The Crossroads - http://www.cmcrossroads.com - As business requirements demand greater release frequency to stay competitive and take advantage of market opportunities, the bottleneck in many enterprises has now moved to the application deployment phase. So, with a team of former BuildForge executives, AnovaStorm recently received two million dollars in initial funding to provide a solution to this problem. In this episode of The Crossroads, Patrick Egan, Publisher of the CM Journal, talked with Derek Hutson, Chief Executive Officer of AnovaStorm about this new endeavor. AnovaStorm combines built-in application server intelligence with a flexible deployment process framework that enables enterprises to automate, standardize and track their deployment activities, thereby reducing cost, improving staff utilization, and easing compliance requirements. So, how is AnovaStorm different from other web deployment solutions? Derek says that AnovaStorm takes a more holistic approach and provides intelligent web deployment automation software that brings predictability, efficiency and auditability to your mission critical web applications. See more videos like this one at http://www.cmcrossroads.com

An Agile Business Video http://www.agilejournal.com - One of the hottest topics in software development today is the focus on combining agile and ALM. Two terms that were once thought to be at odds. ALM, or Application Lifecycle Management, traditionally focused on heavy processes and waterfall development while agile methods strove to rid the developers of the chains brought on by rigid process. Todd Olson, Director of Product Marketing for Rally Software, joins Agile Journal publisher, Patrick Egan, in this episode of Agile Talk. Patrick and Todd chat about agile ALM and what's behind the market push to support this new combination. Todd believes that the deep integration and adaptability of the Rally platform gives developers a seemless adoption of new capabilities while still preserving investment in legacy systems. They go on to discuss the new features of the recent release of Rally's agile ALM tool as well as the future of this exciting integration. See more videos like this one at http://www.agilejournal.com

Patrick Egan, Publisher of the Agile Journal talked with Robert Holler, CEO of VersionOne about their Summer Release which features enhanced product roadmapping, project workspaces and a new Salesforce.com integration, CaseConnect. You can view this video to hear the entire interview.

During this interview, Robert talked about how excited he and his organization are about Agile 2010 and the trends that they have seen in the industry this year including the strategic adoption of agile within organizations. Robert discussed that VersionOne’s latest product features were developed based on these trends and customer feedback.  In particular, this year, some of their product enhancements include enhanced roadmapping facilities to align delivery and strategy, a project workspace so that teams can adapt the system to their own particular needs but still allow rollup and reporting capabilities across the organization, an integration with Salesforce and enhanced customer reporting and analytics.

Patrick then asked Robert to expand on what is unique about this summer’s release.  Robert went on to explain that they have seen the full life cycle of strategic planning move into the ALM arena and VersionOne further aligned their offering with these changes.  Now, with VersionOne’s enhanced drag and drop facilities, users are able to lay out visually where the enterprise is going to be next month, next quarter or even the next few years.  These new capabilities allow users to adopt agile throughout the enterprise by allowing teams to control their own processes, workflows,etc. and manage this at their level without losing the visibility of all projects across the enterprise.  Robert explained that they have targeted their offerings to replace non integrated tools with a nice visually integrated environment that ties the entire life cycle together from conception to delivery.

Patrick then drilled into how VersionOne’s products could be used outside of the development organization?  Robert explains VersionOne that their “ultimate edition” in particular extends agile outside the development team and provides reporting, feedback and collaboration with different teams, executives and customers.  

Finally Patrick asked what’s on the horizon for VersionOne?  VersionOne has extended their products out even further into the community through their partnerships with Agile Journal as well as their own open community platform with the best agile content available.  They are also delivering agile events (Agile Palooza), tool conferences (Agile in Action) and a webinars series called Agile Live, all to help users navigate the complex agile waters today.  

Robert also spoke about their newest offering, Agile Sherpa which was launched at the Agile 2010 show.  This is a guide to the best agile practices and methods, as well as a self-service platform for a training and event calendar and the latest agile news.  

You’ll be able to hear all this and more from Robert Holler in this video podcast.  

People are taking a hybrid approach to everything these days from ALM to Agile and even to development conferences.  This year, the Agile Development Practices West Conference in Las Vegas, was streamed real time to over 2000 online Agile Connect viewers.  This hybrid show was truly an agile event!  It showcased the current state of agile adoption and how software developers are combining different methodologies like Scrum, Lean, Agile and XP to deliver better software.

In this episode of AgileTalk, Patrick Egan chats with Jeff Amfahr, Director of Product Management for Seapine Software.  Seapine recently released a new version of Seapine ALM.  From source code management to test automation to a full test track suite, Seapine has you covered.  They added plenty of new features and deepened the integration of all their products, so check out this episode so see what's new!

In this episode of AgileTalk, Patrick Egan chats with Kevin Deitz, president of Timpani Software.  Timpani recently announced MergeMagician, a branch management and automated merging solution designed to easily address the problem of parallel software development using source code branches.  By using a configurable set of rules, MergeMagician automatically migrates code from their original source branches to their destination branches., saving teams time and money.

