenUP was launched to coincide with the keynote from Scott Ambler which (amongst other things) introduced the EPF project to many people. My impression was that there was good interest in the EPF project in general and the DSDM plugin in particular. We got a good set of contacts which I will be following up on in the near future. The general level of discussion and debate was very high and I have a good list of blog topics to address over the next couple of weeks. Overall - a great conference and I'm already looking forward to next year. You can find out more from the Agile Conference website.

Posted by epfmonkey at 06:44 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 07, 2006

Packed week ahead

So I'm getting packed and ready to go to London for the Agile Conference and EPF F2F (see www.epfmonkey.org). It looks like a busy week but it will be good to meet up with people again. I'm also looking forward to releasing the first version of the DSDM plugin into the wild. I've had some comments back from Ricardo Balduino (IBM) which I haven't read. It is gratifying to get any feedback at all - especially fromn Ricardo, who falls into the category of Very Bright Spark Indeed and will no doubt have some insightful words of wisdom. (For those who don't know, Ricardo is the Content Architect for OpenUP and is part of IBM's RUP team). That's all for now...

Posted by epfmonkey at 03:25 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 04, 2006

Prep

QuickPost | System Overview | Movable Type Publishing Platform Have just set up this blog. Not sure if it is a good idea yet - I guess that will depend on me. I'm preparing for next week, which is shaping up to be a busy one, as I'm in London most of the week for the Agile Business Conference and EPF Face to Face meeting.

Posted by epfmonkey at 10:33 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)


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