VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Tasktop Technologies (tasktop.com), creators of Eclipse Mylyn and a leader in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Automation solutions, today announced that Dave West has joined the company as Chief Product Officer. As one of the foremost software development thought leaders and the most recognized analyst in Agile and ALM, West will lead the strategic direction of Tasktop's product line and market position, and help strengthen Tasktop's executive leadership team as it builds a transformative business that continues to drive major improvements in the software industry.

"Dave's thought leadership has been a key driver in the adoption of Agile and in the ALM modernizations underway at large-scale software organizations," said Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop Technologies and creator of the Eclipse Mylyn open source project. "His insights on how cross-vendor integration have become the main bottleneck on the promised ROI, and the massive opportunity that Tasktop has to connect the software lifecycle across the software supply chain and open source ecosystem, will help drive our vision and product roadmap for overhauling the value chain of software delivery."

West has helped advance many modern software development processes, including Agile and Lean methodologies, process improvement, and project and requirements management. His experience includes hands-on development, executive consulting, project management and industry analysis. He led the development of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) for IBM/Rational, and also managed the development of IBM solutions for financial services, product development and government applications. Most recently, West served as vice president, research director at Forrester, where he worked with global IT organizations and solutions providers to define, drive and advance major Agile-based methodology breakthroughs. He is a frequent keynote speaker at industry conferences and is a widely published author of articles and research reports, along with his acclaimed book: Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design.

"Tasktop is a company that is making a major difference in the evolution and improvement of the software industry," said West. "Its Tasktop Sync and Dev product lines, as well as the Mylyn open source project and ecosystem of integrations, address some of the biggest issues IT organizations face as they move to automate ALM and improve collaboration across the enterprise. The type of integration, automation and synchronization that Tasktop offers is fostering true ALM success, and I look forward to building on the innovation the company offers to meet the infrastructure-level needs of software organizations."

Tasktop helps software organizations implement and automate enterprise-wide Agile and ALM modernization initiatives by connecting both developers, through Tasktop Dev, and cross-functional enterprise teams, through Tasktop Sync. As part of Tasktop Sync, Sync Studio extends the value of its Task Federation™ platform by making it dramatically easier for organizations to connect, configure and maintain medium- and large-scale ALM infrastructures. Together, all Tasktop products leverage the Eclipse Mylyn task-based integration framework to provide a more strategic and lightweight synchronization solution than standard REST API and pure data-store integrations. Its tools provide visibility into ALM work flow and frameworks, and the real-time data sharing of cross-function activities that IT organizations need to synchronize and automate development and deployment of quality software.

West joins Kersten and Tasktop president and COO Neelan Choksi on Tasktop's executive leadership team. He will work side-by-side with Kersten on the product vision, platform design and partner ecosystem strategies, and with Choksi on company growth and business development initiatives. West also will continue his work to advance Agile success at an industry level through thought leadership, and develop new ideas to further streamline and improve the software development and delivery lifecycle.

Connect With Others About this Story:

Tweet This: @Tasktop today announced @DavidJWest as new Chief Product Officer – Read why Dave joined the #Tasktop team at (http://tasktop.com/blog/tasktop/dave-west-joined-tasktop) #ALM

Helpful Links

• Tasktop Technologies
• Tasktop Blog on Announcement
• Tasktop Twitter

About Tasktop Technologies

Tasktop Technologies is the industry's leading provider of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Automation and integration software. Thousands of IT organizations depend on Tasktop's commercial and open source solutions to connect developers, testers, business analysts and project managers who use a wide variety of Agile and ALM tools hosted both on premise and in the cloud.  By automating and connecting the software lifecycle, Tasktop is solving one of the biggest challenges facing large-scale software delivery organizations – the complete disconnect and brittle integrations of ALM tools. Its Task Federation™ technology delivers on the promise of a unified ALM stack through a partner ecosystem that integrates more than 70 disparate ALM tools with real-time connectivity and cross-repository workflow support. Tasktop created and leads the Eclipse Mylyn project, with more than 1 million downloads per month, upon which its commercial Tasktop Sync ALM middleware and Tasktop Dev IDE tools are based. All Tasktop tools are built to enable organizations to gain a competitive advantage in today's software-driven economy by providing the ALM Automation™ needed to gain visibility, predictability and productivity across the software development lifecycle. For more information, visit (http://tasktop.com).

Media Contact:
Christie Denniston
Catapult PR-IR
cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com 
O: 303-581-7760, ext. 13
M: 303-827-5164

SOURCE Tasktop Technologies