The Rational Software Conference 2009 (RSC 2009) is all set to go live in Orlando, May 31st to June 4th in Orlando Florida. As you may recall, at last year’s conference we introduced what was then the public beta of Rational Quality Manager.
This year at the Rational Software Conference 2009, we’re highlighting several Rational Quality Manager based sessions. Over the next few weeks we’ll be previewing some of those sessions here. Today we begin with Brian Massey’s “What’s New in IBM Rational Quality Manager”
This session runs on Monday at 11:15. The speaker, Brian Massey is the product manager for Rational Quality Manager. Brian plans to talk about some of the recent developments in the 1.0.1 release as well as taking a sneak peak ahead into plans for Rational Quality Manager 2.0. This session is a great opportunity to get some insight into the direction of Rational Quality Manager as well as an opportunity to meet the product manager.
IBM Rational Quality Manager facilitates team collaboration through its Web 2.0 based architecture and features such as work items and task lists which keep team members up to date on what is expected from them and what they can expect from others. All good. Yay.
How though, can IBM Rational Quality Manager enable collaboration with external parties, or internal co-workers who (sadly) may not have access to Quality Manager. How about twitter? For those unfamiliar, twitter is a social media collaboration tool where users send brief status messages to one another to keep each other appraised of their current status or needs.
In this Tidbit installment we’ll show how IBM Rational Quality Manager can add a twitter feed to its Web 2.0 dashboard so that users are always aware and informed of what others, in the twitter world, are up to.
In the spirit of collaboration, the Quality Manager team has asked one of our premier partners, Sogeti, to come speak on our teleconference series. Why? Simple – late last year, Sogeti started a pilot project that saw them move 40 of their quality assurance professionals, across 4 projects, from HP Mercury Quality Center to IBM Rational Quality Manager. Sign up for the teleconference to hear why they made, the move, how they did in in a very fast time frame, and what technical and business challenges they encountered along the way. It’s a great opportunity to learn, on an interactive call where you are invited to participate in the discussion in real time. If you can’t make the time, the call will be recorded for subsequent replay. See you there
When Rational Quality Manager 1.0 came out last fall, one of the features that was on the fence was multiple projects. This feature enables users to segregate project information into isolated project areas. This data separation was a feature designed for organizations with multiple quality management projects, that required the ability to restrict data access on a project-by-project basis. The feature didn’t make the cut. Well – to be completely honest, most of the feature didn’t make the cut. Some of the feature was actually implemented, but disabled.
With the upcoming Rational Quality Manager 1.0.1, this feature now makes its debut. Quality management teams now have the ability to create project areas, and assign access to those areas to the individual team members. It’s a simple feature, but a powerful one. When you upgrade to RQM 1.0.1, here’s what you’ll see (look in the top right corner):
Rational Quality Manager - Multiple Project Drop Down
Users who have access to multiple projects will be able to flip between projects by selecting from a drop down box in the top right corner of their desktop.
Just a heads up that internally, the RQM development team has a couple releases planned for this year. The first is a 1.01 release – which is a smaller release that will go out in the first quarter of the year. There will be even tighter integration with Rational Team Concert, which will give us enhanced work item sharing, support for new databases and some new licensing options.
There are also some architectural changes which will enable integration with additional requirements tools, should any other tools want to plug into RQM.
There’s a second release planned for later this year. Planning is still underway on a final feature list – but the expectation is that there will be some news to share at the annual Rational Software Conference. Hope to see you there.
The video that this pertains to is a video we used at our Rational User Conference last year to give a sneak preview of some Rational Quality Manager screenshots. The music in the background of the video was Van Halen’s Right Now. The video is, and shall remain, gone.
For those of you that saw it – great. For those that missed it – keep your ear to the ground. This only encourages us to do more, to see how fast YouTube can take them down. Consider a test of the YouTube system. Given the volume of YouTube submissions – I’m amazed that they were able to find this! Let’s see how fast they can find the next!
Three times in the last week, I’ve gotten the following question, in various forms: “How do I start?” Seems a simple enough question, but after some probing, the basic issue seems to be “blinking cursor syndrome”. Blinking cursor is the disease that sets in, right after install, when the tool is up and running, but the user doesn’t know how or where to begin.
Frankly, in a large testing project, I can easily see this happening. There’s so much to be done, and at scale, little mistakes can evolve into big problems. The problem of course, is that every environment is different, and a couple of blog posts are not really going to suffice.
My recommendation is this. Head over to ibm.com/developerworks and start with the Mike Kelly series on “Managing your first project with IBM Rational Quality Manager“. Mike is an experienced test project consultant and leader, and has written a series of 6 articles on getting started with IBM Rational Quality Manager. They’re an excellent resource, and a good generic, widely applicable answer to “How Do I Start?”
We’ll be looking for lots of Rational Quality Manager content at the conference. Anything you have to say on the tool, or how best to implement test management is game. Some things we want to cover are:
Test management with Distributed Test Teams
Managing large test teams
Test metrics for effective test management
Effective test planning
General test management strategies
Bring it on….and bonus points to you if you mention this blog in your submission. We’re looking for real stories, from real people, who have solved real testing challenges!
The conference is in Orlando this year – what a great excuse to get out and have some fun at Disney!
One of the most frequent questions the Rational Tester gets about Rational Quality Manager is what makes this tool better than “Tool X”?
It’s a great question – and it frustrates me every time, as our competitive guidelines at IBM prevent anyone in engineering from researching any competitive offerings. Sure – I’ve heard about product X and Y, and likely even Z – but my knowledge is usually word of mouth, unverifiable, and quite often wrong! Effectively, I know about as much about product X, Y and Z as I do about Quantum Mechanics. (In case we haven’t met, rest assured, I know nothing about quantum anything.)
So – how then to respond?
Well – thing I find with Rational Quality Manager is that what makes it so powerful are a bunch of little things. Littls tidbits if you will. And I’ve started to document them. My first tidbit went up today, and talks about how Rational Quality Manager helps testers eliminate duplicate data such as duplicate defects and duplicate requirements. It’s a really handy feature, and one that an internal IBM study found was the single most effective action a test team could do to improve their efficiency.
I’ve posted a short video about it on YouTube. Have a look…
IBM Rational Quality Manager went live yesterday, October 28th, just after 9am EST.
We’ve been hard at work over the last month – working on demos, datasheets, documentation and other supporting materials for the release. Here’s some of the better hits:
