Volume 9 - Number 1 - January 2011

This month the CM Journal reports on the trends we expect to see in 2011 and the outlook for the year ahead. This past year was certainly challenging and our talented writers provided guidance to help you achieve success. Once again, our experts will give you the insights you need to conquer what lies ahead and help lead your team to victory. It is no surprise that the articles in this issue will address Agile strategies, cloud computing, virtualization, and mobile computing along with the core CM practices that are required to support any development effort.

Scott Ambler, IBM Rational Chief Methodologist for Agile and Lean, takes the lead with his article "2011 Prediction: Organizations will Continue Applying Agile Strategies at Scale" while Collabnet's Laszlo Szalvay, VP of Worldwide Scrum Business, offers his "Top 7 trends in the Agile community for 2011". Andrew Phillips, VP Product Development for Xebia Labs, gives us "Predictions for 2011: Automation, Integration and Configuration Management". We appreciate these industry experts sharing their views and insight for the coming year and next month, our Dev Ops 101 issue will feature even more!

Our CM Journal family of columnists are led by Ben Weatherall with his "Thoughts for 2011" including Agile up-scaling, ALM and CM in the Cloud while Joe Townsend shares his view of "2011 Trends and Outlook: Guesses and Wish List". Industry experts Mario Moreira treats us to his "CM Forecast for 2011" and in his monthly column "CM: The Next Generation" Joe Farah considers the question What Else Does ALM Need? I talk about CM jobs and unemployment in my own Behaviorally Speaking column and invite you to join us by contributing your own predictions for the coming year online in the Community blog. 2011 is going to be a great year and we are glad that you are joining us in taking a look at the trends and outlook ahead!

Bob Aiello
Editor in Chief
CM Crossroads
raiello@acm.org

Featured articles...

2011 Prediction: Organizations will Continue Applying Agile Strategies at Scale by Scott Ambler When agile software development went mainstream several years ago many agilists declared success.  It clearly was a success, but only one of many.  Recently I’ve been seeing more and more organizations attempt to apply agile strategies in what I would consider scaling situations for large teams, on geographically distributed teams, or in regulatory environments for example, and I predict that this will continue for several years to come.  Why?  First, agile strategies not only work better in practice than traditional strategies they also appear to work as well or better in scaling situations as well.  Second, as organizations experiment with applying agile at scale they will observe that they’re succeeding and choose to continue with tailoring agile to meet their needs. Read More >>

Predictions for 2011: Automation, Integration, and Configuration Management by Andrew Phillips As Bob Aiello predicted at the beginning of 2010, last year was a busy one for Configuration Management (CM) professionals, taking on more tasks and extended responsibilities in a cost-conscious business climate. Thankfully, we're seeing fewer large-scale rationalizations at the moment, but efficiency and reliability are still very much key drivers for CM in 2011. Having adjusted to the restructurings of the past year, companies are taking the opportunity to review their release, deployment and configuration processes. By identifying and adopting new approaches and technologies to minimize manual interventions and eliminate error-prone handover moments, businesses are looking to structurally improve their Configuration Management practice in both the short- and long-term. Read More >>

Top 7 trends in the Agile community for 2011 by Laszlo Szalvay Enterprise Business Agility has arrived and is here to stay.  The case studies continue to pop up to support the successes of cultural transformation and waterfall is in the distant rear view mirror as something your dad did. Every customer we have visited this past year has been keenly interested in talking about Agile, the benefits, the risks, the journey.   From traditional bottom up SMB adoption to top down Enterprise adoption, at CollabNet we are focused on meeting with companies of all types and coaching them on how to successfully maneuver the path to Agility.  With business agility a top priority for many organizations, I was asked by the editors to do a quick round up on where we are going in 2011.  Below is my top 7 list of trends to look for within the Agile community. Read More >>

More articles...

Look for the “Perfect Storm” in Virtualization Management in 2011 by Jay Litkey We live in a very dynamic industry, and spend a lot of time throughout the year talking with customers, analysts and other virtualization vendors, trying to get a handle on how the market is shifting, and how market needs are changing over time. At this time every year this activity intensifies as market leaders put their reputations on the line and make their own predictions for the new year. Read More >> Thoughts for 2011 by Ben Weatherall I would like to say I could predict what was going to happen without fail and without a shred of doubt in 2011, but the only thing I can predict is that I will get it wrong.  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to look ahead, we should just do so without expecting much of it to come true.  So what we end up with is simply guesses and a laundry list of things we would like to see happen.  Another way to predict is to paint with broad strokes that no matter what happens we look like we are soothsayers.  Well here are my guesses and wish list for 2011, enjoy. Read More >>

2011 Trends and Outlook: Guesses and Wish List by Joe Townsend It has been more than 10 years since The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued Circular A-119 (Revised) directing federal agencies to use voluntary consensus standards, both domestic and international, in its regulatory and procurement activities. This circular defined voluntary consensus standards as having the following attributes: openness; balance of interest; due process; an appeals process; and consensus. Standards that meet these criteria include ISO, IEEE, and ANSI standards. It was expected that the agencies, including the Department of Defense, would cease using their own agency-specific standards which were often modeled after the proprietary standards of the contractors hired to develop those standards. Read More >>

CM: THE NEXT GENERATION - What Else Does ALM Need? by Joe Farah As we start a new year, the CM/ALM world continues to evolve.  We've seen a lot of migration to open source solutions, but we've also seen, in the past year, some impressive commercial ALM releases, especially from IBM (RTC) and from Neuma (CM+7).  It appears clear that those who can do with less will move from lower end commercial solutions to open source.  Those who need more comprehensive and integrated solutions, targeted at the wider project team will continue to seek them commercially. Read More >> CM Forecast for 2011 by Mario Moreira Happy New Year and the hope of a better year ahead! Is your Configuration Management (CM) capability able to handle the changes within your organization? As we gaze into the horizon, what do we think will be hot in the CM landscape and where is the CM field headed? What is the CM forecast? Let’s take a look into the crystal ball! Read More >> Behaviorally Speaking – 2011 Trends, Outlook and the Death of CM by Bob Aiello This issue of the CM Journal focuses on the Trends and Outlook for 2011. It is one of my favorite issues as we reflect upon how the industry is changing and what we need to do in order to successfully address the challenges ahead. A few years ago, I created a stir within the Agile community by predicting the death of Agile. A few people actually understood that I was referring to the fact that Agile needed to mature in order to successfully meet the challenges of real world implementations, especially in terms of scalability.  In this article, I will explain why I believe that 2011 will be the year in which we will observe the death of Configuration Management.  Read on if you want to be ready for the inevitable changes in store in the year ahead! Read More >>