EA Tools Adoption

Research from 50+ years ago grouped adopted of new technologies into five categories:

• Innovators (about 2% of the population) or enthusiasts, will use a technology based on its features and do not require financial analyses before adopting a new technology.
• Early Adopters (about 13% of the population) or visionaries wait until Innovators have shown a technology has merits but still are not driven by financial analysis.
• Early Majority (about 33% of the population) or pragmatists need to see clear ROI analysis or ROI-based testimonials from others in a similar industry.
• Late Majority (about 33% of the population) needs concrete objective ROI analysis supported by multiple sources.
• Laggards (the remaining 16%) or skeptics will only use advanced technology if they have no other choice. Often new technology must be embedded in a total solution for a laggard to adopt a new technology.

I believe the EA tools adoption is now moving from the 2nd to the 3rd of these groups.

If you encounter an organization where innovation is the rule, you can promote the idea of EA tools based on their technical merits (and allow the innovators and early adopters to map the features to organization advantages and benefits)

If you find early adopters and early majority users you will need to focus on the ROI and carefully map the features of into specific advantages and benefits within your organization.
Promoting to late majority and laggards may require you to bundle EA tools into a larger package and sell that package as an organizational solution e.g. suggesting a complete IRM for the industry (e.g. insurance, health etc.)

RHE Analysis and modelling offerings

RHE offers a range of analysis and modelling services. These cover the:
- business strategies and plans (drivers, strategies, measures/KPIs, markets, products/service).
- business architectures (interactions, processes, policies/rules, information, organisation, agreements/relationships)
- business change (initiatives, business cases, programmes/projects, requirements)
- technology architectures (services/applications/components, HW/SW infrastructures, operational procedures).
- technology industry (vendors/products, standards, visioning etc.)
- technology design (SOA, objects/UML, data/ER, process/BPMN, etc.)

RHE uses techniques semantics, and tools that allow:
- reference models where they exist to supporting industry benchmarking
- information in the different areas to be inter-related.
- artefacts to be produced in a variety of forms (documents, diagrams etc.)

Lattix Troux Interface

(WIP steps are)

See rationale see (Enhancing EA with SW Architecture).

An overview or steps are as follows:

1. Model the application in the Enterprise Architect - e.g. in Troux Architect define an Application (and commit the Application to the Metaverse) or create the application in Metaverse directly. In production environments will have hundreds of existing applications (and these will usually be loaded automatically via Collectors).
2. Load Code for an Application - Load the code related to the Application into Lattix (e.g. on a PC client)
3. Analyse Code of App - Perform analysis in Lattix to determine modules (structure) and their relationships.
4. Export Code Analysis - Export an XML file from Lattix that contains modules and their relationships. The project name should be the identified (UUID-State) for the Application.
5. Move Code Analysis to Troux space - Make the Lattix XML file accessible from Troux Metaverse by placing the file in the Troux Lattix collection directory.
6. Load Code Analysis into Troux - The Lattix XML file placed in the Troux Lattix collection directory will automatically be selected and loaded by the Troux Collector.e into the Troux State, and related to the Application (based on the UUID).
7. Examine Application/Modules in Troux Explorer/BP Manager - in Troux Metaverse find the Application and the related Modules (that have been Collected/Loaded from Lattix - via the XML collector) - show pictures of the applications and its modules, lists of modules etc. using Troux Explorer.
8. Examine Application/Modules in Architect - in Troux Architect client (connected to the Metaverse/State) e.g. select the Application and get the neighbours from the Metaverse, or explore the Metaverse Tab in Troux Architect to see the Modules of the Application.

A sensible IT Strategy extract from

A sensible IT strategy (what I have advocated since 2000)

Overview
Some of the key points can be summarised below:
- Access: core systems should be accessible from anywhere via internet protocols (and not require VPNs) i.e. Troux (Metaverse/Team server), JIRA, Confluence, Domino etc. We should discriminate against users out of the office.
- LAN - should not be used for document storage/repositories (that is the function of the Team rooms and other Domino document databases). And ALL documents of record (contracts, deliverables) should reside in repositories. No new people were to be connected to the LANs after 2000.
- Printing - services need to work in all offices (until we can find a remote solution).
- NW Access - local offices should just provide effectively ISP access (plus printing).
- Devices - all devices connected to local NW should be treated as potentially hostile (i.e. we can't control the devices of all Associates).
- Browser - Firefox is browser of choice (was Netscape), IE should only be used when it must be (e.g. some tools unfortunately require it).
- Email clients - Thunderbird or Note (i.e. not Outlook - which should not exist on any business owned PCs). SMTP/POP/IMAP services provided by Domino.
- IM - AOL/AIM is the IM all users should use. People can use what clients they want to (AIM was the default, but won't connect to other services Cf. GAIM, Trillion).
- Office Productivity - we should aim to move away from MS Office (and should avoid purchasing new copies). Especially we should avoid using the new extended document formats.
- Drawing tools - the default tool should be OpenOffice stardraw (or Troux Architect) - Visio should not be the default (and we should purchase copies of it). If it is needed for specific projects they should fund this (6the proprietary format is not a suitable format for communication).

