Web 2.0 Collaborative Software Development Tools

I’m diving deep into social collaboration tools for enterprise software development these days.  Early adopters are quite positive about their new-found productivity gains, but the word ”social” makes it difficult for many companies to consider it a serious work horse.

But imagine for a moment a suite of web-based software development tools that integrates more traditional software configuration management, defect tracking, knowledge base, and build and release management with communication tools that allow a large and/or distributed developer community to collaborate online, in real time, all viewing the same document, section of code or client problem at the same time.

It definitely trumps each person in his/her office going through email to find the right version of the materials being discussed…Even if your team is not large or distributed, if they work with clients or partners they’ll never meet, a social layer greatly increases interactions and group productivity, keeps tabs on travel budgets, and acknowledges changes in workplace demographics.

I’m betting that these new collaborative software development tools will fundamentally change more than a few companies’ delivery model, but will this be the case in more traditional high-tech companies? Which industries stand to benefit the most from these new technologies? And is this market nearly mature enough to take any of this seriously? Watch for frequent blogs on this topic as we take a deeper look at these tools over the next several months.