Canadian IT Architecture Blog

The Return on Experience…

It always interested me a lot to see how the different personas of one person get to cross and mix. For Microsoft customers, I am a Software Architect. For my friends I am a gamer. Inside Microsoft, I am an Information Worker. All my personas have an impact on my decision when I build architectures… I always think of my mother using the system, or try to remember myself as the dumb user…

Recently I received a new phone as a gift from Bell. I took the Palm Treo Pro. As always when I receive a new phone, I think "ok, how long and how many effort will it take before I actually do my mail on this phone…". What will be my Information Worker experience?

I must admit that this time, I was really pleased with it! Together the Palm Treo Pro and Windows Mobile 6.1 made it completely transparent. I received the phone, called the Bell number on the box, 5 minutes latter my phone was working. I went in Outlook mobile, enter my OWA address, it asked for my company policies, I clicked yes, and 5 minutes latter my mails, calendar and contacts were synchronized. What an easy experience!

I have been using the phone for 2 weeks now, I downloaded some applications, I must say that for a user experience stand point it is the best I ever got with a phone so far. I think sometime we forget that end user wants what I like to call "Return on Experience" and that is quite different from the typical operational "Return on Investment" we IT peoples normally think… I really must remember this simplicity when I design systems! J

The value of an application is determined by the optimization of the RoE and RoI factors together!

Continued: An IT Architect's experience with a new device: the Palm Treo

I wanted to add my own perspective to the post my colleague Joel posted earlier about his new mobile device. For myself, I've been desperately needing a new mobile device for about the last year or so; previously I had a device that will go un-named but had an unfortunate tendency to disconnect out of the blue on me...

Joel and I are fortunate to have recently been able to try the Palm Treo – this device has a number of features I’m very happy with: 1) I really like the experience of getting it up and running; I was able to take it out of its packaging and within 10 minutes I was up and running with the phone. 2) The layout of the keyboard and overall functionality of the phone has been a pleasure to work with – it’s format is very comfortable and I’ve found that I’ve been very effective using it without almost any learning curve. 3) Reliability – so I have to admit that I’m a little bit paranoid as I’ve had reliability issues with my phone over the past year; it’s funny but in my opinion our ability to communicate reliably has become a bit like breathing in our economy; so I have to tell you that the phone (so far) has been so rock solid that I’ve become comfortable once again with using it as my sole mobile communications tool.

As Joel mentions, experience is key – I’m lucky that I’ve been able to try a variety of tools to see how I can be productive – so far the Palm Treo has  been a great tool for helping me be constantly connected, responsive, and reliably productive when I need to be.

Cloud Computing – quelques ressources…

On parle beaucoup de cloud computing et maintenant de plus en plus de ressources sont disponible sur le sujet. Ce que je trouve fascinant c'est de voir que la majorité des gens de l'industrie semble être assez en accord. Je voulais partager avec vous quelques petites perles.

Microsoft à JavaOne

Microsoft à présenté (en plénière!) à la conférence JavaOne sur l'importance des standards et de l'interopérabilité dans ce nouveau paradigme. Nous avons annoncé entre autre la mise sur pied d'un comité de standard pour le cloud.

• http://blogs.msdn.com/stevemar/archive/2009/06/04/microsoft-keynoting-at-javaone.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/stevemar/archive/2009/04/28/walking-the-walk-the-cloud-and-standards.aspx

Deux saveur de cloud? Public et privé?

J'ai beaucoup aimé cet article pour sa mise en perspective de la relation presque symbiotique entre le cloud et nos centre de traitement en entreprise. http://blogs.msdn.com/stevemar/archive/2009/04/29/two-flavors-of-cloud-computing-public-and-private.aspx

Cloud et IDC

Enfin – pour aujourd'hui – je veux aussi porter à votre attention cet article qui résume bien une conférence qu'IDC à donnée dernièrement sur le sujet. http://blogs.msdn.com/petervdz/archive/2009/06/03/cloud-computing-session-at-idc-conference.aspx

À bientôt!

