From Galileo’s telescope to the scanning electron microscope, scientific progress has been punctuated by the technology that enabled new forms of measurement. Yet in the discipline of software delivery, robust measurement has been elusive. When I set out on a mission to double developer productivity, I ended up spending a good portion of my PhD first coming up with a new developer productivity metric, and then even more time implementing a tool for measuring it (now a core part of Eclipse Mylyn).
Over the past few years, while working with the largest software delivery organizations in the world, I’ve noticed almost every one of them going through a similar struggle. All are looking for the best ways to scale or improve their software delivery via enterprise Agile frameworks and tools, DevOps automation technologies, and end-to-end ALM deployments. The problem is that nobody is able to reliably measure the overall success of those efforts because we are missing the technology infrastructure that allows for measurement across software delivery disciplines, methods and tools.
Register for Sync 4.0 and Data Webinar to learn more
With the launch of Tasktop Data we have a single goal: to unlock the data flowing through the software lifecycle. New measurement ideas have recently arrived on the market, ranging from the metrics backing the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to methods for tracking cycle time through the DevOps pipeline originating from Sam Guckenheimer. There’s also no shortage of tools out there to allow you to visualize such data, ranging from generic Business Intelligence (BI) tools, to innovative new DevOps-specific reporting such as the IBM Jazz Reporting Service. The problem that’s plaguing any large-scale software delivery organization is that there’s simply no way to get at the end-to-end data to drive those metrics and reporting tools. Database-driven approaches such as ETL no longer work due to the fact that databases do not contain the complex business logic of modern Agile/ALM/DevOps tools, and are additionally inaccessible for SaaS solutions. Single tool approaches, such as Scrum or CI metrics, only work for one stage of the software lifecycle and cannot deliver end-to-end analytics such as cycle time. We need a new measurement technology in in order to take the next step in improving how software is built. That new technology is Tasktop Data.
Tasktop has created two key innovations that make Tasktop Data possible. The first is our semantically rich data model of the end-to-end software lifecycle. This is at the core of the Tasktop products and allows us to map and synchronize artifacts across the various tools and levels of granularity that define software delivery. The second is the massive “integration factory” that allows us to test all of the versions of all the leading Agile, ALM and DevOps tools that we support.
With Tasktop Data, we are leveraging this common model and all our integrations, allowing organizations to stream the data that defines their software lifecycle to the database & reporting solution of choice. What makes this new technology even more profound is that we are exposing the models within the Tasktop platform, enabling software lifecycle architects to author the models that will drive their reports. The end-result is the real-time flow of clean lifecycle data flowing in to your reporting tool of choice. Running Enterprise Agile DevOps analytics and metrics that were previously impossible is now easy. Check out the demo above for a start-to-finish setup of Tasktop Data that connects Rally and HP ALM to Tableau in minutes. Then imagine this working for your entire tool chain, with your reporting solution of choice.
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Tasktop Data is being released as part of Tasktop 4.0, which includes significant updates across our entire product portfolio. The most notable is the fact that we’re releasing 6 new Sync connectors (BMC Remedy, GitHub, IBM Bluemix, Polarion ALM, Serena Dimensions RM and Tricentis Tosca) in addition to bringing Tasktop Dev up-to-speed with the latest developer tools (e.g., Eclipse/Mylyn Luna, Jenkins, Gerrit as well as commercial tools that leverage Dev such as HP Agile Manager).
We’re thrilled that the past 7 years of creating the de facto integration layer for software delivery is now materializing in a whole new way of measuring and improving how software is built. This is just the start of a new journey, as the most interesting aspects of data will arise from the way that our customers and partners leverage it in order to create unique and valuable insights in the software delivery process. For more information on how you can become a part of that journey:
- Contact us if you’re interested in deploying Tasktop Data
- Join our partner program if you’re interested in leveraging Data in your solution
- Visit the Product Page to learn more about Tasktop 4.0
