An interesting idea from Liz Barnett, Giga Information Group (quoted in an interview in The Rational Edge):
One of the things that I’ve been a proponent of is a concept I call the Developer’s Resource Portal. That may not be the best name because it doesn’t have to be a portal; it can be any kind of environment. It also is not limited to developers in the strictest sense; it applies to the whole project team. But the concept of easily accessible resources is very important: We need to bring together tools, people, and end-to-end process and make things really simple. I think a lot of demand and progress on this is coming from the user community right now. They are sharing and collaborating, posting best practices and shared component asset libraries. They are tying reuse, best practices, and the actual development tools all together in a way that will address all the types of people involved in development. I think this is a big trend, and a big usability feature that doesn’t need to be all that expensive. I’ve seen implementations that really improved not only the day-to-day technical deliverables, but also teamwork and the softer side of development.
To me, the concept of bringing together all your best practices in a portal or console with your tools and creating a team collaboration environment is very powerful and a huge step towards better, faster, and cheaper solutions.
The Developer Portal is an idea which we will need to look at later when we ready with the foundation for the Visual Biz-ic. A slight variation of this idea can be applied to SMEs. What’s needed is a portal for SMEs in Emerging Markets to share their ideas and thoughts. While we haven’t done any work yet, the idea has been around in my mind for some time: like an EnterpriseDigest.com — a Reader’s Digest and Slashdot combined for SMEs, targeted initially at industry verticals through associations. Then, cut horizontally to let SMEs interact and watch emergence happen.