The Ignite Your Career Architect Webcast Series is Complete!

British Columbia Architect Forum

Hal Bradwell, Senior Consultant For close to 10 years Hal has provided management and strategy leadership to some of the largest and most profitable organisations in the U.S., Canada and Australia. With strong functional experience in finance and operations and working with energy and natural resource clients, Hal has led and delivered strategic initiatives relating to: capital planning and cost benefit analysis  performance planning and management process rationalisation and innovation workflow design and trading partner integration Hal leads the Energy & Natural Resources practice for Western Canada.

You will need to register for this event as we have limited space. The invite is below.

Please join Microsoft, Avantage and your peers at the British Columbia Architect Forum. This unique forum has been specifically designed as a chalk talk to provide an opportunity for top Architects and technical decision makers to discuss the realities of aligning IT investment with the constantly changing demands of your business.

• Have you struggled with investment prioritization?
• Why is it so hard to create a business case for IT projects?
• Do you struggle aligning your IT efforts to the business strategy?
• How do you communicate with Executives and obtain their sponsorship?

Using interesting new approaches combined with time-tested financial measures we will present two ideas to facilitate the process.

We will talk about tools used to support the decision making process; and introduce the concepts behind a ‘Connected Business Assessment’ as a means to supplement business case development, justify investment in IT architecture and create alignment with corporate strategy. Using a case study to ground the conversation, the agenda is designed to facilitate interaction and ideas. 

Next we will demonstrate the power of a ‘Business Capability Model’ to create a view of your business that is not only stable, but allows you to pivot on dimensions such as strategic impact, IT maturity, application coverage, and performance. You will identify with a how a heat map emerges to facilitate the planning process and provide a common language based on what your business does, not how it performs those functions.
Come prepared to discuss, listen and learn from Microsoft, Avantage and your peers.
Please forward this invitation to others in your organization who could benefit from the forum.

In this session we will:

• Introduce the concept of Business Architecture and a Business Capability Map
• Discuss how to leverage a Business Capability Map to prioritize, align and identify opportunity for investment
• Walk though concepts and frameworks to help sell the value to the organization
• Discuss limitations and constraints of the various financial models

I hope you'll join us on Friday, June 19, for this exciting event. Register today to ensure your space.

Sincerely,

Craig Gibson
Architect Advisor
(403)831-0773
craiggib@microsoft.com

Architecting Flexibility – Wrap-up and Content

We just completed our six city tour across Canada, Architecting Flexibility. The afternoon event was part of Energize IT, so if you attended any of those sessions, there is a good warp-up post on the IT Pro blog. Thank-you to all who attended! We hope you enjoyed the content and conversation as much as we did. Typically, at this time of year, our team hosts the Canadian Strategic Architect Forum. But, as many of you are aware, we postponed that event until later in the calendar year to accommodate travel freezes, etc. The CSAF is our premier Architect-focused event in Canada and we felt that waiting almost 18-20 months between events was going to be too long – thus the genesis for Architecting Flexibility.

We decided to approach it like a mini-CSAF, attempting to cover topics such as the Architectural discipline, innovation, implications and facilitate peer interaction. Along the way, we had many requests for the content, so this post is all about delivering on that request. However, it’s worth giving you a behind the scenes look at how the content evolved from city to city.

The following are links to the content for:

• Montreal, March 18, 2009
• Calgary, April 1, 2009
• Mississauga, April 1, 2009
• Vancouver, April 8, 2009
• Ottawa, April 8, 2009
• Edmonton April 29, 2009

As the title suggests, our approach was Flexibility, so we structured the talks like this:

1. The Plus in “Software Plus Services”: we presented the catalysts driving demand for cloud computing and introduced you to Microsoft’s vision of Software + Services
2. Flexibility of Delivery: instead of thinking about ‘solution delivery’, we introduced the notion of ‘service delivery’ and discussed tradeoffs and options between on-premise data centers, partner hosted and a cloud platform.
3. Choice of User Experience: it’s all about the end user! We presented a framework and options for thinking about how to architect the right delivery channels for your application.

