PATTERN LANGUAGE

Modeling, Managing, Making it Right.

May 2007

Dave Rico is asking for your help, and I'm hoping you can lend him a hand (or a few mouse clicks, at minimum). As part of his doctoral dissertation, Dave has put together a survey entitled Effects of Agile Methods on Website Quality to gauge, well, the effects of agile methods on website quality. And Dave and I would greatly appreciate it you would spare a few minutes participating.

The survey is a two-stage survey.

• The first stage involves determining the degree to which software developers are using Agile Methods to produce e-commerce websites.
• The second stage involves asking Internet shoppers and consumers to evaluate the quality of the e-commerce websites produced by the software developers (which will be done at a later date after this first-stage survey).

This is one of those everybody wins deals:

• Dave wins because he gets the benefit of your experience for his research.
• I win (actually, we all win) because he will be writing an article for Dr. Dobb's Journal about the survey and results.
• You win because Dave will be offering incentives for you to participate (see details at the survey web site).

It is worth mentioning that Dave is experienced in these things. He's the author of ROI of Software Process Improvement: Metrics for Project Managers and Software Engineers, among other books and papers. If you have any questions for him or would like to receive a copy of the research results at dfrico@comcast.net. And as Dave says, "though minimal demographic data may be collected, absolute data privacy will be maintained at all times."

So take a few minutes and help Dave polish off that PhD by spending a few minutes on the survey. We'll all be winners.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 03:50 PM  Permalink |

For a lot of people, delegation is a tough nut to crack. But crack it, you must -- no matter what kind of business you're in. What's important to keep in mind is that someone you've delegated authority to may not do it exactly the way you do, but if it works, it is on schedule, on budget, and all that good stuff, that's what counts.

What brought this to mind is Simon Brown's post on Delegation and Software Architects. What I particularly like is Simon's subhead -- "Understand what's happening in just enough detail." Anything beyond that would seem to be micromanaging. His point is that as the architect, you don't have to make all of the decisions yourself, particularly when it comes to coding. As the architect, if you get bogged down in coding, says Simon, " there's probably little chance of you understanding how the entire system works at the code level."

Teamwork is about delegation and responsibility and, as Simon wraps up, focusing on "just enough" detail to get the job done.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 12:24 PM  Permalink |

A new book entitled CMMI for Outsourcing: Guidelines for Software, Systems, and IT Acquisition, by Hubert F. Hofmann, Deborah K. Yedlin, John W. Mishler, and Susan Kushner, has been published by Addison-Wesley. The book is part of the SEI Series in Software Engineering.

CMMI for Outsourcing is a practical introduction to the initial draft CMMI for Acquisition and to its use in all phases of technology acquisition. Developed under the leadership of General Motors and the guidance of the SEI, this initial draft combines CMMI's successful process discipline with techniques proven to work in GM's own extensive outsourcing program. This book covers the entire outsourcing project lifecycle, presents real-world stories as they might occur in organizations, and includes insider experiences, tips, tricks, and pitfalls to avoid.

The topics discussed in the book include the following:

• Determining when outsourcing is and is not appropriate
• Developing outsourcing strategies and aligning organizational structure with them
• Capturing accurate requirements
• Secifying realistic design constraints
• Writing effective RFPs
• Selecting, managing, and collaborating with suppliers
• Negotiating contracts
• Managing risk
• Measuring for success

Posted by Jon Erickson at 02:01 PM  Permalink |

There's no question that concurrency -- also known as parallelism -- is, or at least should be, in the forefront of all developer's and architect's field of vision. This is due in large part to the advent of multi-core processors.

To that end, Jorge L. Ortega-Arjona, a of the Mathematics Department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico has written a paper entitled A Functional Parallelism Architectural Pattern for Parallel Programming which will be presented at SugarLoafPLoP 2007, the Sixth Latin American Conference on Pattern languages of Programming later this month at Porto de Galinhas, Brazil.

According to the paper's abstract, the Parallel Hierarchies pattern is an architectural pattern for parallel programming used when the problem is understood in terms of functional parallelism. This pattern describes a solution in a layered hierarchical form, in which each layer is composed of two or more components that are able to simultaneously exist and perform the same operation.

While I'd much rather hear Prof. Ortega-Arjona's presentation in person, in between sessions on the beach, I'll have to settle to reading the paper online. It is interesting and practical, and worth the time.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:59 AM  Permalink |

Oracle has announced its Oracle Application Integration Architecture, an open, standards-based platform for business process management across Oracle, third- party, and custom applications.

The Oracle Application Integration Architecture will be open to ISVs who can use it to integrate with Oracle Applications. Customers can extend the platform to legacy applications. As part of the architecture, Oracle is delivering pre-built integrations across Oracle ERP, CRM and industry applications using a common object model and an open, Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) based platform. The common object model is the same object model to be used in Oracle Fusion applications. Additionally, customers will be able to extend the object model and have those extensions protected during upgrades.

As part of the architecture, Oracle plans on delivering horizontal and industry-specific Process Integration
Packs, which provide pre-integrated business flows across Oracle's portfolio of applications.With the pre-built, integration packs, Oracle hopes to help reduce the cost to deploy and maintain integrations, while supporting a more adaptive application infrastructure.

Initial available process integration packages include:

• Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand Integration Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite, which is intended to support the opportunity-to-quote process and includes auto conversion of opportunities to quotes and quotes to orders.
• Oracle's Siebel CRM Integration Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite Order Management, which is expected to support the order-to-cash process lifecycle, including capabilities for complex product configuration, inventory availability, automated order processing, price synchronization and real time order status.

Oracle also says it will deliver Industry Reference Models -- tools and documented business processes to create integrated process flows across heterogeneous environments. With these models, developers adopt industry best practices and implement processes that meet specific business needs and should be protected through upgrade cycles.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 01:45 PM  Permalink |