This should probably go into the forum, however I think front page exposure might be good for what I'm proposing.
Last year, myself and 15 others from the University of Melbourne (Australia) developed a framework for the distributed simulation of catchment (rivers, dams) models, that dealt with large data sets using JXTA and other Java technologies. We had an 8 month time span to do this and it was quite a challenge. We were introduced to FDD by quite an avid fan and contributor to this community, Gavin Baker and compared to XP, RUP dx etc. it offered quite a wide range of benefits (most of which I'll talk about in a different post regarding what I found from a project manager perspective. Hopefully the CA from our team will publish his story on FDD as a CA).
One thing that I think all projects, and indeed what Jeff has on his website (www.nebulon.com/articles/fdd/fddimplementations.html), need is a tool to track various projects and the stages in development of each project.
My project team from University developed an in house tool (currently available on sourceforge at http://fddtrack.sourceforge.net), which has specifications and a design document. It's not great, but it's not bad either.
I would like to take off where that initial tool began and develop an open source FDD administration tool (mostly as the job market is slow and it's difficult to find a decent graduate job!). I have a few people in Melbourne who are interested in working with me on this, but what I need for this project to be successful is some initial "neat" features, ideas etc that would be nice to see in this tool to ensure that it will be of greater use (not just to FDD projects). I feel such an open source tool can allow FDD to be taken on by more organisations wanting to assess its benefits in pilot projects (maybe even retain it as their main reporting tool). It would be good for the community to have access to such a tool.
Reporting will most likely be very similar to the current specifications on this site and from Peter Coad's and Stephen Palmer's books (Parking lot diagrams, charts, CP work pages etc.)
For the future of this tool I hope to have some integration with CVS to view CP work packages and other non-mission critical but time saving and visualisation operations.
I will create a forum for discussion on this issue. Please leave any, and I mean any, comments about the shape or scope of this tool. Over the course of the next 2 weeks I will be compiling a spec document and will distribute it back out to the community to read over and add their $0.02.
