IBM is pushing its Jazz developer collaboration technology as a research tool and has given money to some universities that are researching how to break down cultural and geographic barriers when developing software…. Three universities were awarded the grants to help drive the software community’s ability to think beyond the individual developer to organizational productivity. The University of California, Irvine, is exploring the use of multi-monitor environments to improve project awareness and development practices. Two other awardees, the University of British Columbia and University of Victoria, both in Canada, are embracing the collaboration capabilities of Jazz and researching software development team interactions and communication.eWeek: IBM Touts Jazz for Research

Touching on topics I’ve mentioned previously in Software Visualization and IBM Jazz and Location oriented software development, CNN reports that

In its research, the University of California, Irvine is exploring the use of multi-monitor environments to improve project awareness and development practices. To date, software engineering tools are designed under the assumption that they must effectively operate on a single monitor on a developer’s desk. The trend, however, is to equip developer’s desks with multiple, typically larger monitors, and to equip community areas with tiled displays through which vast amounts of information can be shared. This research leverages Jazz technology to explore how software development tools should be (re)designed to take advantage of this extra display space, with a particular focus on project awareness. The Jazz platform provides many hooks and listeners through which the information that the visualizations need can be obtained.

CNN Money

The Lighthouse project is doing some really nice work displaying software development processes across multiple monitors. They’re using Google maps, 3D and other location oriented approaches to create new kinds of developer tools. Now they’re integrating these tools with IBM Jazz. Sweet.

I’ve long viewed screen real estate as a huge constraint to be worked around. The tasks and ideas in my mind just don’t fit on a single screen. It’s rare for me to use just a single screen or even a single computer unless it’s my laptop outside of my office. Most of the time I’m using 2-3 machines and lately more and more that ratchets up to 4-5. Typically one of the machines has a dual display so at any given time I have 3-6 screens visible.

The volume of information flowing through IBM Jazz or any development environment doesn’t fit on a single screen so it’s a huge productivity drain to constantly search for, then minimize and maximize windows. Virtual desktops help, but then windows are out of sight.

In an attempt to broaden the awareness and appeal of it’s Jazz collaboration software, IBM is considering putting parts of it open source, although one source claims not the parts that really matter. It’s really hard to build a following around a closed platform these days as CNET’s Matt Asay points out.