Software & Services Safari

Brian Sommer

Adding agility to Compuware's Changepoint

By Brian Sommer | June 16, 2009, 11:27am PDT

Summary: Compuware made a number of announcements re: Changepoint yesterday. Changepoint is the company’s project portfolio management solution. Changepoint is primarily targeted to mid-to-large IT organizations. Briefly, the company outlined a number of product directions for the near-term as well as showcased its Accelerator for agile development projects. The agile development announcement was interesting as the company [...]

Compuware made a number of announcements re: Changepoint yesterday. Changepoint is the company’s project portfolio management solution. Changepoint is primarily targeted to mid-to-large IT organizations. Briefly, the company outlined a number of product directions for the near-term as well as showcased its Accelerator for agile development projects.

The agile development announcement was interesting as the company now has new functionality to support IT projects that are using the fast, repetitive agile development methodology. The software includes needed templates, best practices, reports, etc. to support agile development efforts.

This accelerator is also interesting because it works in concert (not standalone) with the core Changepoint product. In this manner, top IT and business executives can evaluate all projects regardless of the development approach used (i.e., agile or conventional).

Compuware also outlined a product roadmap that is focused on newer technologies and the effect these could have on project/IT management. The new solutions will support technologies such as Silverlight 2.0, W3C (non-IE) browsers and more. The company is

I was pleased to see these announcements as much of the focus from PPM/PSA (project portfolio management/professional services automation) vendors have been on delivery model (e.g., SaaS) or down-market versions of existing products.

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

More from “Software & Services Safari”

Open letter to all HR software vendors

Equity in the cellular world

Topics

Changepoint Corp., Compuware Corp., Project Management, Tools & Techniques, Strategy, It Operations, It service Management, Management, Brian Sommer

Brian is currently CEO of TechVentive, a strategy consultancy serving technology providers and other firms. He is also a research analyst with Vital Analysis.

Full Bio
Disclosure
Contact

Disclosure

Brian Sommer

I am co-owner of TechVentive, Inc. The company has been engaged on numerous consulting engagements, often for technology firms, service firms and litigators. As a general rule, I do not write about current clients of TechVentive. Should that occur, I will note this in blogs. Readers should assume that I have had client relationships with many ERP and other technology providers. Some of these relationships may be quite small and short-lived while others more significant. One of TechVentive's business units publishes research reports about technology providers. As a result, this business receives small amounts of revenues from a wide variety of software firms, software buyers and others when they purchase copies of reports. Some firms do secure reprint rights to these reports. None of these purchases, individually, represents a significant amount of total revenue for me and the nature of it is hard to predict where it will come from. I also provide some marketing strategy and/or market segmentation work for software firms as I have developed a unique database that segments the largest 4000+ technology buyers in the world. Many technology firms periodically engage me for unique views into this database for future marketing campaigns. I do not blog about these efforts and do not blog about client firms while they are active clients unless some pressing news story erupts. If that event occurs, I will indicate any perceived or real conflict of interest. Occasionally, I will develop unique intellectual property pieces for technology or service providers. If I should blog about a vendor with whom I have recently developed a special information product, I will note this in a blog to avoid any appearance, real or unintended, of bias. For the most part, I have no investments in technology firms. While I've been offered friends and family stock and other inducements in the past, I have steadfastly refused these. I used to be a partner with Andersen Consulting and had no ownership stake in the firm for many years. I frequently refer to this in my blogs and do not hide my prior association with the company. I did purchase a few shares of Accenture and Cognizant stock in late - 2008. I have sold some of those positions in late 2009. Readers should assume that most software conferences that I write about involved some measure of fees waived and/or travel reimbursement. I do not charge vendors to attend these events nor will I accept payment for same. I do get reimbursed for many speaking engagements. I generally note at the end of blogs whether the vendor reimbursed me for travel expenses. Generally, this includes airfare and hotel. I do not request, receive nor accept travel perks such as first class airfare.