Well, it looks like that expectation is starting to gather momentum with the announcement that the Mylyn project is proposing to restructure itself and, in the process, endorsing OSLC as its “reference standard” for external interfaces for integration with other tools. Mylyn, of course, is led by Mik Kersten of Tasktop fame, who has been one of the earliest adopters and strongest supporters of OSLC.

For more, see the full announcement and the formal proposal.

The already available Rational C/ALM 2009 integrations of Rational Quality Manager (RQM), Rational Team Concert, and Rational Requirements Composer  made use of interfaces defined in preliminary versions of the QM spec. The RQM team is on a path to provide a complete implementation of the final 1.0 spec in its upcoming 2.0.1 release in March.

Congratulations, all!

My colleague Scott Bosworth and I created this white paper for exactly those people. Comments welcome below.

So naturally I can’t resist the inevitable “underpants gnomes” reference:

Phase 1: Create OSLC

Phase2: ?

Phase 3: Profit

Of course, that’s not the main reason I was there. My justification was to recruit participants in OSLC, of course, and I’m happy to say that I was delighted with the response. I managed to chat with a good handful of prominent Agile tools vendors and was heartened by the reactions. There was some natural skepticism about the motivations of a big, traditional company with a commercial product portfolio like IBM, but just about everybody I spoke with very quickly — if not immediately — saw that we were genuine in our belief that growing the market was good for everybody, and therefore good for us. A big “shout out” to Mik Kersten of Tasktop is appropriate here:  everybody I met had already heard about OSLC from him, and his endorsement was a big help in opening minds and opening doors among this audience.

The surprising part to me is that this topic is generating so much activity and interest at OSLC. I was expecting something much more mundane to be leading the pack in the early going. Perhaps one reason is an increasing focus on the business value of the software development portfolio. The most business-savvy companies are realizing that project management is a first step, and project portfolio management a good second step; but you’re not really managing software development as a business process until you’re managing risk and the likelihood of success.

If project success matters to you, check it out.

So I have a new “elevator pitch” response when people ask me what OSLC is all about. Open Services is all about making it easier for professional developers to be more productive and more effective, by eliminating unnecessary barriers between the tools that they and their colleagues use.