While we tweaked minor things as we went through the process, there were two key changes we did in response to your feedback. The first piece of feedback was centered on the ‘Choice of User Experience’ presentation – this topic can be challenging for most of us as we tend to spend our time in the technical details. However, if you compare the slide decks from Calgary and Vancouver, you will see a substantial adjustment in approach. You challenged us to present the content in terms of patterns and case studies instead of iterating through the technical options.

In response, we created a grid of options, similar to delivery flexibility, and presented them by iterating through a set of solutions and discussing the “why’s” involved in each decision.

The second piece of feedback we heard was directed at the level of technical and business depth to the content. When we built the original set of slides, we were very careful to target the content at the audience we suggested attend. For the most part, our content was at the level you were expecting, but based on the questions we got and the evaluation results, two parts of the presentation were identified in the ‘Flexibility of Delivery’ talk.

We had many requests for additional technical detail around security and integration. When discussing cloud computing, these questions are always number 1 and 2. We decided to include content about claims-based authorization and the service bus patterns that are leveraged inside Azure’s .NET Access Control service and the Internet Service Bus.

The next piece of feedback related to the content level didn’t actually have anything to do with technical depth. Architects tend to live in space that exists between the business and IT - facilitating interaction, among other things – and that requires us to have a depth around the business opportunity as well. We got many questions that could be categorized as “(What) should I move to the cloud?” So we worked with our corporate Architecture team, consolidated research notes and presented a framework by adding an additional dozen slides on the economics, risk evaluations, application style and modality, as well as target cloud functionality. We wrapped this section by presenting a fictitious organization and a walkthrough of their application portfolio and how they made the decision.

Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank our list of panelists who assisted us conclude each event with a peer group conversation. The questions from the audience were always fascinating and the opinions were varied!

• Jason McIntyre, Senior Consultant, Habanero Consulting Group
• Darren Jeffery, Manager, Architecture, Web Services and Principle Architect, FortisAlberta
• Rob Burton, Manager - IT Architecture, WestJet
• Tom Opgenorth, Independent IT consultant specializing in application development with .NET
• Dave Woods, Owner of Solidhouse Inc., A .NET Consulting Firm
• Barry Gervin, Principal Consultant and Architect, ObjectSharp
• Bill Baldasti, Vice President, Infusion Development
• Guy Barrette, Solutions Architect, Microsoft Regional Director for the Montreal region
• Mario Cardinal, Senior consultant specialized in enterprise application architecture, MVP in the competency of Software Architect.
• Daniel Nerenberg, Independent IT strategy consultant based in Montreal
• Jean-René Roy, champion behind DevTeach
• Shaun Walker, Co-Founder & Chief Architect, DotNetNuke Corporation
• Kent Alstad, Chief Technology Officer, Strangeloop Networks
• Rob Church, Director Enterprise Architecture & Integration, Inventure Solutions – a subsidiary of Vancity

We hope you enjoyed the event and as always, continue to leave us feedback in the comments.

Craig Gibson
Architect Advisor, Developer and Platform Evangelism Group, Microsoft Canada

The Ignite Your Career IT Architect Webcast Series is almost here!

The IT Architect team here in the Canadian Developer & Platform Group are getting really excited... and this webcast series is why!

Starting on the 5th of May we're going to be joined by IT Architects from around the country to talk about career issues in challenging times. We're going to discuss industry trends and insights, skills development, entrepreneurship and organizational competitive advantage through careful use of IT - all in the context of furthering our careers as IT Architects.

The webcasts will be one hour long starting at 12 noon Eastern and will consist of a panel discussion with our invited guests. Every week we will tackle a new topic with a goal of taking as many questions as we can get from you the audience. This is your opportunity to learn about best practices and ways of honing our careers from individuals around Canada who have excelled in the IT industry. Be sure to visit the Ignite Your Career MSDN website to register for each of the sessions that interest you.

I'm looking forward to all of your participation, and all of your great questions to put to our panel!

