IBM tightens up Rational 'team' tools

IBM this month will release an upgrade to its Rational tools designed to give development teams more control and better oversight.

At the Rational Software Development Conference on Tuesday, IBM announced enhancements due later this month in IBM Rational version 7 Team, a suite of products for collaborative development.

With the changes, different people in the development process can more easily centralize and share information, said Roger Oberg, vice president of marketing and strategy at IBM Rational.

The latest version of activity management program ClearQuest, for example, has closer integration with IBM's Tivoli provisioning software and IBM's program for gathering application requirements, said Oberg.

That will allow developers, testers and project managers to keep better tabs on the status of development projects, he said.

It will create a central point for keeping information, such as what code has been tested and what requirements have been met.

"ClearQuest is now the hub for maintaining development lifecycle artifacts," Oberg said. "You can get a single point of view, from requirements to tests to build records."

In addition, IBM announced that a number of third-party companies have built programs that are closely integrated into the Rational tools.