By now, I'm sure most readers of this blog have seen the announcement of CollabNet's acquisition of Danube Technologies, Inc. Our CEO, Bill Portelli, posted a blog entry here yesterday addressing the strategic reasons behind the acquisition, but I wanted to write a note to welcome Danube into the CollabNet team, and talk a little bit about how I think they will make our services offerings stronger.

In its coverage of the announcement, Forrester Research penned a great blog post with a lot of details of why they think this is a key acquisition in the Agile ALM space. While there will be forthcoming discussions of how the CollabNet TeamForge and ScrumWorks products will be integrated, I'd like to focus on another area that Forrester called out in their blog:

"One of Collabnet’s largest implementations is the Forge.mil site which provides a community oriented development space for defense projects to share development assets. Increasingly these projects are looking to adopt Agile methods, but in a controlled and distributed way. The result of Collabnet’s acquisition of Danube is a large amount of Scrum best practice [which] will slowly percolate into this community."

This is a key and fundamental strength this acquisition brings to the CollabNet services portfolio. Danube has an awesome array of talented Scrum Trainers and consultants that will be able to bring solid experience in explaining the details of how to take advantage of all that Agile development has to offer. Where I'm most excited is in how that combination of 'how to do Agile' intersects with CollabNet's own community management consulting practice. A lot of what we do in the community consulting area is about explaining the 'why' of new methodologies such as Agile. Having our new Danube colleagues on board to help us deep dive into the 'how' of Agile will undoubtedly help us as we start to engage additional teams both within and outside of the DoD.

Forrester is absolutely correct that in the DoD space, the move to Agile is all about doing this in a controlled manner that makes sense. There is a long established culture in the department that doesn't exactly embrace this 'new-fangled' way of doing things. Thankfully, the experience of building out Forge.mil has proven that amazing things can happen (180 days to launch initial revision of software.forge.mil) if you apply Agile principles to new projects in the DoD space. With that being said, we've had to build out a 'hybrid-Agile' approach in this space, to account for certain 'back-end' processes like Change Control Boards (CCBs), but we are still moving the department forward and saving taxpayer money in the form of reduced redundant efforts.

I look forward to working with my new colleagues in the services space, and would love to hear from any readers on what kinds of things you'd like to see the combined talents of the community consultants and Scrum Trainers take on. Hopefully, we'll be able to integrate the Danube blogs into this space soon so that we can continue to drive these discussions forward...

By Bill Portelli, CollabNet CEO & President

I am proud to be sitting here in Frankfurt making my way to Davos, Switzerland, where I will accept a Technology Pioneer Award. While there, I will also participate in a number of working sessions and breakout groups along with hundreds of technical, business, and social leaders from around the globe.  Although I will have the pleasure of accepting this award and participating in these sessions, I accept this on behalf of the hard work, passion, and vision of the current and past employees of CollabNet who have made globally distributed software development a reality. The community of World Economic Forum (WEF) Technical Pioneers was established by the WEF in 2000 in recognition of the importance of small companies that create impact through technical innovation of entire industries.  Since 2000, a rigorous annual selection process by the WEF in cooperation with a host of strategic partners identifies hundreds of companies worldwide, and eventually selects about two dozen companies each year. 

When thinking about why CollabNet won this award, a couple of things struck me.  First, it takes a certain kind of company to win.  Klaus Schwab, founder and still the driving force behind the WEF, founded it in 1971, based on the stakeholder theory, which states that the management of an enterprise has to serve all stakeholders.  In a 2008 London Times opinion piece, he wrote:  “ . . . the management has to lead the enterprise as the trustee of all stakeholders . . . in order to secure the long term prosperity of the company”.  By “stakeholder”, Schwab means all constituencies – both internal and external.  I’d like to believe that CollabNet management has operated in an open manner with this long-term view of serving our stakeholders since we founded the company in 1999 - both internally among our employees, as well as externally with our clients and business partners.   And of course, we need to look no further than CollabNet’s founding of Subversion and continued corporate sponsorship and leadership of it over the last 10 years to see that this multi-stakeholder long term view of the world is a core value of our company.  Perhaps it’s the open source gene coming through….

The second aspect that struck me even more was that the companies honored as Pioneers are recognized for creating “impact through technical innovation of entire industries.”  CollabNet, and our nearly 1,000 customers, have blazed the path for industry to define and adopt industry-changing software development paradigms -- from fractured and decentralized to collaborative and distributed.  We have done this across every industry, and often with award-winning results, such as the recent recognition by the US government for DISA’s CollabNet-based implementation of forge.mil.  Certainly, great technology is critical to winning such an award. Even more important is the ability to have the long-term vision and perseverance to identify an industry opportunity, and to work within that industry to bring to bear that technology for transformative gains for all that participate in that industry.  That’s exactly what CollabNet, DISA, and other companies have done in the past year - but more about that in a blog to come.