Dave Remmer, Architect Advisor, DPE Canada

A Pragmatic Approach to Capability Modeling

The discipline of architecture is supported by many frameworks, certifications, tools and guidance to help shape and consolidate our thinking. As a result, we often encounter conflicting approaches and methods: strategic planning, portfolio prioritization, enterprise architecture, business architecture, etc. Sharing experiences goes a long way to rationalize – in fact, if you haven’t had a chance, I suggest checking out Architecture Center as an online resource for further discussion.

On that note, I had the opportunity to discuss a recent project executed in Calgary by Jason McIntyre where he leveraged an interesting technique called Capability Modeling. I first encountered this technique a few years ago attending a talk by Microsoft’s Ric Merrifield. Since then, Ric and colleagues have evolved their approach and recently published an article in the Harvard Business Review.

This post, presented in question (Craig) and answer (Jason) form, will introduce you Capability Modeling (pdf) in a real project scenario and discuss the advantages, outputs and learning that took place. Jason works for Habanero Consulting Group in Calgary providing services to help companies build out and leverage capability modeling.

We also recorded a video interview to supplement this posting at the end of the article.

Let’s start with your project. Provide us an overview of what was going on with the organization and the type of problem they were attempting to address.

The business approached IT and asked “what systems will we need to support our 5-8 year vision?”

What became clear very quickly was how loaded a question this was for IT. It presumed that IT had the ability to take a business vision and translate it into a set of functional technology systems. In my experience IT is getting better at translating specific requirements into productive solutions but IT has a fair way to go in translating a business vision into a realistic and pragmatic future state architecture.

The greatest challenge was identifying the information package needed for a credible and justifiable response. As we began building the answer, the deficiencies in IT’s understanding of the current business model began to emerge very clearly.

How did you get involved in the project and what did you notice?

I engaged in the project after the original project team had completed about 3-4 months of work. It was apparent in my first meeting that the team was ‘stuck’ and progress to date was limited. I brought forward the idea of ‘capabilities’ and doing the modeling before that first meeting was over.

In my mind, the context for change was simple. Most of the work to date had focused on mapping out existing business processes. I saw fundamental flaws in the ‘process’ approach as not only was it going to take too long, but also by the time it was complete many of the processes would have changed.

The team was skeptical but that quickly changed to enthusiasm after we ‘whiteboarded’ how understanding capabilities would lead us down the path to an answer fairly quickly.

What exactly did you Whiteboard? What led you to this new approach?

We needed a way to communicate seamlessly with both the business and IT leadership. I am a big believer in visual communication. Given the areas we needed to reach into were complex, it compounded the challenge of bridging the gap between business and IT. I knew that if we couldn’t easily communicate the rationale behind our answer we would lose the business audience. Perhaps foolishly, I believed that we could communicate our answer and its rationale with one image. I was hopeful that this tool would allow both the IT and business people to easily understand the overall conclusions and rationale without too much added explanation.

So you introduced the notion of Capability Modeling?

In its simplest form, a Capability Model is a visual representation of what a business does. The model shows the finite pieces of work that are done to allow the business to be successful. These pieces of work are nested and hierarchical, showing the relationship between operational tasks, management activities, organizational responsibilities and leadership directions.

In my situation, a subset example of a nested set of high level capabilities for Training & Development would look something like this:

Capability modeling focuses on understanding the static and pervasive building blocks of a company. Unless an organization gets rid of its Training & Development group, a capability such as “Deliver Training” will remain constant through all forms of organizational and process change. In contrast, how training is delivered and the finite set of requirements associated with it could change dramatically.

This pervasiveness and the static nature of capabilities provides the real value in capability modeling; it simplifies the complexity of an organization down to a level that is easily understood and rarely changes; it shows the discrete building blocks of the organization where value is generated or supported; it allows an organization to understand the productivity of its building blocks to discern opportunities for differentiation; and, it provides a relatively stable view of an organization that maintains most of its integrity through change.

Why did you feel this approach would help address the problem?

