2011 Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference

Mark your calendars for the 2011 Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference in Grand Rapids, MI on Saturday 2011-APR-16. (www.GLSEC.org)!

I invite you and your colleagues to the 2011 GLSEC. This year’s conference focuses on Competitive Innovation. Come learn from top business and IT thought-leaders from all over the Midwest as they address critical aspects for attaining software excellence, from business strategy and enterprise architecture, and from hiring practices to test-driven development and embedded engineering.

Noted consultants and authors Johanna Rothman and Rex Black are the keynote speakers:

Johanna Rothman is a management consultant for software managers and leaders. She helps clients identify and solve the problems that prevent them from releasing systems, hiring the right people, or even deciding which project to work on next. She takes a pragmatic approach and customizes a solution that will work best for you and your organization. Her keynote is titled “Thriving in a Competitive Marketplace”.

Rex Black has over a quarter-century of software and systems engineering experience. He is the president and principal consultant of RBCS, Inc and is a leader in software, hardware, and systems testing. His popular book, “Managing the Testing Process”, has sold over 40,000 copies around the world, including Japanese, Chinese, and Indian releases. His keynote is titled “The Future of Test Management”.

I will present “Attaining Business-Oriented Software Excellence”:

ABSTRACT:
Software excellence goes beyond mere technical ideals and measures. Software, as with all information technology (IT), must serve and enable the business, and must do so cost effectively. This establishes the context, boundaries, and rationale for any meaningful definition and measure of software excellence. But how do companies attain such business-oriented software excellence?
Framed in the context of global change, market forces, and technology advance, this presentation explores our understanding and misconceptions regarding the role of software in enabling and automating business. It examines case study successes and failures in creating software solutions.
This presentation describes how enterprise architecture aligns IT with the business strategy and optimizes IT investments; translating and demarcating the context, rationale, and boundaries for software excellence. It explains the essential enterprise architecture mechanisms for achieving alignment, and attaining business-oriented software excellence. The provided checklist allows you to gauge how well your company utilizes enterprise architecture, and recommends specific action steps you can take to help your company attain business-oriented software excellence.

Conference Details:
2011 Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference
Saturday, April 16, 2011 8:00 AM - 4:30 PM (Eastern Time)
Prince Conference Center at Calvin College
1800 E. Beltline SE
Grand Rapids, MI 49546 USA
www.GLSEC.org

Finally, I invite you to share this message with your colleagues and contacts; especially those business professionals who are directors, executives, managers, and supervisors. This conference will help them get more business value from their IT investments and software portfolios.

I look forward to seeing you at the 2011 Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference.

Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 9: Green Initiatives

Customers and communities are pressing companies to be more environmentally friendly. Their demands range from reducing energy consumption, reducing carbon footprints, using less water, and minimizing landfill waste. Many companies have responded favorably. They made their operations more environmentally friendly; obtaining ‘Green’ certifications, winning awards, and even incorporating their accomplishments in advertising.

Physical constraints within existing infrastructure are playing a part in the move to ‘Green IT.’ Faced with power density, utility company feed, cooling capacity, and floor-space and rack-space constraints, companies have relocated to new ‘Green’ data centers and have moved to the Cloud.

Economic pressures are also playing a part in the move to ‘Green IT.’ Energy consumption will continue to be a concern for business and IT executives. Increasing energy use in developing countries including China and India will place demand-side pressure on energy prices world-wide. The growing computational workloads and the growing number of computing devices of all types around the world will add further demand-side pressure. “And the other thing we’re finding is that in terms of energy consumption, that the trajectory, it’s a one-way street where we continue to consume more and more energy, and these data centers tend to be energy hogs, and we need to find a fundamentally different strategy as we think about bending this curve as far as data center growth is concerned.” __ Vivek Kundra, ‘The Economic Gains of Cloud Computing’, An Address, The Brookings Institution, 2010-APR-07, (http://www.brookings.edu/events/2010/0407_cloud_computing.aspx )

The Cloud Computing paradigm helps companies bend the curve to achieve their ‘Green IT’ objectives: reducing energy consumption, reducing carbon footprints, using less water, and minimizing landfill waste. It is naturally greener than building and operating one’s own data center. “There are a lot of data centers that are not highly utilized. If they utilize their assets at 20%, they're doing well. What we can do is aggregate a lot of demand across a lot of different time zones and use cases.” __Forbes, “Amazon's Golden Cloud”, 2009-JUN-29, (http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/26/amazon-cloud-computing-technology-cio-network-outsourcing.html )

Cloud computing allows us to aggregate demand across use cases, business processes, business capabilities, business units, time zones, and even companies. The Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, and Private Cloud options allow companies to achieve balance between their specific business and security requirements and their financial and environmental objectives.

