Many of my customers refer to SharePoint as their “business operating system”. This ideal is re-enforced by the platform enhancements in SharePoint 2010. There is a business opportunity to leverage SharePoint 2010 as a development platform. A recently published David Chappell article, The SharePoint 2010 Developer Platform: An Introduction for ASP.NET Solution Architects does a nice job of highlighting the new features that application development teams need to consider when thinking about such a platform. There is also a discussion on his blog.
However, this has the potential to create another set of challenges!
| SharePoint or ASP.NET? | SharePoint vs. ASP.NET? | SharePoint and ASP.NET? |
I have mentioned previously that I get this question a lot. I always respond the same way: there is no whitepaper to download because well, it isn’t really a science (it’s an art!). Well, thanks to Mr. Chappell I can now point people to a good primer on the subject, but as Architects we need to examine a few other areas to round out our technical knowledge.
Many technology decisions are linked (avoid breaking them)
Sections of his paper are dedicated to discussing the traditional layers of design and their application against the SharePoint platform. So many options! The advantages to an application framework are obvious but so are the caution signs. For example, using SharePoint Lists as the data source in your application begets the content repository database and associated API set. This had tradeoffs when it comes to reporting (think cross-table relational join) that you may be faced with later as your application expands.
Leveraging a tool like InfoPath can be a fast-to-market approach and solve very tough problems in a short amount of time. But again, this scenario leads you towards InfoPath services, web service data retrieval, SharePoint Workflows and document libraries for submission and event handling.
We like to group ‘areas’ of functionality and make technical decisions about the appropriateness of the solution in each (independent) case. For application architects, you may want to consider the cascade effect of each decision when applying that philosophy against the SharePoint platform.
Business Analysis & Architectural View Point
The article recommends styles of applications that are appropriate for SharePoint, and those that are not. It suggests you target applications with collaboration characteristics, look like a portal or other LOB ‘snack data’, web-part centric or bite sized pieces of information that have horizontal appeal, applications that leverage any of the SharePoint features instead of building them, and corporate websites.
On the do not try list, he mentions high (transactional) list volumes, data / processing intensive applications and scenarios that involve integration as their core reason for being.
I would add that an important examination would be the type of request being made: is it a box or a line? I have talked about capability modeling before, but also true in integration, are we dealing with the concept of movement, transfer and collaboration or the actual process, workflow and human interaction therein? Many times, this can provide very unique insight: Would you build an accounts payable (box) solution in SharePoint or leverage it to perform secure dissemination, lookup and reporting of receivables (line).
Internal Demands
While David’s article does a great job focusing on the technology, it is equally important to focus on the internal equation you live and breathe every day. Developers have an existing skill set, you’ve made an investment where you need to realize a return, or you have outsourced a portion of your IT operations. These are all important factors and play into the ‘art’ I mentioned previously.
I find that a questioning framework works well – it doesn’t imply an answer but instead suggests topics for exploration. Continue to refine and discuss the answers as you move along the spectrum of choice:
- What type of timeline are you on? Can you leverage “out of the box” components at 80-90% fit?
- Who is building the application? Are you retaining these skills in house? Are you contracting them? How will you find the skill set later to manage and maintain?
- Is there an intermediate step that can be achieve? I often see applications go from Excel/Access to full blown Enterprise SQL/.NET custom applications. Perhaps we can leverage components inside a platform like SharePoint to provide a logical stepping stone.
- Is the request the result of a lack of authority? Governance structures are wonderful things until they start to inappropriately restrict self-service. Leverage the permissions model where appropriate, govern and manage policy and give the users the ability to satisfy their own demand. What is the correct mix of systematic vs. opportunistic development?
How are you addressing this challenge in your organization?
I’d love to hear about your insights into this complex topic!
Craig Gibson, Architect Advisor, Microsoft Canada
This week was a busy one not only because of the fact that Windows 7and Windows Server 2008 R2 hit the streets, but also because many details surrounding Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 were announced at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas which just ended.
Many of you that attended TechDays in Toronto and Vancouver have asked me questions about SharePoint 2010 and what some of the new features will be, and, to be quite honest, I did not have a good answer as I was not privy to many of the details. This Monday, at the Microsoft Mississauga office you can learn about SharePoint 2010 at the inaugural meeting of the Mississauga SharePoint User Group.
