We just started playing the RTC 2.0 M3 release. Fantastic job on releasing so much big and little useful improvements in such a short time!

On the M3 download page there is a new version of the RTC product editions available as well. It's great news to see some extra process capabilities pushed into the express editions (process permissions are now added). However, one big process-sensitive feature is still missing from RTC Express: customizable work items. I filed an enhancement on this last year: enhancement 57887.

The ability to add work item types and (required) attributes is very important for process customization. At our company we are using a customized process for both in-house an customer-site projects. The cost of standard+ edition of RTC server is prohibitive for deploying it as a single-project solution for relatively small/short-cycle projects (typically <20 devs, <1 year development time). Also, some customers would like to try RTC Express for some projects before committing to a company wide Standard+ deployment.

Especially since other previously Standard-specific features have been added to Express, I wonder if it would be possible to move the work item customization into Express as well. This would greatly simplify the differences between editions from a perspective of process customization and support, and thus the ability of partners to use and support RTC based solutions. Other features, like the reporting, additional infrastructure and integration options, number of users and availability would still be a great motivator to opt for standard+.

Thank you in advance for any response. Any RTC users on the forum that feel the same way about this feature we do, please speak up as well!

We are glad you like what you see in RTC 2.0 M3. There are many improvements to agile planning, scm, work items, reporting, dashboards and connectivity to other scm/work item tools as well as support for very large enterprise deployments.

The decision about where to draw the lines in feature set between Express and Standard are always challenging. We want to make RTC Express attractive to smaller teams and affordable, while still ensuring that the capabilities needed by enterprise teams matches the value that RTC provides to that segment of customers.

In RTC 2.0 we moved role based permissions to RTC Express. Our thinking here was that we would make it easier for third parties and customers to write extensions to RTC that would then work on all editions of RTC. We also allowed RTC Express to support the new cross project and cross repository dashboards so it could participate in ALM scenarios across multiple Jazz based products. (RQM 2.0 and RTC 2.0 for example). This support also makes it possible for a team using RTC Express to expose events and viewlets with other teams using RTC Standard for example in RTC 2.0. The use case we envisioned here is a smaller company working with a larger company on some shared development effort.

Regarding customization of work items. We are updating the SCRUM process template to be much richer in RTC 2.0. Hopefully, for many SCRUM users this will be very usable out of the box for teams using both RTC Express and RTC Standard/Enterprise Editions. We do understand that many users want to customize work items (regardless of team size) and we also recognize that many agile planning tools out there are quite restrictive when it comes to customizing workflow. So this is a strength of RTC. Can you elaborate further on levels of customization you might need? Is there a level of basic customization you might require that could meet the needs of smaller teams and a level of advanced customization in RTC that you see suitable for enterprise teams? You can update the work item with any details on this. Thanks.

--Rolf Nelson
Team Concert Product Manager

Is there a level of basic customization you might require that could meet the needs of smaller teams and a level of advanced customization in RTC that you see suitable for enterprise teams? You can update the work item with any details on this. Thanks.

I've updated the enhancement with a "basic" customization scenario, where in RTC Express you'd only be able to add/customize attributes of existing work items. This would enable Express users some limited tuning and improved process enactment, while RTC Standard+ still has the most powerful customization options available. Thank you in advance for looking into this.

Peter, thanks for pursuing this. Good news! Here is what you will now see in RTC 2.0 RC1 . For the RTC Express segment of the market that targets teams of less than 50 developers, we have made the following change based on customer feedback and a competitive analysis. As a user of RTC work items I will be able to create custom attributes and modify the presentation of those custom attributes. I will also be able to bind to existing workflows but NOT be able to create new custom workflows. RTC Standard and RTC Enterprise will continue to enable the creation of custom work item worklfows. This will allow small and mid size teams to take fuller advantage of RTC's customization of process and work item attributes in the RTC Express Edition. The product matrix will be updated when RTC 2.0 RC1 is available to reflect support for work item custom attributes in RTC Express and Express-C.

Thanks for your feedback and working with us to improve RTC. Please take a look at what we have done in RTC 2.0 RC1 and let us know how you like it. RTC 2.0 RC1 should post very shortly. (within a day or two).

--Rolf Nelson
Product Manager Team Concert