RE: is scarab at its end of lifetime ?

I introduced Scarab in my team of systems engineers about 6 years ago, while I was working for an aircraft manufacturer. At the time, we were gearing up for the development of a new aircraft model and I was looking for a flexible issue tracking and management system able to support the high pace of system development work we were doing.

In my search for such an application (ignoring the commercial "mammoth" solutions), I found that the overwhelming majority of so-called "issue" trackers are heavily biased towards software engineering, i.e. glorified bug trackers. I found that Scarab was the only application flexible enough to support one of the key activities in Systems Engineering: issue tracking.

Scarab has proven to be invaluable to the development work we did, from tracking issues in requirements and design data (for hardware, software, integrated systems, subsystems) all the way through to ground and flight testing. Scarab even influenced the jargon used in the company, with managers (both in the company and at major suppliers) requesting "the Scarab burn-down rate" for the month (where Scarab became the synonym for any issue that was tracked ...).

Back to your original question if there is a user community for Scarab. I have read feedback from a lot of users who use Scarab in an ITC environment. I would say that the potential user community in this kind of environment is limited. Simply because there are plenty of free bug trackers and help desk ticketing applications around that are easier to use and look sexier than Scarab. I would argue that Systems Engineering is the domain that truly needs the kind of flexibility (and level of abstraction) that Scarab offers). If you would ask me what focus continued development (functionality wise) should have, I would suggest: have a look at the needs of the Systems Engineering community.

Thanks to all contributors who have put their effort in creating the remarkable product that Scarab is. It certainly made doing my job more fun !

Joost

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