Document management
Notes client (fat client) allows automated replication of documents - it also provides Web access to documents. Documents used frequently should be replicated so that local copies are keep on the client (this significantly reduces the load on the PC). Large documents should typically not be sent in emails they should be referenced i.e. to team room location.

Our default document database on Notes is a very primitive one called a team room - its main purpose is to replace the file system e.g. LAN). It is does not have great control for concurrent editing (locking, check-in/check-out) - but in practice this is very seldom an issue. There is an index of team rooms which provides you a simple drill down access to all team rooms (i.e. it is a table of contents for the team rooms).

Model repositories
Troux team room - should be used to store copies of models that need to be shared or archived.

Other repositories
JIRA - is used for bug tracking, issues tracking etc.
Confluence - is used as a wiki for informal communications (it is NOT where documents or record should reside).

Other newer issues
- Skype should be used for VoIP (but should not be left running as a default IM).
- PDA/Phones - people will use a variety
- Wireless - our strategy for these needs revision i.e. external services/standards.
- Office formats - we should aim at ODF (not Office XML).
- Project - MS Project vs Open project [need to consider]

Special cases
The above does not apply to 2 special cases - SW developers - who needed what ever their project demands, Accounting. Re Development they will need a range of specialised tools/technologies oriented (IDEs, UML modellers, ER modellers, Databases etc.]

Gartner's 10 trends

Gartner's 10 trends
1. Green IT
2. Unified communications.
3. Business process management (not a technology, just ways to simulate, model and design the processes that run businesses). The evolution of the business process management suite including: model-driven development, content/document management/ collaboration, business intelligence, business rules, business activity monitoring/management, system connectivity and systems management.
4. Metadata management. Important as companies integrate data - for instance, customer and product data and warehouse data.
5. Virtualization.
6. Mashups.
7. The Web platform.
8. Computing fabric. A server design that is still a work in progress, computing fabric involves treating memory, processors and I/O cards as a pooled resource instead of a fixed arrangement. Blade servers allow you to do some of this pooling with I/O, Claunch said. "Be aware of this, because blades are not the final step," he said.
9. Real World Web.
10. Social software.

RHE's focus:
3. Business process management: BPMN (ProActivity etc.), Idiom, Troux
4. Metadata management: Troux (Cf. Australian Customs)
5. Virtualization: RHEIS
6. Mashups:.
7. The Web platform.
9. Real World Web.
10. Social software: HealthPhone was in part oriented at this; HereAndNow also

User Interfaces - design

Eyes are most sensitive to the center of the spectrum (blues/reds must be brighter than greens/yellows), and brightness is mainly determined by R+G. It is harder to detect changes in reds/purples/greens and easier to detect changes in yellows/blue-greens. Trouble discriminating colors affects 9% of people.

Avoid:

• saturated colours (except in small areas to make a point) i.e. prefer pastels for large areas.
  
• red & green in the periphery (no RG cones)
  
• pure blue for text, lines, and small shapes
• adjacent colors that differ only in blue or that clash e.g. R/G
  
• single-color distinctions mixtures of colors should differ in 2 or 3 colors
• using only brightness or colour to indicate differences
• shapes with no boundaries (shapes are detected by finding edges and it is hard to focus on edges defined by colour i.e. with not line

Layout

• time to move the mouse depends only on the relative precision required (i.e. not the the distance).

SOA Grid

(prompted by http://www.soamag.com/I10/0907-1.asp)

This discusses technologies for scalability e.g. mid-tier caching, load balancing, and high availability through service-level grid enablement for high performance SOAs (SOA Grid) that may help enable enforceable SLAs across service portfolios (WS, messaging, enterprise
applications, mainframes)

It introduces some interesting architectural issues e.g. remote nodes to cache
the programming logic (as well as shared data objects)

This leads to a consideration of re-locatable BPEL: i.e. BPEL that dehydrates and then rehydrates itself somewhere else on the grid to execute closer to the service and instance data that it is operating on.

It could also lead to Business Rules/Decisions be dealt with in the same way if they were discretely partitioned.

Software factories and architectural frameworks

(prompted by "Mass Customizing Solutions" item in Fall 2007 Methods and tools)

Introduction
This item discusses the concept of Software Factories. While it is focused on a very specific sort of development I believe the principles it articulates have much broader application (if the approaches to development and integration are to be improved. It also describes the core thinking underlies the establishment of RHE's AMA (and the idea of instantiatable Development Approaches - DMAs). This lead directly to the need for multi-perspective modelling (e.g. as enable by a metamodeller) to make the management of the resulting knowledge viable.

It makes the point that the key intellectual content from a project is not the code. It is information (best held in models, and published in views suited to different audiences) that describes the requirements and design from many viewpoints.

Further, in my view, one of the key reasons business analysis does not mature as practice is the absence of a focus on quality (repeatability, consistenty). This is largely because there is not a focus on a consistent set of inter-related business domain viewpoints that can be explicitly captured (i.e. in a model) and people continue to think that the essay style is suited to conveying an sets of essays are useful for managing the knowledge.

