elemental links

links for 2008-08-31

• Good Tired and Bad Tired. Which Are You?
  Anecdote from Harry Chapin: "My grandfather was a painter. He died at age 88. He illustrated Robert Frost’s first two books of poetry. He was looking at me one day and he said, `Harry, there’s two kinds of tired. There’s good tired and there’s bad-tired. Ironically enough, bad-tired can be a day in which you won, but you won other people’s battles, you lived other people’s days, other people’s agendas and dreams, and when it’s all over, there’s very little you in there, and when you hit the hay at night, you toss and turn, you don’t settle easy.

  Good tired, ironically enough, can be a day in which you lost, but you knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days. And when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy, you sleep the sleep of the just, and you can say, “Take me away.” "

  
  
  (tags: chapin creativity)
  
  

links for 2008-08-20 (more or less)

Had the delicious blog posting job worked, I would have already recommended the below links.  But it didn't (shocking) so here I am, impersonating a batch job.  We've all been there before, eh?

Fighting the Superstitions of Software Development: Questioning the Assumptions | Advice and Opinion 

"At the Schindler bitranch, we call these "superstitions:" information accepted on faith, without personal knowledge or examination. People pass along "everyone knows" data without questioning it, and others repeat the superstition as though it's undeniably true. Confidence isn't knowledge; in fact, confidence can prevent knowledge and innovation from happening, because an unquestioned belief means you never measure, never test, never look at alternatives." 

Jitterbit Reveals Open-Source Data Integration Tool - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership

need to check these out, Jitterbit + "Other open-source data integration vendors include Talend, XAware and SnapLogic, which also has a community site and is building a library of completed connectors and pipelines."

Todd Biske: Outside the Box » Blog Archive » Governance does not imply Command and Control

Last week, Todd & I were chatting about the (wrongly) implied command & control nature of SOA Governance, and how that inhibits success. In that conversation, I passed along the link to an article on inspiration & leadership, previously sent thru my links here. Todd, being Todd, expanded/augmented that quick conversation into this great post. Think of it as a preview for his upcoming book on SOA Governance.

Jeanne Ross to Keynote SOA Consortium's September 24-25 Meeting in Orlando

One of my responsibilities for the SOA Consortium is planning and moderating the member meeting program.  And self-congratulations aside, I have to say our programs offer excellent speakers, insights and conversations.  Continuing this trend, I'm thrilled to share that Jeanne Ross, Director and Principal Research Scientist of MIT's Center for Information Systems Research, has agreed to keynote our September meeting in Orlando.  Yes, Jeanne Ross, co-author of Enterprise Architecture as Strategy, and IT Governance.  I know, my EA roots are showing.

Joining Jeanne on the agenda are Dr. Michael J. Kurtz, Assistant Archivist for Records Services, Washington DC, National Archives and Records Administration, and Geoff Raines and Larry Pizette of MITRE Corporation. 

What follows is the latest information from my post on SOA Consortium Insights.  The meetings are open to the public.  Please consider joining us, and getting involved in the 'SOA Soapbox Derby'.

"Have the recordings from our earlier meetings enticed you to attend one in person?  Well, if you are a SOA practitioner, you'll definitely want to join us in Orlando on September 24-25 as we do a SOA reality check and dig into sustaining SOA success.

Kicking off our SOA reality check, I'm thrilled to share that Jeanne Ross, Director and Principal Research Scientist MIT Center for Information Systems Research, will be our keynote speaker.  In her talk, Jeanne will present new research on SOA Adoption & Value:

MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research and Diamond Management and Technology Consultants recently collaborated on research project surveying architecture leaders on SOA adoption, current practices, value and results and barriers to SOA success.

The research objective is to help those responsible for architecture better understand how their organizations stack up on a variety of key SOA metrics: investment, progress, reuse, and others.

In this presentation, Jeanne Ross will share the results of the survey analysis, including insights gained on the linkages, if any, between SOA initiatives and company financial performance.

And what would be a reality check, without real-world stories and lessons learned?  We have two great invited speaker sessions:

Dr. Michael J. Kurtz, Assistant Archivist for Records Services, Washington DC, National Archives and Records Administration, on Records Management in a Federal Service Oriented Environment

A multi-agency Records Management Service initiative has been undertaken by an Interagency Project Team composed of nineteen Federal Agencies under the leadership of the National Archives and Records Administration. The service is being developed in the context of the US Federal Government's over-arching approach to move to Service Oriented Architecture in the Enterprise Architecture of its agencies. This presentation provides an overview of the activities of a government Community of Practice defining and enabling a Records Management Service in order to realize the vision of Service Oriented Architecture in Federal Government.

 

Geoff Raines and Larry Pizette of MITRE Corporation on Leveraging Federal IT Investment – Using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

This presentation will explore SOA, as implemented through the common Web Services standards.  It offers Federal senior leadership teams a path forward, given the diverse and complex information technology (IT) portfolio that they have inherited, allowing for incremental and focused improvement of their IT support systems.  We will also discuss the SOA Trade space and briefly cover our project team’s efforts.

Rounding out our SOA reality check, our own Richard M. Soley, Executive Director of the SOA Consortium, will announce the winners of our case study contest, co-sponsored by CIO Magazine.  In addition to the announcements, Fill Bowen and I will share many of the SOA Lessons from Case Study Contest Entries.

And that's just Wednesday.  On Thursday, we focus our attention on sustaining SOA success.  After an invited speaker talk on SOA & ITIL, we'll have our first ever 'SOA Soapbox Derby'. 

