| Hi Flavelle,
[NB - have taken the liberty of including the ormf-dev mail list in my reply.]
Thank you very much for you kind email and your offer to contribute. I am not certain whether or not you are aware that Useme and its underlying framework has recently been approved as an Eclipse Foundation inubator project called the Open Requirements Management Framework or ORMF. Later in this email I will point you to some of the new resources that will be useful for you to follow and contribute to the project. I am certain that we (the entire ORMF team) would be very pleased with your contributing as you outlined.
Presently Useme requires a full blown Java 5 EE application server. This may not be the case however for the first alpha release in a few months, but nothing is certain yet. As far as the OS, any Windows, Linux or OS X environment would be suitable for either the server or client. The database is not an issues as we use an embedded Derby database, so this is transparent to the installation environment. At the moment there are no plans to enable export of to an external website, but this feature could be proposed and considered.
If you would like to try out the Useme client we have set up a test server to make this easy for interested parties such as yourself. You will need to install Eclipse if you have not yet, and then use the update manager to install Useme. Let me know if you would like to try and I will send you detailed instructions.
If you wish to stay up to date with developments and release dates, there are several options, depending upon your degree of interest and desire for involvement:
1) The ORMF project website http://www.eclipse.org/ormf contains updated information on the status of the project
2) The project's newsgroup eclipse.technology.ormf contains discussions, comments, requests for help on a day to day basis. It can be useful to peruse or, even better, to contribute ideas, questions etc.
3) The announcements mailing list ormf-announce@xxxxxxxxxxx will be used to communicate any important announcements (f.i. releases) related to the project. You can subscribe to this mailing list here: https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/ormf-announce
4) The development mailing list ormf-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx will be used by and for committers and contributors to the project, in order to discuss the details of development related issues. You can subscribe to this mailing list here: https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/ormf-dev
5) The Bugzilla repository for any issues and/or feature or enhancement requests. This can be reached at https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs and the project's issues can be found by searching under "Technology" as Classification and "ORMF" as product.
6) Last but not least, the Useme newsletter contains a periodic summary of all that has happened to Useme and ORMF since the last publication. You can subscribe to it at http://www.etish.org/newsletter/signup.html
Thank you once again for your interest in Useme.
Btw, I am curious as to what you meant by It was frustrating when looking through the eclipse site to find the message that 'linux was coming later'. Could you elucidate on that?
All the best, Joel
On 18 Jul 2008, at 16:27, Flavelle Ballem wrote: Hello: I encountered your firm while looking for requirement management tools in linux. I am the principal of a small Canadian-based consulting firm ( http://www.ballemco.com) that has been working on a number of business analysis engagements over the years. We recently migrated to a linux environment from Windows. We have previously used Enterprise Architect from Sparx Systems, as well has the hard tools (MS Access, Visio, Word, and Excel) in our practice. I am very intrigued with useme, as described in some of your flash presentations and I am hoping that more information might be available. I will also, if it would be helpful, like to volunteer our services in the user testing area, as well as in contributing to the documentation if you require. There are two scenarios that are of interest to our firm: - Server-based back-end and pc-based front end.
- On the server-side, our clients typically use either MS SQL Server or Oracle. Server operating systems are commonly Microsoft. I think that this might pose problems for a GlassFish-based implementation. We do not have access to these servers, but wanted to make you aware that this could be an issue.
- We also have a LAMP server that we can tear down and re-build as required. Our experience in linux is very limited at the moment. The server is ubuntu 8.04, and as long as we're given very explicit instructions, we would be more than happy to tear down and re-build that server for testing purposes.
- PC-based front end is currently linux (ubuntu 8.04) and we do not have MS Windows machines. It was frustrating when looking through the eclipse site to find the message that 'linux was coming later'. We use OpenOffice 2.4. Our clients typically run MS Windows XP, with no plans to migrate to Vista. They use Microsoft Office 2003, with no plans to migrate to Microsoft Office 2007.
- We would also be interested in a scenario where a consultant could load and run everything on a laptop (linux - ubuntu 8.04) and publish an HTML website to an external web server. We are careful with backups, so we could use a production laptop for these purposes. Eclipse Ganymede is already installed and we are getting comfortable with the tool. We have been exploring (and not necessarily liking) the UML2 project that is part of the Eclipse Modeling Framework.
Our experience with linux is limited, having only recently made the decision to switch. On the other hand, Ballemco Inc. has 8 years of engagements in business analysis, primarily for large, international financial firms and for governments. Our engagements have been primarily focused around requirements elicitation, documentation, and management. Prior to forming Ballemco Inc., I worked as a business analyst in the financial services industry, and have nearly 25 years experience. In short, I think I might be what you would be looking for as a 'consumer' of useme. I was intrigued by the structured approach that you've taken to Use Cases, and the ability to easily maintain and report on the traceability (always a large challenge). Please let me know if there is anything that I can do to help, and I am looking forward to receiving further information at your earliest convenience. Flavelle Ballem Ballemco Inc. |