The “one visual image” was a powerful communication tool not only to show what future systems were needed but also gaps in existing systems coverage, the redundancy in existing systems, the opportunity for process consolidation, the potential for global approaches to architecture versus regional specialization, the problems associated with information flow and consumption and the list goes on and on.

In my experience IT has a terrible habit of trying to talk to the business about technology. Capability modeling allows IT to talk to the business about the business; no more “lost in translation”.

How did you construct the Capability Model?

It was built on the fly. The situation was a bit unique in that IT didn’t really have a handle on what the business did. No one in IT could capably describe how the business generated value nor what and where the building blocks of that value existed. We built a plan that addressed not only the project scope but also the need to keep existing initiatives moving forward (if they made sense given the emerging architecture) and maintaining service delivery for the existing applications and operations.

Much of my confidence in the approach came from two occurrences. The first was when I originally saw a short video clip on Microsoft’s Channel 9 of an interview with Ric Merrifield. He laid out the premise of capability modeling (at the time called “Motion”) and I saw situations where it could be applied simply. I later took advantage of a trip to Seattle to spend a morning with Ric and he was generous of his time and experience to answer all of my questions.

Capability modeling became a key pillar in the whole initiative but was just one of many activities undertaken to get to an answer.

What artifacts did you create during this project?

We produced a number of key artifacts. Most importantly we produced that “one visual image” that I talked about before. I think everyone involved had a really hard time visualizing what it would be until I put it up on the wall one Monday morning. In addition, we produced a full capability model across multiple companies, future state systems architecture, a business architecture document, an information architecture foundational model and a business executive presentation.

Given you came into the project late, how did your team respond to the new direction?

The challenge was changing the team dynamic. My sense of the existing team was that many members were lacking the experience it would take to do this. I believed I needed more than a typical business analyst skill set; I was looking for business consulting skills to facilitate the business in describing their capabilities.

When you talk to most business people about what they do, they talk in terms of process. I needed someone with enough business experience to be able to listen through the process and the unique language each person has to hear what it was that people actually do. I also needed architecture skills on the team, preferably people with lots of years of experience who could step outside of the typical architectural frameworks and think with simplicity.

As the capability modeling took hold, there was a genuine increase in the interest level and excitement about the answer we were drafting and the means we were using to get there. In fact, I think our “one visual image” became the most talked about IT initiative of the year!

Did you accomplish your objectives? Did you ultimately address the problem?

We encountered problems during execution, primarily chalked up to the lack of experience in the team around doing higher level consulting work. One big area of challenge that I will look at closely next time is the variance in people’s interpretation of what a capability is and isn’t as it creates some headaches if isn’t addressed at the beginning. One other gap that wasn’t (and isn’t) readily overcome is helping traditional IT employees actually understand business concepts. It is one thing to model a capability and another one completely to understand the context, meaning and implication of that capability.

Overall though, using capability modeling in this circumstance was the right approach. We had a powerful and fully transparent conversation with the senior business leadership team. They used our key visual artifact as the main talking point and were bringing forward their own interpretations of what it meant before and long after we presented them with our recommendations from it.

Supplementary Material

Online Resources: The Next Revolution in Productivity [Harvard Business Review] Microsoft Motion Overview Presentation PDF Note: Motion was the name given to the methodology before it changed to Microsoft Business Architecture Ric Merrifield - Microsoft gets down to business with Motion initiative [Channel 9] Jason McIntyre Habañero Consulting Group Calgary, Alberta

Silverlight & SAP Announcement

    +      =  

The Mix 09 conference in Las Vegas was a complete announcement-fest! Tools and technologies such as the IE8 release, Silverlight Beta 3, Sketchflow, & Superpreview kept the keynotes singing through the 3 day event. You can read up all the announcements and keynotes on the Canadian UX Connection.