__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)

Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 8: OpEx Management

Organizations have learned that acquisition and implementation costs are only a small part of their total cost of ownership (TCO). To reduce and contain OpEx, prudent organizations are seeking to reduce management costs. The Cloud Computing paradigm reduces the physical IT estate, integrates service management tools, and enhances service management effectiveness. These reduce service management efforts and costs, and contribute to reducing and containing OpEx.

Organizations can achieve further OpEx reduction and containment through the service-orientation and SLA-driven aspects of the Cloud Computing paradigm. Composing applications from discrete loosely-coupled services reduces development, enhancement, and maintenance costs. Automating the dynamic management of fluctuating workloads and changing priorities reduces service management demands on costly professional resources. Service orientation and service level delivery leverage automation, process improvement, resource sharing, virtualization, economy of scale to reduce and contain IT OpEx.

__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)

Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 7: CapEx Management

Cost reduction and containment are significant drivers behind Cloud computing adoption. IT departments are seeking ways to reduce new IT spending and to extract more value from their existing IT environments. Many find that they have IT assets that are significantly under-utilized. The federal government faced this problem and opportunity with its thousands of data centers and hundreds of thousands of servers around the world. The Federal CTO assessed the situation, “Now, when you think about these data centers, one of the most troubling aspects about the data centers is that in a lot of these cases, we’re finding that server utilization is actually around seven percent, that’s unacceptable when you think about all the resources that we’ve invested.” __ Vivek Kundra, ‘The Economic Gains of Cloud Computing’, An Address, The Brookings Institution, 2010-APR-07, ( http://www.brookings.edu/events/2010/0407_cloud_computing.aspx )

The Cloud Computing paradigm intentionally minimizes IT asset ownership to translate capital expenditures into operational expenditures resulting in reduced CapEx. The IT assets are shared; improving workload densities and resource utilizations. Virtualization further improves resource utilizations while containing capital expenditures. “When we think about information technology and the potential of cloud computing to lower the cost of government operations, drive innovation, and fundamentally change the way we deliver technology services across the board, we recognize that this is an amazing time in the very early days of cloud computing.” __ Vivek Kundra, ‘The Economic Gains of Cloud Computing’, An Address, The Brookings Institution, 2010-APR-07, ( http://www.brookings.edu/events/2010/0407_cloud_computing.aspx )

Organizations can leverage the multi-tenancy capabilities of the Cloud Computing paradigm to allow multiple business units to share infrastructure (IaaS), platforms (Paas), and applications and services (SaaS). They can also leverage Cloud computing’s virtualization capabilities to run multiple applications and/or services on a physical platform or run a large application across several physical platforms. Resource sharing and virtualization increase utilization and improve return on investment (ROI).

__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)

Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 6: Elastic Capacity

A highly elastic, scalable, and flexible IT environment is critical to organizations seeking to remain competitive or enhance their competitive position. The Cloud Computing paradigm provides elasticity to support changing workloads and business priorities. Applications, services, and infrastructure can be scaled up or down as needed. “Elasticity is a trait of shared pools of resources. … Elasticity is associated with not only scale but also an economic model that enables scaling in both directions in an automated fashion. This means that services scale on demand to add or remove resources as needed.” __Gartner, Press Release, 2009-JUN-23, ( http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1035013 )

Organizations can leverage the elastic capabilities of Cloud computing to serve varying workloads; from small departmental applications to large enterprise applications, and from routine transactions associated with daily operations to large transaction spikes from special promotions. Enterprises can also leverage the service-oriented capabilities of Cloud computing to evolve transaction processing as business requirements change, to improve resource utilization, and to manage costs as well as allocate costs by allow business units to pay only for capacity that is actually used.

The relevant question is how to begin transforming the IT estate so that applications and workloads can effectively and efficiently benefit from Cloud computing to better support the business. Organizations seeking to leverage their IT environments for competitive advantage are beginning to transform their data centers to enable and automate their ‘Core’ and ‘Differentiating’ business capabilities and processes cost effectively using the Cloud Computing paradigm.

__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)

Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 5: Time to Market

It is not surprising that Cloud computing has captured the attention of IT departments. Promising higher resource utilization and decreased demands on data center power, cooling, and footprint, Cloud computing is attractive to those seeking cost reduction and containment.

