Process Framework Face-off.... or not?
In one of my previous posts I wrote about the Essential Unified Process. This process framework, that is being developed by Ivar Jacobson for Microsoft, will be challenging RUP on one of it's big problems: the size of RUP. When using RUP you should always take a subset of it, suitable for your project. But because there is so much in RUP, people often use more than necessary making it less effective.
To solve this, IBM has developed the Rational Method Composer. The RMC will replace RUP as a product, but RUP will still be the process framework. The RMC comes with a set of out-of-the-box processes or delivery processes. There are processes for small, medium and large projects, COTS, systems engineering, service oriented architectures and maintenance. This will make RUP much more accessible than before and back in competition with MSF or EUP. To support this the are plug-ins for multiple development environments, including .NET.
The sad thing is, that there will probably less competition than before. IBM has donated about 15% of the RUP to the Eclipse Foundation to stimulate a vivid involvement of the (Java) open source community. This part of RUP will be called the Eclipse Process Framework. And although the EPF is meant to be cross platform (both Java and .NET) it will probably be not. It's most likely that the majority of Java developers will be using RMC/EPF and .NET developers MSF/EUP.
While there is nothing wrong with MSF, I think the Java developers might be better of in the long run. Microsoft will most likely thighten the relationship between process and tools and can freely do so, because it controls both of them. This again will give them more control and reduce competition. I like the new Team System and Team Foundation Server very much, but I do not think that this is a good thing. More than 15 companies will contribute to the Eclipse Process Framework giving it a broad basis for future development.
Read more on:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/nov05/kroll/index.html
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-10-2005/jw-1017-idgns-eclipse.html