One of the quieter announcements was the Silverlight-SAP partnership. This has the opportunity to profoundly impact Enterprise customers running SAP’s ERP software by improving the user experience through a rich set of controls and giving the developer access to the enhanced data binding and charting available in Silverlight. Coupled with the out-of-browser scenarios, you have an amazing opportunity to serve the casual or sometimes-connected user community that has typically struggled with large (training-required) desktop user interfaces. Specifically, SAP has announced that their development environment and core user experience technology, Web Dynpro, will use leverage Silverlight to deliver an enhanced user experience.

An expert from the announcement available on PressPass:

“SAP already provides a large number of controls to its developers through Web Dynpro. However, we wanted to provide our customers with additional options to customize their controls, repurpose existing .NET code, or integrate advanced graphics capabilities in their custom applications. Therefore we will open our powerful Web Dynpro UI to Silverlight. With this relationship, we aim to help SAP customers provide a certain level of richness to their graphical elements, and will additionally provide them with an easy two-way binding between a Web Dynpro server application and Silverlight client components while minimizing development costs.”

Andreas Wesselmann
Senior Vice President, Technology Department
SAP

Microsoft-SAP Partnership

This is part of an ongoing relationship with SAP and I recommended viewing the website dedicated to the topic.  I have highlighted a few of the key resources below:

Duet is the result of a groundbreaking collaboration between SAP and Microsoft. It is the first joint product created by these two industry leaders and is designed to revolutionize how Information Workers interact with enterprise applications. Duet software brings together the worlds of business productivity applications (Microsoft Office) and enterprise applications so that every Information Worker can become an Enterprise Information Worker. For more information, see the Duet site on Microsoft.com or Duet for Microsoft Office and SAP Tech Center.

SharePoint Products and Technologies provide enterprise-scale capabilities to meet business-critical needs like managing content and business processes, simplifying how people find and share information across boundaries, and enabling better informed decisions. For more information, see the SharePoint site on Microsoft.com.

Visit the Sharepoint and SAP Interoperability site to learn more.

Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) provides easy-to-use, certified access to SAP data to help you make better, more informed decisions. With Microsoft BI, you can use the familiar tools in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system environment to create, analyze, and share your own reports and BI dashboards. For more information, see the Microsoft BI and SAP site on Microsoft.com.
Visit the Business Intelligence Interoperability site to learn more.

Architecting Cloud Applications for the Enterprise

I wanted to provide pointers and credit to the detail behind the ‘Architectural Impact’ portion of the cloud computing presentation that I have used recently in Vancouver, Calgary and Regina.

Eugenio Pace, who works on the Microsoft Architecture Strategy team, has been building out the scenarios I leveraged to discuss the impacts of Enterprise cloud computing. The conversation is based around two fictions entities, “Super Cloudy Software” and “Very Big Corp”, as a piece of Web 2.0 software built by the former is adopted by the latter.

It is important to stress that this is a set of conversation topics – not a set of answers! Eugenio has gone so far as to construct working code as reference examples, but there will continue to be many ways to solve these complex challenges. Take security as an example, interoperability is a fundamental pillar for success.

I urge you to read his series of postings:

Architecting Cloud Applications for the Enterprise - Part I - Introducing the Actors

Architecting Cloud Applications for the Enterprise - Part II - VeryBigCorp buys IssueTracker

Architecting Cloud Applications for the Enterprise - Part III - SuperCloudySoftware meets VeryBigCorp CIO

Webcast

You can also watch his presentation Services Symposium: Enterprise Grade Cloud Applications that was done at PDC 2008 hosted on Channel 9.

[BC Architect Forum] A Cloud Computing Perspective

Thanks for those that attended the BC Architect Forum last week. I enjoyed the conversation, it was an interesting discussion!

I have uploaded the slides to Skydrive that we used as the foundation for our forum.

Look forward to seeing you at the next one!
Craig

Get Ready to Be Energized!

Being an IT Architect is arguably one of the most interesting, strategic, and fun careers you can have in our industry - but it does come at a price. We're tasked with marrying technology with business strategy, and the only way we can be effective at it is to constantly seek out new technologies, best practices and methods of process improvement and introduce those that make sense into our organizations. Constantly learning, discussing, and pushing the technology envelope is a necessity for those of us in this role!

