Intel has announced the release of the new versions of its software development packages Intel Parallel Studio XE 2011 and Intel Cluster Studio 2011 for the platforms Linux and Windows. These new products contain the best compilers for C/C++ and Fortran, the libraries for increasing the productivity and the application parallelization, the analysers of code consistency and profilers. In addition to the functions of Intel Parallel Studio XE 2011, the Intel Cluster Studio package includes additional options for programming the distributed memory using the MPI technologies.

The emergence of the Linux versions became a very important event in the development of the Intel Parallel Studio 2011 package – now software developers can check the memory and the standard parallel programming models even in Linux. The utility Intel Inspector XE 2011 has replaced the former utility Intel Thread Checker which is responsible for checking the memory.

The new function of Ideal Interconnect Simulator in the utility Intel Trace Analyzer and Collector helps model the application behavior in the ideal communication environment. What concerns the support of the Fortran programming language, which is very popular in the projects with intensive calculations, Intel provided a special interface for the Microsoft Visual Studio environment (you don’t have to purchase an additional license for Visual Studio) and the utilities Intel Composer XE and Intel Amplifier XE work directly via this interface.

Many times you and I have heard about advantages of Agile development techniques and drawbacks of traditional “hard” techniques like RUP, MSF and so on. I think, sometimes we are mixing them up.

A lot of software engineers, project architects and even PMs prefer the Agile approach because of the anarchy it allows in the outsourcing development. I mean the absence of specifications (even when they are really needed), merge of project roles and responsibilities (when no one can say who is responsible for low quality level and specification), and the sacred belief in users’ stories without any additional analysis of business goals. The situation can become worse if a customer hasn’t got a clear vision what he wants to get at the end of the project, if the requirements weren’t completely described and verified by him and finally they were implemented according to the developers’ point of view. Most probably the client’s expectations will not be satisfied, and it will lead to hours of overtime, release date shifting and other symptoms of an unsuccessful project.

In addition, unskilled key project persons frequently use this fashionable term to clear themselves when they fail, the project deadline is out-of-date and the customer is not satisfied. They say “We create software using modern flexible approaches, we don’t need all these hundreds of specifications and process descriptions! This is Agile, baby, so relax!”, but usually they forget one important thing.

Agile practice is not the universal magic wand that allows you to make any project no matter if it’s low-sized or estimated in 10 thousand man*days, with minimum of documentation, absence of project roadmap, detailed architecture and so on. Of course, it could be so in small/medium projects and on the assumption of all project-members already have agile experience and the Project Manager keeps all working activities and plans in his head. But you have to keep in mind that it’s rather risky to rely on this.

I strongly believe that Agile development process should be used only by highly-experienced web developers – because they already know the weak points of this methodology and they will not addle with the seeming simplicity and easiness of this approach.