Before the weekend - during the Launch 2005 week - eWeek.com announced that Microsoft continue to support the use of agile development methodologies, such as extreme programming and Scrum, to revise its products faster. Read the full article "Microsoft Lauds 'Scrum' Method for Software Projects".
Today eWeek publishes the article "Microsoft Taps Former Rational Heavyweight to Lend Credence to Enterprise Tools Play ". Indeed, Ivar Jacobson, known as one of the fathers of the popular Rational Unified Process (RUP), will lead an effort to deliver a lightweight unified process to the Microsoft Solutions Framework. Jacobson agrees on the fact that RUP is heavyweight and needs some refactoring.
"RUP is one of my babies, and babies grow up, and some of them need correction."
It's great to see that Microsoft is working hard to bake process within the software development environment through Visual Studio Team System. This means that in the near future we'll be able to use a kind of UP based on the Microsoft Solutions Framework integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System. Or as Jacobson says: "We build a fresh new process architecture based on aspect-oriented ideas, and using the MSF and VSTS is a very good platform to instantiate such a process."
Read the full article "Microsoft Taps Former Rational Heavyweight to Lend Credence to Enterprise Tools Play" at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1886531,00.asp".