About the Author

(Posted by Dana Nourie)

We know that using an open source model for software development drives innovation, reveals bugs and fixes more quickly, and allows for creative minds to collaborate in ways that just can't happen with proprietary code. Because of this, we have been seeing more open source software projects emerge over the past few years. That's not to say that there aren't issues. Businesses are still working out the kinks in how they can sponsor and encourage open source software while trying to figure out how to pay the bills and profit. After all, few can volunteer all of their time. In addition, credit needs to go where credit is due.

In the science fields, sharing research and data has been the norm, but the process differs from the open source software model. Typically a scientist starts his/her research, makes discoveries, writes up the findings, and then publishes in leading journals. Then, and not until the creator's name is firmly attached, do others get the data. Eventually, the code or data gets shared. Now, however, various branches of science are looking more closely at the open source software model.

The main concern of scientists has been getting credit where credit is due. The introduction of licenses, similar to those we use for open source software, will protect the discovery process, while encouraging collaboration, and verification. The added benefit is that there is no need to wait for publication.

Personally, I find this exciting. It means more minds can get in on the research from the very beginning, and is not academically exclusive. The more variety of people and the larger the set of eyes looking at a project or problem, the great the likeliness that it will speed up the discovery and testing process.

Transparency is a huge bonus in software development, and I think we'll find the same is true in the world of science.

There is much concern in the science arena that someone will swoop up the public research and take credit for it, that people "undeserving" will water down the reputations of those more deserving. I think just the opposite will happen. And it's sad that the importance of reputation manages to rise above the possibility of improving processes and increasing the likeliness of discovering error or new information.

Apparently many science researchers are resistant to sharing data, even after the publication in a journal. Science should not be allowed to be a closed system. All the processes, the procedures, the data capture methods, and the data itself should be exposed at the earliest possible moment.

I'm excited to see sites and resources like the following:

• Open Source Science
• OpenSourceScience
• The Open Source Science Project
• Victoria Stodden: Open Source Science-Open Research License
• Open Source Science Experiments

There is currently a lot of resistance from scientists to open source their projects, but as awareness increases about the benefits of transparency emerge, I think we'll see more and more scientific research on the web along with special licenses to protect the originators through the discovery process.

This weekend I attended the Community Leadership Summit in San Jose. Before it even started, I had an interesting discussion with Jack Repenning and a man who was investigating various community models for a homeschooling organization he's working for. As we talked about the needs of the parents of homeschoolers, I realized how much they had in common with open source community members:

• They are joiners and have need of connecting with other parents like themselves
• They do not want an overt governing body controlling the way the community interacts
• They have need of shared resources and discussions
• They want to stay away from institutionalized or corporate rules and pressures, and instead want the community members to have roles emerge organically

There are likely some similarities I'm missing here, but I realized in this discussion that these types of communities can benefit from the open source community model. In an open source community, it's important that creativity is encouraged and unbound, that community members are treated equally, and that any roles assigned are appropriate and emerge out of needs rather that what an official overhead dictates. This type of community is self-regulating for the most part, if not entirely.

The parents of homeschoolers, and many groups like them, are rejecting conventional methods of education, but that does not mean they don't have a driving need for support, communal togetherness, or collaboration.They do join groups, parenting, educational, as well as many others, but they want to avoid the school "feel."

Additionally, I can see how a project model and platform would work for homeschoolers and their parents. Homeschooling often involves collaboration similar to software development. Needless to say the Subversion and TeamForge platform would be ideal so that children could work together on various projects, keeping all versions of a project and adding to it, while parents could make use of collaborating on resources, documentation, and discussion forums.

Both the open source community model and the CollabNet platform and tools would work well for the homeschooling crowd, and no doubt many other non-developer types.

I'm noticing more communities wiggling out from "the man" and opting for an open environment in which community drives and guides itself. Everyone seems to be tiring of corporate or institutional pressure and dictates. I think we'll be seeing the open source community model becoming more the norm than not over the next few years. And it will be interesting and fun to see what kind of creativity emerges from these communities of free thinkers.

With 'Government 2.0' receiving a disproportionate amount of coverage in the press lately (due in part to the new administration's focus on transparency - a good thing in my opinion), there have been a number of pundits who have asked, 'When will we know that we've reached Government 2.0, and how long is that going to take?'