The purpose of the SOA Soapbox Derby is to allow practitioners to exchange ideas on activities that are critical to sustaining SOA success.  Derby participants will have 10-15 minutes to soapbox, followed by another 15 minutes (or so) to engage in related conversation with meeting attendees.  Any practitioner attending the SOA Consortium meeting may participate in the 'SOA Soapbox Derby'.   For more information, contact me in advance, or onsite.

Thursday afternoon, we'll focus on community of practice activities, including the unveiling of the SOA Consortium Planning Framework. 

Interested?  For more information, including registration, please go here."

New SOA Consortium Podcast: Melvin Greer on SOA Hard Problems & Spiral Solution Development

I realize it's much cooler to talk about how hyped technologies burst into flames in the real-world, but honestly, that's not my experience with SOA.  Nearly everyday, either through my work with SOA Consortium members or consulting/coaching, I interact with organizations that are attaining value using SOA approaches.  Now, that's not to say SOA is simple, it's not.  SOA requires transformation along technology, business, process and organizational aspects.  And as your services network grows in size, distribution and popularity, you'll face hard some hard challenges.  Luckily, there are organizations, such as Lockheed Martin, that are not only leading the way, but also contributing their learning and expertise to the broader community.

In his most recent talk at a SOA Consortium meeting, Mel Greer, Lockheed Martin’s Chief SOA Architect, delivered a very engaging and thought-provoking talk on the topic of SOA Hard Problems and Spiral Solution Development.  The essence of that talk, and links to the audio recording and slides, follows, excerpted from my post on SOA Consortium Insights:

"The SOA Consortium was extremely fortunate to have Mel Greer, Lockheed Martin’s Chief SOA Architect, return to speak at our June meeting in Ottawa. Consistent with his March talk on SOA Competency Centers, Mel delivered a very engaging and thought-provoking talk on the topic of SOA Hard Problems and Spiral Solution Development.

Mel began by defining hard problems and spirals. Hard problems have three characteristics. First, a hard problem doesn’t go away over time. Second, left unresolved, a hard problem will have a significant negative impact on your SOA adoption. Third and most important, resolving a hard problem requires multiple disciplines that come from inside and outside your own organization. A spiral is a technique that breaks a hard problem into a series of small activities, each lasting 30-90 days. Each activity, or spiral, produces an answer that moves the hard problem towards resolution.

Lockheed Martin has identified SOA hard problems across six categories: business, engineering, operations, security, governance and skills development. During his talk, Mel shared examples of hard problems within each category, as well as the inter-relationships between hard problems.

Within the engineering category, Mel spoke of altering existing development processes and methodologies for SOA, designing for context awareness, and designing for runtime discovery and composition. In respect to runtime discovery and composition, Lockheed Martin is trying to determine the best way for a running to composition to become aware of newly delivered capability. As an example, Mel called out how the Mars Land Rover continues to receive new capability without returning to earth.

In closing, Mel spoke of impending challenges as third-party services – SaaS, Applications as a Service (APAS), cloud computing, etc – become the new business models. These changes will require support for service-level agreements, real-time monitoring, end-to-end testing, pricing models and service usability.  Mel encouraged attendees to consider these new hard problems in their work as a multi-discipline, cross-industry consortium.

To listen to, or download the audio recording of Mel’s presentation, and view the slides please go here."

[Disclosure: The SOA Consortium is a client of my company, Elemental Links]

links for 2008-08-12 [delicious.com]

• "What business are you in?" -- Hoover's Business Insight Zone                
  my moment of illumination in regards to business capability and technology matching, now immortalized by Tim Walker of Hoover's.  And yes, this led me to SOA -- at the time we called it services based architecture -- and exploring product line management & portfolio concepts.  And honestly, how cool is it (and totally unlikely) that I'd be mentioned in the same post as Drucker and Einstein.  I might be done now.
                 
  (tags: drucker business_capability soa elemental_links)
              

• Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang on Understanding Gartner'€™s "€œGeneration Virtual"               
  this post is interesting for it's content, but even more so because it's from a Forrester analyst on Gartner research with Gartner analysts contributing to the discussion in the comments.  Shows the power of social media for breaking down walls and spurring conversations.  As for some of the mentioned customer community roles, Patty Seybold (my former boss) speaks at length about these in her 2005-06 work, Outside Innovation.
                 
  (tags: analysts gartner forrester social_media outsideinnovation)
              
• The Era of Inspiration                
  I often cringe when listening to folks talk about EA & SOA governance that relies on "command & control" and "positional authority".  I talk about creating environment of compliance rather than enforcement. This article talks about a way to get there, via inspiration. How are you inspiring people to participate in SOA & EA initiatives for group success?

  "Unlike coercion and motivation, the source of inspired conduct is intrinsic and internal. Inspired employees act on something they believe in; they are in the grip of ideas; they are compelled by a deeper purpose and propelled by values they hold fundamental. Unlike carrots, beliefs are largely free—and they can be shared. Because they can be shared, they spur collaboration and serve as the glue that keeps people aligned and energized. This is particularly important in the face of current economic times, where external stimuli (carrots and sticks) are not as readily available. In short, values are sustainable."

                 
  
  (tags: leadership governance inspiration commandandcontrol)
  
              
• IT oversight bill gains support
  from the it's about time category: "Bill S. 3384 ... would require agencies to report regularly on significant deviations in cost, schedule and performance...“The bill’s requirement to report cost and schedule breaches means that agencies will need to be more transparent with and accountable for their poorly performing projects,” Powner said."
                 
  
  (tags: government IT accountability)