Facing greater market and competitive pressures, IT departments are also looking to Cloud computing to improve time-to-market for new and enhanced applications. Given the Cloud computing maturity level, Gartner recommends that organizations “…focus on opportunistic solutions — quick-hit, tactical opportunities where time to market and developer productivity outweigh long-term technical viability…” __Gartner, Press Release, 2009-FEB-02, ( http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=871113 )

However, IT-driven time-to-market initiatives are mostly tactical and often miss strategic business time-to-market opportunities. Such strategic opportunities extend well outside the IT department boundaries. Organizations can utilize the Cloud Computing paradigm to accelerate time-to-market for new products and services. When coupled with Business Intelligence capabilities, the Cloud allows companies to learn from and respond to customer needs, wants, inquiries, and complaints. Amazon has modeled the way, “Even more interesting are the experiments using cloud computing to accelerate learning from customers, speeding up both time-to-market and customer feedback. For instance, Amazon uses its own cloud-based Relational Database Service to much more quickly and cheaply manipulate the tremendous amount of data it generates from simulations of its 98 million active customers.” __Forbes, ‘Learning From The Cloud’, 2010-OCT-20, ( http://www.forbes.com/2010/10/20/microsoft-amazon-varian-technology-cloud.html )

Organizations can further enhance the time-to-market value proposition by coupling the Business Intelligence capabilities with enterprise sense-&-respond and social media capabilities. The organization achieves integrated market-awareness, marketing and sales, product and service development and delivery, and customer service with near-real-time responsiveness. “A dramatically higher level of experimentation and learning--and therefore talent development--is the real potential of cloud computing. Those who understand and harness these forces can develop a significant advantage relative to those who continue to view the cloud as just another form of low-cost IT outsourcing.” __Forbes, ‘Learning From The Cloud’, 2010-OCT-20, ( http://www.forbes.com/2010/10/20/microsoft-amazon-varian-technology-cloud.html )

__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood )

Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 4: Resource Leverage

People and organizations have formed alliances and partnerships with others for centuries. The strengths and advantages of each member in the value chain facilitate creating and delivering products and services to customers at competitive prices.

The Cloud Computing paradigm provides another platform for establishing alliances and partnerships and building value chains. Its service-orientation makes it flexible to changing demands and new opportunities. Membership within the value chain can change quickly to incorporate new members and leverage their strengths and advantages.

Organizations can use the Cloud computing paradigm to build and evolve value chains in which they focus on enabling and automating their ‘Core’ and ‘Differentiating’ business capabilities and processes. These organizations invite partners to participate in those functions where the partners bring strengths. The partner organizations deliver, what is for them, ‘Core’ and ‘Differentiating’.

This allows each organization to more sharply focus its professional and technical resources on creating and delivering products and services, serving customers, and generating revenue.

__ Joseph Starwood ( www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood )

Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 3: Business Focus

Most business and IT executives would rather invest in those business capabilities and processes that are essential to serving their customers and that differentiate them from the competition. They are focused on enabling and automating their ‘Core’ and ‘Differentiating’ business capabilities and processes.

The Cloud Computing paradigm allows organizations to focus their professional and technical resources on building and delivering functionality that provides business value. This minimizes investment in business capabilities and processes that are not ‘Core’ or ‘Differentiating’.

Whether in the form of a Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, or Private Cloud, organizations can leverage the service-orientation within the Cloud computing paradigm to focus IT investments on solving business problems and enabling business capabilities rather than technical details.

__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)

Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 2: Business-IT Alignment

Increasingly, business are insisting that the information technology (IT) function lead innovation of business practices and contribute to increased revenue generation. “If IT still thinks of itself as something that keeps the lights on, it is limiting its potential. Today, business wants IT to lead the way and show how to: Acquire more customers, enhance customer experience and keep employees happy.” __CIO.com, ‘2011 Non-tech Prediction: Business-IT Alignment’, 2011_JAN-19, (http://www.cio.in/article/2011-non-tech-prediction-business-it-alignment)

The Cloud computing paradigm can help organizations transform the role of the IT function and ensure that it meets these goals. Many organizations are using Cloud computing to deliver services to their customer in ways not previously practical. Additionally, the Cloud computing paradigm is enabling organizations to offer new services and improved pricing to their customers. General Electric (GE), for example, leveraged Cloud computing to greatly improve its global supply chain and e-procurement capabilities. __CIO.com, ‘GE CIO Gets His Head in the Cloud for New SaaS Supply Chain App’, 2009-JAN-22, (http://www.cio.com/article/477499/GE_CIO_Gets_His_Head_in_the_Cloud_for_New_SaaS_Supply_Chain_App)

__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)

Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 1: Introduction

Businesses, under increasing market and competitive pressures, are seeking new ways to improve business operations, enhance value propositions, meet variable demands, reduce costs, and manage risks. Cloud computing presents a viable option for many organizations.