I think that begs the question of exactly what constitutes Government 2.0, as well as sets an unrealistic expectation of a finite process that has a clear beginning and end. Clearly, any effort designed to fundamentally change within the Government such things as technology acquisition, transparency, or collaboration will not be a 'forklift revolution,' but an ongoing and constantly reviewed process. I think most intelligent and knowledgeable folks within government realize that successive approximations are the only realistic way to make this happen.

There has been good progress on some of these fronts (both for internal government & public collaboration) - notably data.gov, Intellipedia, A-Space, whitehouse.gov, and even Forge.mil. However, one of the recent approximations that I believe is critical to this effort has happened within the Department of Defense - a call to streamline the acquisition process for Information Technology. Currently, the IT acquisition process is the same one used for things like tanks and missiles, systems that require a large up-front investment in requirements analysis and a strict process to ensure they can perform the necessary mission before the 'crank is turned' and thousands of items are produced and delivered.

Software, as most of us know, doesn't operate that way, and in fact, needs to be able to adapt to changing technologies and requirements throughout the life cycle of deployed systems. The DoD will be fielding 10 systems in fiscal 2010 to be acquired under the new, more streamlined process, and if these are successful, there is a strong chance that the program could be expanded to add more systems in the future.

I should also note that there need to be approximations within approximations. I know this sounds silly, but the best example I can think of is cultural change in how IT and other software support systems are developed and fielded. A large change in the culture that we are attempting to engender with the Forge.mil effort is shared (and in many cases, 'open' within the DoD) collaboration. There are approximations within this cultural change effort aimed at getting people used to not developing in silos, looking for, and building reusable components, and accepting contributions from qualified members of the department outside of their immediate project team.

Once I fully realized the need for these approximations in my efforts as one of the Forge.mil community managers, it was easier to relax and treat this entire effort as a continuous process, not as a finite deliverable. I believe it is critical that the larger government community adopt this same approach as well - attempting to build out all parts of what Government 2.0 could or should be right away would be expensive, and doomed to a lackluster reception by those in the community who need it most. The new DoD acquisition plan seems to correctly recognize a need for 'course corrections' or 'approximations' as we move forward toward building a more participative technology infrastructure for government. I'm hopeful that it will become the model for other government agencies going forward - quite honestly, doing it any other way probably portends failure from both the technology and fiscal perspective.

Last week I attended the Virtual Edge Summit, which  focused exclusively on providing education, training, and solutions for planning and producing virtual events. I attended the first day in person, and the second day virtually.

It's not surprising in this economy that virtual conferences are becoming more popular. What I did find interesting was the number of virtual conference vendors out there, and the quality of their software and services. In addition, it was fascinating to listen to some of the top dogs, such as IBM and Oracle, speak about their experience with virtual conferences, the mistakes they made, how they corrected, and what expectations should be.

Conferences are at heart about community. You aren't bringing together hundreds or thousands of people just for the heck of it. Every conference must have a purpose, a goal that is wrapped up in intention to better serve that particular community with services, products, and communication. After all, this is not a one way street. Companies need to find out what their communities need from them and how they can better serve them. Conferences are a great opportunity to do just that.

So, when considering a platform for your virtual conference, it's vital to make sure it's going to satisfy the social aspects of a conference. All the speakers at the Virtual Edge Summit made it clear that virtual conferences do not replace face-to-face contact and in-person conferences, but rather they extend and enhance the typical conference. Businesses need to make sure the virtual experience is every bit as satisfying as the in-person experience.

Most of my experience with virtual conferences and meetings has been in Second Life (SL). I like SL a lot, and use it way too frequently for my personal fun, but I have found professionally that SL has a steep learning curve for many, has big computer requirements, and therefore some attendees are less likely to join that platform. What is great about SL, though, is the 3D environment lends to a feeling of "being there" and having avatar-to-avatar contact gives more of a face-to-face feeling than does 2D.

The Virtual Edge Summit did a great job of uniting the in-person experience with the virtual. While in sessions, we could see the virtual session while they had us on a screen, so we could see each other. Virtually folks entered their questions and comments through text, and chatted with each other, commenting on what the speakers were saying, while listening to our in-person questions and comments.

The Virtual Edge Summit used VirtualU, a virtual universe created by Digitaltell Inc. This platform provides a 3D and 2D experience, which I really liked. First you download the software, which has a small footprint, then select an avatar. Navigation buttons are at the bottom of the screen at all times. The virtual environment is on the left, while a small panel of 2D features is on the right, giving you access to any file downloads, such as PDFs, text chat, etc. It was nice to use the software in a real conference to see how it worked. Other vendor software there worked similarly, some using only 2D and menuing systems, which offered a lot of nice features.