That's why Microsoft Canada's EnergizeIT 2009 is so important to me, and why some of the changes we've made to the event this year I think will enhance what IT professionals will get out of it. This year we've made two specific changes to the event I want to highlight in particular: 1) we've created a whole series of events as part of the program (not just a one day session); and 2) we're taking the event on a cross country tour to a number of cities around Canada. Elements of EnergizeIT this year will be targeted at a variety of roles within IT: students, developers, infrastructure managers & professionals, entrepreneurs and more. Of course I can't leave out architects and senior technical decision makers - the role that's so near and dear to my heart.

EnergizeIT this year is concentrating on highlighting what's possible: how to leverage the Microsoft Platform to create value, operational excellence, agility and in the end competitive advantage. We'll have content on how to reduce capital costs while increasing scalability through Microsoft’s approach of bringing together the best aspects of Software and the best aspects of the Internet - Software+Services. We'll present Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 emphasising how it can provide a richer platform for developers and those operating your environment. There will be insights on how new virtualization options allow you to solve key application compatibility issues. Finally, we'll be providing plenty of opportunities to interact with your peers, local experts, and Microsoft Canada advisors to share your challenges and learn from their experience.

If you haven't already signed up for MSDN Flash and / or TechNet Flash then make sure you do - over the coming weeks we'll be including lots of details on the event as well as registration and calendar details. I'm looking forward to seeing you at EnergizeIT where we can all learn what's possible!

British Columbia Architect Community Forum

We will be holding the next British Columbia Architect Community Forum Friday February 20th at the Microsoft offices downtown Vancouver.

Joining the round table will be Ryan Storgaard – Microsoft Canada’s Chief Software + Services Officer – as we focus our discussion on Cloud Computing. We hope to introduce you to Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform and facilitate a discussion on the opportunities and implications for the enterprise. 

If you want to join us, please drop me a line! Look forward to seeing you there – bring your questions!

Craig

Those interested in a technical understanding of the platform should read David Chappell’s white paper: Introducing the Azure Services Platform.

Death by a Thousand Cuts?

Roger Sessions just posted a new article the titled “Obama's Information Technology Priority”, published as an editorial in the International Association of Software Architects (January 2009). The abstract for the article from his blog:

Federal IT projects fail at an alarming rate. The total cost to the U.S. economy? According to Roger Sessions, at least $200 billion per year. This editorial by Sessions is reprinted from the Perspectives of the International Association of Software Architects (January 2009). It is an in-depth analysis of why so many Federal IT systems are in trouble and what steps the Obama administration needs to take to control this epidemic.

The author presents some interesting facts and figures about the nature of US Government IT spend highlighting flat project volume over 3 years, yet an increasing rate of failure. Further to that, it argues the case for a single failure reason, Complexity, and outlines a solution aligned with his research. I enjoyed Roger’s latest book and even had the opportunity to have a beer with him last week in Seattle.

While I want to discuss his primary assertion, there was something that struck me in his preamble. One of the efforts aimed at improvement is a universal Earned Value accounting practice. I have to admit, I was a bit surprised that all projects have this rigor. Earned Value is definitely an important measure, some would argue it necessity, but does its value diminish on projects whose budget and scope aren’t fixed? Can you even calculate earned value in a variable scope effort? Can you apply an Agile measure such as velocity in its place? I submit ‘applicability’ in addition to Roger’s list of 3 reasons why EV misses the mark.

However, the assumption of Roger’s editorial is that complexity is the single ‘Factor X’ behind the increasing rate of failure. His assumption certainly has merits – years of research and the promise of mathematical solution verification – are definitely appealing. I would agree that Complexity is a common factor, but I’m not sure it is the factor. I would contradict the notion that projects fail for one and only one reason. Addressing complexity will definitely help, but is it the antidote?

