Re: Danny's Corporate Roadmap
From: Danny Thorpe (dthorpe_at_gmail.com)
Date: 09/15/04
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Date: 15 Sep 2004 14:03:50 -0700
Ian wrote:
>
> When Danny said 'roadmap' I was hoping for Borland to lay out a clear
> path for the next few years, with projects, milestones,
> schedules...you know, the sort of thing that roadmaps usually
> include.
Well, we could give you pie in the sky dates that are guaranteed to e
wrong, but I rather think you'd be more interested in what sort of
functionality we're working toward.
In the Delphi camp, the roadmap has been shown and discussed in nearly
every Delphi session this week, over and over again: Diamondback is
the next release of the Delphi tool chain. We plan to release Delphi
tools with support for .NET 2.0 Framework (Whidbey) in 2005, shortly
after the release of .NET 2.0 itself. We have long-term research
projects in mind for the Longhorn time frame. Given the long window
for Longhorn, it's likely we can turn around two releases of Delphi for
the .NET 2.0 platform before Longhorn arrives.
Nothing magical in all that, if you're aware of what the platform
calendar looks like. No dates either. ;>
Maybe even a mention of WTF is happening to BCB - though
> that's probably asking too much :-(.
>
> Not a holistic process umbrella.
> Not even a 64-bit holistic process umbrella.
>
> I have been a lone Delphi developer since v1. I'm looking for future
> versions of Delphi to include cool stuff to make my life easier:
> version control, unit testing, bug tracking, deployment control etc,
> as part of the whole ALM deal, and the story so far on Diamondback is
> encouraging - in fact, much better than I was expecting, given the
> recent record of delivery by Borland - but I can not see ANYTHING
> here for me.
Well, that's where we on the Borland product team have our work cut out
for us. ALM and the larger SDO vision won't work unless we can make it
relevant to the developer. Workflow and process documentation might
not be as critical to an individual developer as to a 100 person team
scattered across 4 continents, but that doesn't mean that workflow and
process management are completely unimportant to an individual.
We hope to make these "process-scale" information ecosystems
interesting and useful to individuals. The cardinal rule is they
should not get in the way of your coding - they should simply feed on
the operations you're already doing. In a team environment, each
developer's IDE is a neuron in the larger project sensory network.
>
> To quote a bit more, the above list of areas is seen as part of
> 'defining the rules of engagement', an attempt to 'create a market
> segment we can define, own and win'. 'Instead of bludgeoning it out
> on the home turf of a much larger opponent, find a way to define your
> own home turf in which the opponent is ill equipped to respond'.
>
> Is the long-term strategy to concede defeat to Micro^H^H^H^H^H a 'much
> larger opponent' in the developer tools market segment?
Nope. It's called changing the playing field to take advantage of your
own strengths and their weaknesses. For example, Delphi 1.0 changed
the playing field of compiled application development by combining a
fast compiler, visual app design tools, and strong database access into
one product, in one coherent application architecture. That was a
radical (and scary) change from the norm for compiler tools of the day.
It wasn't enough for Turbo Pascal to compete solely as a fast compiler.
There were other compiler tools, and there were GUI designers, and
there were database libraries, but nothing brought them all together.
Until Delphi.
> Are the core
> development tools going to take a back seat to the development of
> this 'new home turf'?
Nope. The core development tools are the entry points to creating that
home turf. A software development process management system that is
not seamlessly and silently connected to the developers' daily activity
is a system with nothing to report. The core development tools'
participation in the larger info ecosystem give the engineering team
greater visibility and participation in upper management's macro
decisions. It gives the developers documented ammunition to justify
why management's latest proposal to pull the schedule in by 3 months
would have disasterous consequences on the product feature set and/or
quality, and how adding additional people might solve certain "long
poles" in the schedule but not others, and so forth.
One side of SDO is to provide management with better information about
how their business is doing. The flip side is that the better info
that management is seeing should mean that management is more informed
of engineering's needs, abilities, and objectives. I know I would
certainly like for my management to have a better understanding of the
dynamics surrounding the products we work on (with less effort on my
part)... ;>
> Can we expect a return to huge gaps between
> product release and bug fixes?
Absolutely not. The long-term vision will take several product
releases to fully realize. We started on ALM more than two years ago.
Now that we're starting to realize much of that plan, it's time to push
out the vision even further. Software Delivery Optimization is ALM
taken to the next level.
> Is this the stuff that Danny + all the
> other key guys are going to be focussing on?
Exclusive focus? No. Working on as needed? Yes.
>
> Is the corporate roadmap supposed to make your existing customers
> think you're not in their target market any more?
Nope. We just have to demonstrate that the big roadmap also applies to
the little guy. ;>
-Danny
-- Delphi Compiler Core: http://homepages.borland.com/dthorpe/blog/delphi/
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