Interest in Cloud computing has grown over the past few years. Today, it is the investment option most on the minds of these executives. “A report just published claims to show that cloud computing has shot up to the top of the agenda in most corporates, as the number one investment priority in the IT stakes for the year ahead.” __InfoSecurity.com (UK), ‘Cloud computing is top investment priority for 2011’,2011-JAN-27, (http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/15480/cloud-computing-is-top-investment-priority-for-2011/)

Cloud computing has captured the attention of Business and IT executives around the world; especially those in emerging market economies. “Don't be surprised if the growth rates of cloud computing in emerging economies far outstrips that in more developed nations.” __CIO.com, ‘Cloud Computing: 2011 Predictions’2010-DEC-09, (http://www.cio.com/article/645763/Cloud_Computing_2011_Predictions?page=2&taxonomyId=3112)

An Enterprise may obtain several benefits from the Cloud computing paradigm. These include:

• Business-IT Alignment
• Business Focus
• Resource Leverage
• Time-To-Market
• Elastic Capacity
• CapEx Management
• OpEx Management
• Green Initiatives

This is the first in a series of articles in which we will explore the benefits of Cloud Computing.

__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)

Executive Seminar – Enabling IT Value Through EA – Prof. Jeanne Ross

Executive Seminar – Enabling IT Value Through EA – Prof. Jeanne Ross

Location: Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Peter B. Lewis Building Room 201, 11119 Bellflower Road, Cleveland OH 44106
Date: 2011-02-18 / Time: 12 Noon
Price: Free
Spaces Available: Limited Space Remaining

Description
This premier half-day seminar is brought to Northeast Ohio collaboratively by the Case Western Reserve University Weatherhead School of Management, the Northeast Ohio IT and Enterprise Architects (NEO-ITEA), and the Northeast Ohio Chapter of the Society for Information Management (SIM). It provides an opportunity to engage with recognized experts and local IT executives to identify the roadblocks standing in the way of realizing the full value of IT investments. Discover how enterprise architecture can overcome roadblocks, enabling corporate strategies and turning IT from a liability to a strategic asset.

This event is essential for business and IT executives and leaders, enterprise and IT architects, and others with a stake in enabling IT value and driving business–IT alignment.

Registration is free and does not require NEO-ITEA membership.


About Prof. Jeanne Ross
Dr Jeanne W. Ross, Director and Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School’s Center for Information Systems Research is our keynote speaker. Dr Ross is a nationally recognized authority on leveraging Enterprise Architecture to enable business strategies and corporate operating models, and is the co-author of several widely read books: 1) Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution; 2) IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain; and, 3) IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results.

Special Features
In addition to Dr. Ross’ keynote, Case Western Reserve University will present their research on the impact of enterprise architecture on the performance of Federal Government Agencies, IBM will present on the impact of enterprise architecture on financial companies, and there will be a Panel discussion with Dr Ross, corporate IT executives and IBM speaker on opportunities and challenges in leveraging Enterprise Architecture to gain IT value.

