Toolmakers are recognizing the shift away from waterfall methodologies and beginning to respond, at least in their marketing strategy, says a recent SDTimes report. Bob Schatz, owner of Agile Infusion and CST, is quoted as saying, "The traditional application life-cycle tool vendors have had to adjust their messaging to align with agile principles. For many of them, there are really no application changes. But unrealized promises of the past have tarnished [earlier] value propositions.”

Empirix, maker of testing and performance tools, has made the shift as well, according to the report. SDTimes paraphrased Empirix CTO and director of strategy Dan Koloski as follows:

"The new marketing efforts reflect the shift away from waterfall development, where one stage finishes before the next starts ... The tools, which did not share data among the different project phases, reflected that reality. But today agile practices and ideas, such as test early and often, and link testing with development, have gained wide acceptance, and tools are increasingly focused on tying together the two processes. 'I credit the philosophy and spirit behind agile with making that happen,' [he said]."

SDTimes also interviewed Fergal McGovern, Compuware's Optimal Trace product manager. He told SDTimes that many of their existing tools, while not directly targeted at agile shops, do have offerings that make them useful for agile development. He gave an example of capturing requirements incrementally. SDTimes paraphrased him as follows:

"Agile looks at steps in the development process in terms of how they relate to other steps, not as discrete tasks. That thinking is evident in tools that show, for example, which requirements have been tested."

You can read the full article here.

posted by Rebecca T. Traeger (26 Mar 08)