For CollabNet, since we are a smaller company, some of these platforms are going to be out of our budget. I'm researching less expensive alternatives, while being careful that the platform gives as "real" a conference experience as possible. Community is important to us, and one big attraction to having a virtual conference is that more people can attend since travel is not an issue.

I would love to hear from you on your experiences with virtual conferences, how likely you would be to attend a CollabNet virtual conference, and what some of your expectations would be.

Another interesting use of this platform is that some companies are extending their websites with this software so that folks can visit virtual chats and 3D forums year-round. Sites have had text discussion forums for a long time, but it seems our online communities are getting 3D face lifts, such as extending into places like Second Life or platforms like VirtualU. I welcome your thoughts on this topic as well.

Dana dnourie at collab.net

I must admit, I really enjoy my job, and the industry that I'm in. This week I went to the Virtual Edge Summit conference in Santa Clara. Today, I am attending that same conference, but I'm participating while lying on the couch, laptop on my lap (go figure) in my jammies, and getting other work done at the same time.

Virtual meetings and conferences are wonderful. I'm not saying this replaces face-to-face interaction, but there are many advantages to attending meetings and conferences virtually:

1. Convenience -- no traveling; easy to join in; can squeeze in between other tasks because you don't have to go anywhere
2. Increases productivity -- you can do other work when parts of the meeting don't apply to you, or during conference sessions of no interest to you
3. Document share -- you can share documents or other computer assets instantly
4. Increased communication -- while one person is talking, you can IM others pertinent information
5. Expense -- virtual conferences and trade shows cost a lot less to run than physical ones, or extend the physical
6. Increased Participation -- Folks from all over the planet can join since no physical travel is involved
7. Near face-to-face - Video and avatars, plus live chat or voice, provide a near face-to-face experience that is immediate

I'm looking into various software applications for CollabNet to use for virtual conferences and trade shows. Yesterday while at the Virtual Edge Summit in person, I had a chance to talk to a few vendors. My experience has been mainly with Second Life, so this was a nice opportunity to see what other folks are using, and what features are provided.

Some of the software was mostly 2D, some of it 3D similar to Second Life, and one ran in the browser, using graphics and a menu system. I was impressed with all. Some are quite pricey but have a lot of features. I'm also looking online for less expensive alternatives, and to see what is available.

I welcome suggestions from you folks who have experience with particular software that you really like. I'd also welcome hearing your experiences with virtual conferences and tradeshows.

Email: dnourie at collab.net

The main reason I came to CollabNet five months ago was to have a chance to show companies how to do a better job of collaborating, utilizing Open Source (code and methodologies), and using the CollabNet SourceForge toolset to accomplish all of these goals. I'm happy to report that I've been given a chance to do all three of those things in an effort we are currently working on for DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency), the cross-services IT arm for the US Department of Defense.

One of the very many cool things about this project is that while it may be destined to reside inside of the secure portion of the .mil network, it could very well usher in a new era for how software development, acquisition, and vendor collaboration for DoD is accomplished. In a nutshell, this project is about building the equivalent of SourceForge.net inside of the .mil domain, so that participants (DoD contractors, vendors, etc.) can utilize our collaborative toolset for their future projects. The site, when launched later this year, will be christened 'forge.mil,' and will serve as a centralized repository for common code libraries, as well as provide a space for different parties to come together and collaborate on future software projects for the DoD. One of the other things I love about this is that it fits nicely into experiences I had in helping run a very similar sort of 'internal SourceForge' site at Motorola, where we made a fair amount of headway into getting folks to utilize more collaborative development practices.

I just returned from a trip to Charleston, SC, where our team met with folks from the Navy's SPAWAR (Space and Warfare) command, who will be running the day-to-day operations of the site. We had a number of good discussions over the course of one and a half days, and I found the team members to be very enthusiastic about the future and possibilities for this system. I do realize that we might have a tough road ahead with some folks (such as DoD software contractors/vendors who generally don't collaborate with each other) in building out this community, but my hope as the community manager is that we can provide a compelling value proposition for these parties, and have productive discussions along the lines of the kind I had earlier this week with civilian/commercial business people who attended a panel discussion I spoke at on Open Source and communities.

I think this effort will prove to be extremely interesting, not just from a community building/management standpoint, but as a data point to really showcase the value of 'innersourcing.' If the US government can successfully do this in an organization as large and diverse as the DoD, making it happen in your corporate environment is not only possible, but highly desirable. I'll be giving updates periodically here in the blog as we get closer to site launch, and as we progress toward important milestones. I look forward to being able to report more good news in this effort!