Architecture frameworks
It item discusses Architecture Frameworks (e.g. Zachman):

• the key intellectual content of a project is not the code - "... interface design and functional factoring constitutes the key intellectual content of software.."
• this key intellectual content is captured in these frameworks - "Architectural frameworks capture the intellectual content using view points that identify, separate and interrelate well defined sets of stakeholder concerns"
• the frameworks have views for a variety of stakeholders (technical and non-technical) - "... stakeholders include business analysts, project managers, developers..."
• viewpoints include business rules, business info, business processes, UI workflow etc. - "Examples of viewpoints include business rules, business events, business information, business processes, user interface workflow and database design. Examples of stakeholder concerns include how business rules are enforced by a given process or how a physical database design supports a logical database design".
• viewpoints need to be able to be nested and adapted (i.e. a metamodeller is useful) - "The software factory schema is an architecture framework ... nesting viewpoints, specific to the solution family...dynamic [e.g.] new viewpoints are added.
• relationships between viewpoints are critical
• viewpoints imply artifact - "a viewpoint ... defines a set of related artifacts..., the activities that act upon the artifacts..."
• viewpoints/relationships support development - "Relationships between viewpoints are used to support the flow of development..."
• publishing information is key (that should be available from models) - "... publishing information about key processes and artifacts... This metadata is often readily available in the models used by factories."
• publishing information on requirements and design decisions is key - "...Two kinds of information are particularly important ... about requirements, sych as the information captured in feature models ..., about architecture"

Benefits
"The results are generally significant reduction in cost and time to market, significant improvement in the quality attributes, and greater consistency from solution to solution. Risk is also reduced..."

"When it is time to maintain or evolve ..., the metadata captured during its development is used to analyse the impact of changes in requirements and technologies.."

See other items related in one way or another
Enterprise data management
Business modelling with domain specific languages
UML not suited to requirements capture

BP modelling and SOA

Oracle
Oracle's BP Analysis Suite (Aris) shares a common process model format (an intermediate format based on shared metadata between the modeling tool and the implementation tool) with the Oracle SOA suite to allow round-trip engineering. Modeling is done in the BP package and then executed in the SOA Suite (BPEL).

Software quality

Coverity's Prevent SQS SAT engine (based on the concept of Boolean satisfiability) uses a representation of software to identify complex defects in source code. It is $35 annually.

Lattix uses interdependencies to create an accurate blueprint of applications, databases and systems. Developers can analyze systems in detail, edit the structure to create what-if scenarios, and specify design rules, allowing them to formalize and communicate the architecture.

BP, BR, SOA

Gradually people are starting to realise that Processes, Rules and Services are connected.

Intalio
Intalio BPMS 5.0 (built on top of the Apache ODE BPEL engine, and the Eclipse STP BPMN modeller) supports: use case design, process modeling, process simulation, complex human workflow execution, Web form generation, conditional logic mapping, advanced business rules design, and real-time process monitoring (BPMN, BPEL 2.0, BPEL4People). It has been integrated with Alfresco (CMS), Mule (ESB), Liferay (Portal), and OpenLexicon (Rule Engine). The modeller was re to support BPMN 2.0 specification, and the BPEL runtime optimized to support 100,000+ process models and 250,000,000 process instances deployed on a server, and the workflow framework extended to support BPEL4People and provide better support for BAM.

Fiorano and Adaptive Edge
Fiorano (BP integration and messaging) announces a partnership with Adaptive Edge in Aus (a provider of BPM/SOA solutions). Adaptive Edge will provide Fiorano customers with a rapid process deployment programme i.e. pre-packaged templates, discovery, modeling, integration and deployment, delivering a running process within 90 days.

BP modelling

(prompted by Metastorms purchase of Promforma)

Market consolidation
Over recent years, most of the other leading BPA/EA companies have been acquired e.g. Computas (Troux), Popkin (Telelogic/IBM), ProActivity (EMC). IDS Scheer (Aris) is now the clear pure play market leader. Others offering BP modelling are: Casewise, Mega, iGrafx, Savvion has a free, downloadable process modeller (downloaded 100,000 times), Lombardi has a Blueprint on-demand process modeller delivered through a SaaS model.

EA modeling and process modeling should help bridge the gap between strategy and execution (as would a connection of EA to Rules modelling, EA to ER modelling).

Further consolidation is expected in areas such as process simulation, BAM, and rules engines and convergence of BPM with BI (predictive analytics, visualization and activitybased costing). Likely future purchasers: SAP (IDS), EMC (from ProActivity), Oracle (above Collaxa), IBM (tying together Tivolli/Rational/WebSphere, HP, SUN (above JCAPS) etc.


Everyone thinks the are in the BP game - somewhere - see:













Metastorm and proforma
Proforma has a comprehensive suite of process libraries and reference models. Metastorm has Process Pods and Process Templates. These libraries will form packaged vertical and functional domain models.