Model driven SOA

(prompt by Model Driven SOA emerges)

The following points are made in this item (that we have been saying for a number of years):

• If you want to address SOA in a scaleable way, you can't do it without support for modeling.
• Many people underestimated how fast BP modeling would become a topical issue for organizations.
• Historically, we only had UML process modeling that was low level and wasn't much use in SOA. Developers pretty much stuck with gathering requirements, which usually ended up gathering dust on a shelf, and then got down to coding applications.
• With the adoption of SOA and BPM (BPMN, BPEL etc.) that approach is going over the application development waterfall in a barrel.
• The idea of a BPMN specification linked to BPEL that allows automated code generation is intriguing, especially when you combine that with business rules capabilities.
• if you really want to get to reuse, you really want to have a higher level model-based oversight on what the different components are and how they interact.

It will of course be interesting to see how Telelogic's products prosper in UML oriented IBM unit (Rational).

Modelling Business Strategy

We have had a number of conversations with business people and consultants about the merits of modelling approaches for driving strategic alignment in organisations. 

Whilst there are many techniques for defining strategy and flowing it down through the organisation (e.g. Balanced Scorecard), the processes for managing the relationships between these organisational goals and initiatives are typically quite "loose".

Modelling these relationships in Troux Metaverse facilitates a mechanism for maintaining the ongoing integrity of such processes, as well as being able to use the tool to actively manage transformation initiatives and IT spend.

I have written a short document on this which can be downloaded here.

Guy

Managing complexity in business and IT strategy and architecture

(the need to manage complexity better in business and IT strategy and architecture)

A working group from The Royal Academy of Engineering and The British Computer Society - looking "The Challenges of Complex IT Projects" (ISBN 1-903496-15-2) - noted [comments in square brackets are mine]:

• Complexity is increasing: the challenges associated with complex projects is increasing rapidly. These are fuelled in large part by the exponential growth in the capability of hardware and communications technology, and the corresponding inflation in people’s expectations and ambition

• Unprofessional practice is common: A striking proportion of project difficulties stem from people (customers and suppliers) failing to implement known best practice. This can be ascribed to the general absence of collective professionalism in the IT industry, as well as inadequacies in the education and training of people at all levels. [e.g. about what class of tools to use for managing complexity]

• IT doesn't learn well from more mature professions: There is a broad reluctance to accept that complex IT projects have many similarities with major engineering projects and would benefit from greater application of well established engineering and project management procedures e..g risk management is poorly understood, systems architecture is not appreciated.

• Managing complexity requires new methods, processes and tools: problems relate to the people and processes but further in developments in methods and tools is required to support the design and delivery (in particular regarding effective management of complexity)

[See how other industries organise things: by analogy, by example ).