OREANDA-NEWS. Nanzan University, IBM Japan Ltd., Fujitsu Limited, NEC Corporation, NTT DATA Corporation, Hitachi, Ltd., and Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. announced that PROMCODE has released its first publication, the PROMCODE Interface Specifications, for exchanging project-management data between organizations.

The specifications are available on the group's website (http://lab.nise.org/PROMCODE/) along with the PROMCODE Usage Manual and PROMCODE Adapter Software for exchanging data in actual projects based on the specifications, as well as the PROMCODE Experiment Report. These tools will enable customers and vendors to manage project-management data via a standard interface across organizations, lowering the risk of project delays and cost overruns.

PROMCODE was formed so that large-scale system-integration and software-development projects involving a customer and multiple vendors would have efficient time and progress management and quality control between the organizations involved. This is made possible by a data-interchange interface for project-management data that would be independent of any organization or platform.

The first publication from this consortium, the PROMCODE Interface Specifications, compiles knowledge from the member organizations that are involved in multi-organizational, multi-layered, large-scale systems integration and software development projects in Japan. The PROMCODE Interface Specifications was designed based on management data used in actual development projects, and is being validated through practical experiments. The consortium plans to use it on actual projects in the future, with the aim of giving the customer and vendors participating in large-scale systems integration or software development projects a high degree of flexibility and independence, with the aim of transforming Japan's information industry.

Offshore development has brought the challenges of distributed development conducted by multiple organizations to a global level. This is why the consortium is preparing to form a technical committee in OASIS with the eventual goal of having its work recognized as an international standard.