Amanda McPherson of the Linux Foundation penned an interesting post recently entitled 'What's Your Dunbar Number'?

She had a hypothesis that the tools of the 'social feed' could help us to be 'close' to a larger number of people, but that we have to work harder in some cases to connect with those individuals. It is interesting to me that I'll probably never meet the majority of people I follow on Twitter, though I tend to be more selective on Facebook and LinkedIn. The use of Twitter as a 'personal Zietgiest' (cool description by Amanda) is fascinating to me, and for all of the 'trivial' things that come across my Twitterific client every day, there is always at least one or two things that make me think, or that I find useful to what I'm working on.

So, if that is the case, why is it that businesses see this kind of interaction ('community', 'wisdom of crowds', etc.) as frivolous, or not worth investing time in? How can collaboration tools (yes, even those from CollabNet :)) do a better job of incorporating these tools of the new collective mindset so that there isn't an 'application/attention span gap' between your 'vocation', and your 'avocation'? Is there a way to take the most powerful aspects of both (plus add in your 'social brain') and have a customized knowledge feed spit out the other side? Is FriendFeed the beginning of this type of software? There are already attempts to 'business-ify' some of the 'social media' applications (see Yammer, a 'Twitter for business').

I often wonder if there is a way to quantify 'business fun' - the ability to use 'fun' to drive your business forward. At their core, a lot of Open Source communities are more often about fun than anything else. Despite the fact that there are successful Open Source projects sponsored/supported by companies who pay people to work on them, there is a body of evidence that monetary rewards aren't everything. For example, Stormy Peters gave a great presentation at the Southern California Linux Expo (2008) where she talked about how paying people to work on Open Source can actually demotivate them.

All of this makes me question - is there a reason why we function differently when put inside of a 'corporate bubble'? Despite the rise of collaborative tools like Wikis, blogs, IM, and the raft of web 2.0 things out there, why are some larger companies still focused on how to take 'project management' (a.k.a 'control) to the web, instead of utilizing the project management tools to feed their collaboration engine? Are there companies out there who ARE doing this?

I know, more questions than answers - my sincere hope in these blog posts is to get some amount of interaction stirring, so that we can hopefully learn from each other. Please, feel free to jump in anytime. :)

One of our main goals and success factors at CollabNet is to listen carefully to our customers and prospects to understand your specific requirements. These requirements drive the development of new features within our products significantly. 

This blog post is a call for participation with two opportunities - An opportunity for us to listen to your needs, wishes and best practices and an opportunity for you to actively participate in our requirements engineering process.

For a research study focusing on improving the tracker workflow management features of SourceForge Enterprise Edition (SFEE), we developed a survey and a workflow extractor tool  to gather your current tracker workflow configuration and learn more about your needs.

The workflow configuration of a tracker defines its statuses, its permitted transitions between the statuses with their constraints (e. g. required fields and roles for a transition to happen) and its auto-assignment configuration. You can find the current workflow configuration of your trackers within the project admin tab in subsection “Tracker Settings.”

Please take part in our Survey

If you would like to take part in our survey, you can rate five proposed new features that extend the functionality of SFEE's Tracker Workflow Engine. Every feature comes with three examples of how it can be applied to boost the tracker workflow and ticket handling process within your organization.

Of course, you know better what your organization needs than we do, so don't miss the chance to vote for and comment on these new features.

Please share your Tracker Workflow Configuration with us (Free Open Source Tool)

Getting a rating for potential features is one part to improve SFEE - seeing how the current features are actually used is another one. Therefore, we developed an Open Source SFEE workflow extractor tool.

CollabNet's Workflow Extractor Tool will automatically extract the tracker workflow configuration of your system and store it within an XML file. If you send the information within this XML file to CollabNet (please zip it before), it will be used to find out how and how often the various features currently available within the tracker workflow engine are actually used and how they can be improved.

If you like that CollabNet can come up with further ideas of improvements by considering your unique situation, just download  our tracker workflow configuration extractor tool, follow the instructions in the README file and send the resulting (zipped) XML file to CollabNet.

Play around with Free Code Samples

Last but not least, the full source code of the workflow extractor tool and a pre-configured Eclipse project are also part of the download. If you are interested in some free code samples how to retrieve the tracker workflow configuration, the project names, its associated users, releases and tracker names for your whole SFEE site or even multiple sites, feel free to play around with the code. Of course, you are allowed to use some snippets within your own projects.

Thank you for actively shaping the future of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, I promise to keep you updated!