More information on IBM's contribution to the Eclipse Open Source Project titled the Eclipse Process Framework, or nicknamed "The Beacon Project". It is currently in a project proposal phase and is written to solicit additional participation and input from the Eclipse community.

There are two main goals of this project...

1. To provide an extensible framework and exemplary tools for software process engineering - method and process authoring, library management, configuring and publishing a process.
2. To provide exemplary and extensible process content for a range of software development and management processes supporting iterative, agile, and incremental development, and applicable to a broad set of development platforms and applications

IBM has proposed a substantial set of software contributions to the project including...

• Process engineering framework
  • Core process tooling framework – IBM proposes to donate the core process tooling framework, but this does not yet have exposed API extension points.
  • Meta-model - IBM also proposes to contribute a content meta-model, referred to as Unified Method Architecture;see meta-model section above for more details.
• Exemplary Tooling Donation - IBM proposes to contribute a new set of tools built from scratch, and of alpha quality. The tools already have the capabilities for method authoring, process authoring, library management and configuration and publishing, and will need to be modified to support added process engineering framework extensibility
• Exemplary and Extensible Content - IBM proposes to contribute a light-weight derivative of the IBM Rational Unified Process (otherwise known as the Basic Unified Process or BUP), incorporating some practices derived from Scrum.

The Basic Unified Process, or BUP, is described as a very light weight adaptation of RUP with influences from Scrum. The content is in draft form and needs contribution and feedback. Here is the draft PDF, here is a audio/video demonstration and BUP+Scum version.

While a majority of the contributions are from IBM, other notables involved in the project are Scott Ambler and Bob Martin.

The tentative plan for this project includes the following milestones:

• December 1, 2005 - Project acceptance and provisioning
• July 2006 - Release of Project Framework 1.0
• September 2006 - Enlist content owners and champions

You have to recognize the significance of this contribution to the open source community and the movement toward agility. IBM is making some bold moves with this project. However, even as they have stripped away many layers of the RUP framework in their BUP proposal, there still appears to be a stronger emphasis on phases, artifacts and roles than many in the agile community would recommend. Is there room for negotiation? I believe so. Its time to make your voice heard.