Powerful All-in-one IT Management System Giving IT Leadership a vantage point leveraging costs, delivery, productivity, and over all quality Task Manager with analytics dashboard & Mass Update Wizard Project Manager with Analytics Dashboard Summary Reports...

AgileCycle, is a fully-integrated Agile Application Lifecycle Management (Agile ALM) solution designed to improve time-to-market, product quality, and efficiency for large and small software projects. AgileCycle is available exclusively from AccuRev, Inc., and includes options for comprehensive services including Agile coaching, training, and product deployment and support. AgileCycle is ideal for Enterprise Agile, where there is a combination of Agile, iterative, and waterfall processes. AgileCycle provides management with full visibility into the software development process, including the ability to track requirements at each stage of development. With AgileCycle, software teams focus on the product, not on the tools!

Be Agile!  The world of software development is constantly changing.  At ESDC 2010 in San Mateo California, industry experts in all frameworks and technologies were talking about software with an Agile twist.  Companies are now scaling agile across the enterprise, testing and QA are getting involved, and agile is being adopted on a much larger level.  Tools, training and collaboration are required to get better software out quicker and make the most of the enterprise.  So watch this video to hear what you missed or re-live the action from this year!

VersionOne announces a new edition of their award winning V1 Agile Product Suite, which focuses on helping managers track the work of multiple teams. With the introduction of so many new agile suites recently, VersionOne sets itself apart by continuing to deliver innovative solutions that are both easy to use and scale quickly to meet the needs of different sized organizations. In this Agile Talk interview, Robert Holler and Patrick Egan discuss the new Ultimate Edition: a Comprehensive agile lifecycle management platform for scaling agile throughout your organization. The VersionOne Ultimate Edition provides integrated solutions for automating collaboration with your users and customers, defining and managing QA regression test plans and suites, and maximizing stakeholder visibility via the industry’s only completely customizable reporting platform. So, whether you are a small team just getting started with agile or a multi-team, multi-program enterprise, you can easily customize VersionOne's products to match your specific agile process.

John Walker, Senior Marketing Manager, Perforce - Agile 2009, Chicago, IL

Ryan Martens, CTO, Rally Software - Agile 2009, Chicago, IL

TechExcel announces Agile Studio combining project planning and implementation with defect tracking and out-of-the box Agile methodology templates for Scrum, XP, Feature-Driven, and Test-Driven development. In this video interview Jeff Johnstone, TechExcel’s VP of Product Strategy, talks about how Agile Studtio gives development teams some real flexibility and how in the light of other recent announcements why is Agile Studio different? Jeff Johnsone and Patrick Egan also discuss that it is very important to allow users to mix Agile methods so that teams can choose the right approach and the right balance for their unique situation. So to address this Agile Studio allows users to begin with the most appropriate general approach which might even be waterfall and then and then potentially move into a more traditional approach. In this release Agile studio also addresses scalability by providing a single centralized repository for teams large and small In addition to supporting multiple agile methods Agile Studio supports both agile and non agile teams alike. Its' task workflow which might normally seem to be in conflict to the agile approach allows teams that normally develop by agile standards but have specific cases that require some level of process control. For more information about this release you can visit TechExcel on the  web at http:/www.TechExcel.com

Mike Jones, VP Marketing, Outsystems - Agile 2009, Chicago, IL

Erin Curtis, Electric Cloud - Agile 2009, Chicago IL

Danube Systems has announced at Agile 2009 that their newly updated Scrumworks Pro 4 now has a connector for Tasktop. This takes it all the way from Pro 4s newly expanded program-level management down to the individuals task-level productivity integrating with apps like Outlook, GMail and the Eclipse IDE so that developers can seamlessly code and accomplish tasks within their favorite development environment and productivity apps just by sending themselves emails or checking boxes while staying integrated with their company-wide Agile teamwork process.

We spoke to Paul Unterburg of TechExcel about the new release of their application lifecycle management system DevSuite 8.0. Whats New in Version 8.0? DevSuite is used daily by tens of thousands of developers and management to quickly design and implement processes based on industry-standard methodologies. The software provides managers with the reporting capabilities needed to make intelligent decisions needed for rapidly evolving projects. DevSuite allows for any process to be modeled, including traditional waterfall as well as newer agile practices. Version 8.0 introduces new and enhanced features that allow organizations to optimize all development processes and reduce the risks that often come with international teams, including: MyWork Dashboard Full Unicode support Multi-lingual support User-definable UI names and values for multiple languages And More DevSuite is available as an integrated client/server and Intranet/Internet solution that provides powerful workflow and process automation, robust searching and reporting, and simple point-and-click customization. It also features an intuitive user interface, universal ODBC support, advanced email notification, built-in time tracking, extensive customization options, and presentation-quality reports and graphics. More information on DevSuite is available at: http://www.techexcel.com/products/devsuite/devsuite.html