Space is limited. Register now! http://www.neoitea.com/ea-seminar/

__ Joseph Starwood, NEO-ITEA Co-Founder & Past-Secretary (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)

Being an “Agile” Signatory

Recently, I posted a Status Update on LinkedIn announcing that I had become an “Agile” Signatory.
Those of you who follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter will know that being an “Agile” Signatory aligns with my overall attitude toward information technology. You may recall some recent posts: “Enterprise architecture is at the nexus of business and technology”; “IT Architects are business professionals who apply architectural skills; just as other business professionals apply their skills”; and, “Architectural Organic Unity: containing all required & nothing unnecessary, all relationships & integrations being essential & inevitable.”
I received an excellent reply from Steve Braver, “This would appear to conflict with your previous update on PM Best Practices, unless your position is that SDLC and Agile can both be valid approaches depending on the nature of the organization and project. That's what I believe.” __ Steve Braver, LinkedIn reply, 2010-APR-29
His thoughtful reply is the inspiration for this posting.
Actually, there is no conflict at all. Project Management methods and Solution Development Lifecycle (SDLC) methods are just that -- methods. Agile is, among other things, an approach to how to best tailor and apply a method – it is a mind-frame.
As I've read "The Enterprise Unified Process: Extending the Rational Unified Process" and "A Practical Guide to Enterprise Architecture", I've come to realize that I applied an Agile approach even when I worked with DoD standards. Many people think that DoD standards imply a boxcar load of documentation and process. However, that is not true. I was taught to tailor the DoD standards to just what was needed for the project. I've always taken a business-oriented suitably-tailored approach regardless of the method at hand: DoD, NASA, FIPS, Hoskyns, Method-1, GS-Method, and RUP.
RUP, which is extended to the EUP and AUP, can be performed "Agile" or not. In fact, I recently (a few years back) worked with a client that over-engineered RUP with process and documentation. It became quite unwieldy as well as entirely unnecessary. I observed that the tendency to over-engineer process and documentation was linked to a profound lack of understanding of a subject -- in this case, RUP.
I’ll continue to read these two books until I complete them. I am sure I’ll learn much more, However, at this point from reading and experience, I see no conflict between having methods and being Agile.
__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)

Rattlesnakes Sunning

Spring’s warming sun is here. Warming in the sun is the inspiration for this posting.
I began my professional life as a Minerals Exploration Geologist & Geophysicist. I prospected for copper, molybdenum, silver, and gold from central Texas to northern California.
One brief project in Southeastern Arizona was led by a Geologist who had recently received his Masters degree. With the exception of academic field work, this new Geologist had never lived and worked in the wilderness.
On our first full day at the prospect location, we took geochemical samples together from early morning through mid-afternoon. Our work plan began at our base camp, extended out in a loop covering several abandoned mine sites, and returned to our starting point.
Sampling a very large mine site at far end of the prospect area required more work and time than planned. As we worked, I noticed the sun getting lower in the sky, and shadows extending on the east-facing hillsides.
Rattlesnakes would soon move onto the rocks in those growing shadows to warm themselves. Hiking back to our base camp would be very dangerous once the sun was behind the hillcrest.
I advised my colleague about the danger, and the need to work our way back to the base camp. We had sampled only half of the mine site, and he wanted to complete the work.
After further urging, he finally agreed to leave this mine site; provided that we take some quick samples at the remaining mine sites on the way back. As we peered into the next mine site, a horizontal tunnel into the rock face, we spotted a large rattlesnake moving toward the entrance.
This new Geologist asked, “Is that what I think it is?” I replied, “Yes. It’s a big one; the second biggest I’ve seen yet. It’s moving to the warm rocks.” Seeing this, he decided to return immediately to our base camp. We completed our geochemical sampling the next day.
So what does this have to do with information technology? Much! Experienced professionals know many things that less experienced professionals do not, as well as many things that are not taught in school or written in books.
Tom Bilcze, my colleague in our IT Department, shared this reply in response to one of my postings:
“I think a general perception in IT is that architecture immediately implies complexity and more cost. … I guess the success of architectural simplicity is to actually see it being used as a natural work process and not being deemed as an overhead and unnecessary evil.”
__ Tom Bilcze, 2010-APR-20, Reply to Status Update on LinkedIn
Enterprise Architects and IT Architects face constant challenges from other IT professionals regarding architecture’s apparent complexity and cost as well as its purpose and value. Unfortunately, these IT professionals are not experienced in Enterprise Architecture and IT Architecture.
These IT professionals most often encounter Enterprise Architecture and IT Architecture through the Target Architectures (a.k.a. Project Start Architectures) provisioned to their projects. Because the Target Architectures address requirements and constraints in the context of the broader Enterprise Architecture, it appears to the project team as being more complex and costly as compared to developing the project in a silo.
However, businesses can no longer afford to develop IT solutions in silos. Business agility depends upon flexible and resilient IT components including services, applications, and COTS packages as well as their integration.
A well-crafted Target Architecture meets the requirements and constraints allocated to the project, and it conforms to the assigned milestone in the Enterprise Architecture Roadmap. It possesses “Architectural Organic Unity” (See: Prior posting).
Such a Target Architecture provides the flexibility required to realize business agility, advances the Enterprise Architecture according to the Roadmap, and establishes the foundation for IT project success.
__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)

Organic Unity in Information Technology Architecture

Organic Unity in Information Technology Architecture is this: containing all that is required and nothing that is unnecessary or distracting, with all relationships and integrations being essential and inevitable; no element can be added or removed, no part can be changed in character or placement, and no integration can be changed in association or contract without degrading or destroying the whole.
__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)