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Waltisms and Waltish
of
Application Jumping
Tuesday Oct, 9 2007. ~Walt Davis~
Services as Roles and
Responsibilities
Business Architecture
Alignment
For large organizations it can be surprisingly common to have more than one effort for the same thing with each effort not knowing or caring about the other. In some cases knowing parties care but for valid reasons are not able to halt the momentum of their own effort for another effort. Not only does this happen internal to a department but also across departments, state agencies, federal agencies, and down to the local level (county and cities agencies). It is one of several frustrating and overwhelming aspects of public sector work.
A single coherent solution for cataloging systems will be a necessary part of capturing current state. To reach a future state we must be able to plot a path starting from the present and ending in the future. Why debate which is initially most important? In truth they need to be done concurrently Perhaps capturing current state is not as fun as creating future state but for me current state always provides the better advantage point to understanding current events. Ideally both efforts should be conducted in parallel and with equal effort. As we collect requirements for cataloging applications we are also forming relationships with key personal that will sustain a more coherent and unified solution.
Thursday Dec 27, 2007. ~Walt Davis~
ERD's are not a Substitute for Requirements
Thursday Jan 10, 2008. ~Walt Davis~ Model Types and Their Order
Once requirements have been
sufficiently captured begin to model the data being shared. While ERD
(Entity Relationship Diagram) models can be used, I try to encourage the use of
object models. The model should include each partner, a description of the
data, direction of data flow
first strive towards an analysis model,
then a design model, and if necessary an implementation model. While the
analysis model would not normally contain implementation technologies
(i.e., xml, DB2, SSL
) as you drive towards a solution the
design and implementation models should show increasing use of
technologies.
Thursday Jan 28, 2008. ~Walt Davis~ Legacy Technology is Good Technology
We often over focus on replacement of older
technologies in order to modernize the automation of business processes.
Instead of looking at what is usually expensive and complex system
replacements look for a path of least resistance and most benefit.
Consider the mainframe! Why do we have to build new web apps in an effort
to transition off what is consider archaic technology. Instead lets be
smart about it and leverage the mainframe via web enablement of
functionality and by surfacing legacy functionality as consumable
services.
Monday July 7th, 2008. ~Walt Davis~ My Silo vs. Your Silo vs. The Enterprise
The battle between silo's and the
organization has changed little since its conception. What does change,
and with varying degrees of slope, are the people involved and their core
values. The winning side is always changing and continues to be motivated
from organizational concerns over technology, architecture, and or design.
What I find intriguing over anything else are the arguments for or against
a silo point of view. I mean are they not all true depending on the
perspective? Yet we always resolve to thinking one side must be the
winner. So I totally disagree with this and I believe all sides are the
winner and each is correct from its point of view. Here point of view
translates into, from the business being supported, protecting ones own
interests. Therefore, it is my recommendation that we stop using the word
silo. In its place I would like people to take an object oriented point of
view. For example, in your case you are both DCIOs and your scope is to
look out for the interests of the LOB you represent. It has to be this way
because each LOB has different goals, funding, purpose
Now in taking an
object oriented point of view we have two objects. Granted when these
objects are decomposed further there is a lot of complexity. But at the
heart of OO is abstraction and at this point the level of abstraction is
an object representing your line of business. Exploring the use of object
orientation further we know that an object has something called
encapsulation. This represents the objects internal or private parts. Then
the object has an external representation which represents how it
interacts with other objects, i.e., other LOB.
Monday Aug 18th, 2008. ~Walt Davis~
Test Driven Design I was not born yesterday.
Wednesday Oct 27th, 2008. ~Walt Davis~
Forget About The Technology Stupid We focus too much on technology. It has always been a moving target and will continue to change. Change may come from a new manager who has no clue yet things something is cool or drank some cool aid and then decides we need to migrate. Therefore if we have designed our solution correctly then it will have separated logic into highly cohesive and loosely couple sets: business logic, UI logic, Persistence logic, Distributed Logic, Service Logic, ... this is simply stated organizing complexity in to Agile structures. These structures are cheaper to build, cheaper to maintain, cheaper to support, and have a longer life span.
Friday Dec 19th, 2008. ~Walt Davis~ Are We Solutions Integrators or Vendor Advocates There has been a rash of meetings lately in which directory services and security are mentioned. The mostly starts when someone speaks of us as moving to and standardizing on a single directory implementation. Then somehow agile is mixed into the works. Now I dare anyone to debate how only supporting a single directory implementation is agile. Furthermore, if this where to happen and based on the assumption that AD is not RFC compliant continue to demonstrate how this is agile, save us development costs, and lowers maintenance. No suppose you have continued to make yourself believe that you are winning the debate and lets consider that we do not live in a homogeneous environment. Would you agree that with today's IT solutions we find ourselves less as new application developers but as solution integrators. Given this then would it not make more sense to focus on establishing a single and common directory integration solution that supports multiple directory implementations. So how did we get this all switched around. On we now all on the same page.
Friday Dec 19th, 2008. ~Walt Davis~
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