My Problem with OpenUP

I have been following the progress of the Eclipse Process Framework (EPF, ref: http://www.eclipse.org/epf/) project for some time now. Apparently it was started by folks who were companies or authors or supporters of processes like RUP and Scrum, and then joined on the way by others who boarded the train. Their work has resulted in a smaller version of RUP (IBM’s Rational Unified Process), which they call OpenUP. It is interesting to see how a community of like-minded people can build something like EPF and OpenUP collaboratively and in an open source mode. The process does feel ‘made for techies’ though and I guess that could be because of the underlying modeling rigor. It would be nice to make it more fluid, or somehow be able to use its content which seems to be pretty good.

EPF and OpenUP also show that path to the future as far as software development processes are concerned. We are all moving towards simpler, ‘let’s get it done’ processes. We want to chop off fat from big process and run with what makes sense, guards us enough in terms of what to do and what not to while keeping us pragmatic. In Paradigm PoP we use Scrum for developing PoP Project. It’s a local flavor with onsite-offshore collaboration, and simplification even beyond what Scrum offers.

I seem to be getting too drawn into the ‘process’ geek talk, but hey, whatever changes in front of me gets me thinking. I see change coming when I look at EPF and OpenUP.