If you think about your projects – the successful ones – the failures… can you categorize, sort and order them? Do any single success / failure characteristics stand out to you? Me neither! Each has it’s own unique reason for going sideways. Let me be clear, I am in no position to contradict Roger’s theory for the solution to complexity, but i would argue that if we address each assuming that complexity is the problem, we may be in trouble. In the absence of research and mathematical formulae, let me suggest a few items to spur thinking:

1. Resourcing. People can make or break a project. Have you ever had a really risky venture and the first thing that popped into your mind was “I need the ‘A –Team’ to deliver on this.” Those so called top notch delivery folks get their reputation for lack of failure; providing unwavering success in the face of huge obstacles. Why is that? Do they understand complexity better than the rest of us? Do they know when to walk away or how to predict outcomes? Perhaps have some crystal ball or all knowing inside source? Whether you call it experience or call it art, people have a huge impact.
2. Politics. Yes, I know it sounds ironic given the focus of the editorial but it represents a huge challenge to success. In a counter point to the notion of the ‘A-team’, it is entirely possible for projects to be sacrificial lambs (I have this experience myself). Where someone with more authority is plotting your demise. Career growth, promotions, political capital, and spite can surface and play a role.
3. Technology. The role of the bits is often understated. Organizations are adverse to new technology – “it will introduce to much risk”, “I don’t understand the benefit” or “the benefit upside isn’t worth the failure downside”. Is this just another horn on Complexity? Perhaps, but I suspect that, looking back, we can recall a project where the technology caused much more grief than anticipated.

Each project is unique; projects tend to be personified and acquire an identity. The moment we begin, a character takes shape and we scientifically and artfully make choices that affect how we it will be remembered in history (including how complex it may become). Finally, and perhaps more as rhetoric, is the cost of failure. Would the same failure rate exist if the consequences of failure where higher?

So, where does IT Architecture fit in facilitating success? Arguably, addressing complexity tends to be one of the core-tenants and depending on your discipline, a different viewpoint emerges. For example, Business Architects tend to look at project portfolios and describe (model?) their relationship to business outcomes and objectives, while Technical Architects will lean on standards and patterns (or anti-patterns) for influence. What about the mythical Enterprise Architect? Perhaps holding the others in check and balance? Architects apply constraints such as standards, processes and frameworks that facilitate success. Complexity-solving is a great tool and one such constraint, but I have to believe it sits alongside many others.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you are addressing the issue through Architecture.

Tutorial on Enterprise Architecture and Development (Calgary)

Phil Unger, from the Calgary Enterprise Architecture Forum, is organizing a one-day course focused on developing the skills Architects require in their day to day work. The course will run March 4th, 2009 in Calgary. If you are interested, please contact Phil or Craig for the abstract and registration details.

This course provides students with a theoretical and practical understanding of the subject
areas related to enterprise architecture plus technical and business opportunities and
industry trends.

The course, delivered by Jamshid A. Vayghan Ph. D, will cover topics in Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture frameworks, Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture and the unique aspects of enterprise architecture and development.

Taken directly from the abstract, the following are the key benefits to Architects:

1. What is enterprise architecture and its importance in the current business
   environment? We will discuss barriers, opportunities, risks for implementation of
   an enterprise architecture program and ways to overcome them. We will also
   discuss how to identify the scope of an enterprise architecture to make sure it
   aligns with business strategy plus ways to identify business values from an
   enterprise architecture program.
2. How to recognize the need for enterprise architecture in an exiting organization
   and ways to create a proposal for an enterprise architecture initiative.
3. You will learn an implementation methodology that you can use to initiate an
   enterprise architecture program.
4. You will learn Service Oriented Architecture and how to use it to design and
   implement enterprise applications.
5. You will learn three enterprise architecture frameworks and how and when to use
   them: Zachman Enterprise Architecture Framework, The Open Group
   Architecture Framework (TOGAF), Enterprise Architecture Cube methodology
6. You will learn why governance and standards are as important to development of
   enterprise application and architecture as technical architecture is.
7. You will hear from an industry professional with practical experience in initiating
   and developing an enterprise architecture program.
8. How to extend what you learned in the software engineering, software
   architecture, and project management courses to the enterprise application
   development and architecture domains.