What is the real-time equivalent for Agile – what would that look like?

A different interface than Tweetedeck but the concept is the same.  A service on top that gives a view of different applications that are available real-time via a REST API.

That’s the idea behind what Tasktop Technologies is developing these days. Their goal is to offer the developer with tools that give real-time views on the status of a task and the manager with ways to look across the any number of tools that are used in application development across the enterprise.

Their perspectives give a view into the often byzantine world of the enterprise stack and a forward look at how APIs are transforming traditional applications.

Tasktop Sync

In the enterprise, there may be as many 60 different application lifecycle management (ALM) solutions. Tasktop had to find a way to integrate with all of these ALM solutions. Syncing is has been largely solved for email, calendar and contacts with protocols and synchronizers working seamlessly across Microsoft Exchange, IMAP, Google Apps and iOS. But ALM is a world of silos.

Tasktop Sync uses APIs to connect to these ALM and open-source tools used for application development, said Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop Technologies and creator of the open source Eclipse Mylyn project.

Tasktop Sync connects the task requirements. It’s s designed to provide a universal view into an Agile process, which can be difficult when teams are spread across different continents.

You can mitigate that with Skype, internal real-time tools like Yammer for communication on a topical level. But to manage the code itself? The complexity is of a different scope. And it’s primarily due to the any number of application lifecycle management tools that the enterprise developer uses.

Tasktop Sync is the counterpart to Tasktop Dev, which provides the developer with that real-time view. It’s again a service similar to Tweetedeck.

Here’s a good overview of the new offering with James Governor of RedMonk.

Services Angle

I talked with Mik last month at an HP blogger event. Smart, smart guy. Tasktop is working closely with HP. In fact, Tasktop Sync was built in large part with the HP R&D group.

HP is getting it. The REST API is that new middle layer that connects new services with traditional tools.

That’s going to be an ongoing story.