A Very Long Engagement

 A Very Long Engagement

Presenter:  Seb Rose

Format: Lightning OR Formal 30 min

Telelogic, was acquired by IBM Rational in 2008. Telelogic's major product is DOORS, a leading requirements manangement product, used by systems engineers worldwide. The product began its life in the early nineties as a cross platform C application, migrated to C++ in 1999, became Windows only in 2004 and generally grew arms, legs, spaghetti and (of course) a scripting language.

IBM is a vocal adopter of Agile methods, and with the support of the new management the development team mothballed the SRD (Sytems Requirement Document), and jumped into an agile transformation, new team structures, RTC (Rational Team Concert) and the baffling complexity of dealing with a huge organisation.

Last year, I reported the successes and failures of our first 6 months as we tried to change the way we worked within the team and the larger organisation. 12 months further on, I can report another batch of triumphs and some despair. Management support is still forthcoming, but there is ambiguity in the message, especially given the many varied stakeholders in the IBM hierarchy.

In a nutshell: it's a long road, but with identifiable milestones along the way, you can keep your spirits up, even though progress can seem stalled at times.

No sign of Ms Tautou, but definitely a report from the front line.