Rob Windsor from ObjectSharp will take you through what’s new in SharePoint 2010. The session will provide an overview of the product with a particular focus on what’s new for developers. You will learn about the new designers, explorers and templates and overall developer experience for SharePoint 2010. Along the way you’ll see several of the enhancements to the end-user experience including the ribbon, in-place editing, and the new page and dialog interface model.
To register for the event, please go to https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=142514.
Damir
My colleague, Jim Bowyer, is conducting a webcast, October 19th 2PM EST on the topic of connecting your distributed systems.
Monday, October 19, 2009 – 2PM EST
Register now for the webcast
I have worked with Jim on many engagements over the past few years in his role as Software Architect for Integration & SOA. His knowledge and advice on the subject will be hugely valuable for all those considering, planning or working on integration projects.
I had the opportunity to do a peer review on his content and I think you will find that his presentation will provide you some hard-learned, real advice:
- What we have learned from experience (what is the challenge here?)
- The recipes for success – what works, what doesn't (road mapping, partitioning, connectivity)
- A set of reference materials for you to leverage.
Jim will also touch on how the topics of Capability Modeling and Simple Iterative Partitions can play a role in your success.
Here is the official abstract:
A better way to connect your distributed systems.
In theory, connecting your distributed systems makes perfect sense. It’s a simple way to increase efficiency and help reduce costs. But in reality, figuring out which approach makes the most sense for your environment is anything but simple.
“Addressing System Connectivity in the Age of SOA” is a quick and easy way for you to learn more about successful approaches to managing system connectivity and associated issues. We will present a range of connectivity and integration choices provided by the Microsoft-based platform, while also sharing insights Microsoft’s Technical Specialists have gained through connected systems assessments of successful customers.
This webcast will provide you with a valuable opportunity to learn more about the role of Microsoft BizTalk® Server in a service-oriented architecture (SOA), and provide you with an overview of the Microsoft Application Platform, which includes the .NET Framework, the Managed Services Engine (MSE), Azure .Net Services and the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Toolkit.
Jim’s alternative title to the webcast, How to avoid being shot by your own Enterprise Silver Bullet! seems apropos given his time in the Military . I highly recommend attending…
To get your own copy of the Microsoft connected systems webcast, be sure to ask for it after the Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
Bonjour à vous! C'est maintenant fait, la rentrée scolaire est passée ce qui marque la fin des vacances et le retour en force pour le blitz de l'automne qui commence. Ce sera un automne chargé d'activités!
Il y aura bien sûr les « forum des architectes » de Montréal et Québec les 2 et 3 novembre. Si vous avez des demandes spéciales ou voulez être conférencier c'est le temps de me contacter!
Cet automne c'est aussi le lancement officiel de la prochaine vague de Windows et de Exchange. Restez à l'écoute pour les détails qui viendront sur mon blogue!
Il y aura le PDC09
le 17 novembre à LA avec plein d'annonces sur le futur de la plateforme de développement de Microsoft et sur Azure. Il y aura la conférence SharePoint de Las Vegas le 19 octobre avec de l'information sur SharePoint 2010!
Plus proche de nous la tournée canadienne TechDays sera à Montréal le 2 décembre et la tournée Align IT
sera à Montréal et Québec les 12 et 24 novembre!
J'espère vous croiser à un de ces événements! Si vous me voyez venez me dire bonjour!
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!
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 Pro – 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 Pro has been a great tool for helping me be constantly connected, responsive, and reliably productive when I need to be.
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.
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!
Last week we wrapped up our webcast series dedicated to career issues for architects during challenging times. We covered 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. I’m thankful that so many of you were able to join us and wanted to remind you that all of the webcasts are available on demand. Here are the links for the various webcasts:
Industry Insights and Trends for Architects
Honing Your Experience and Skills for Uncertain Times
Becoming an Architect Entrepreneur
Helping Your Organization Create Competitive Advantage with the Support of IT
Once again, I wanted to thank our fantastic panellists throughout the 4 webcasts in the series:
Barry Gervin, Andy Nogueira & Jean Rene Roy
Guy Barrette, Scott Howlett & Kent Weare
Mario Cardinal, Mark Ruddock & Phil Unger
Bill Baldasti, Jason McIntyre & Daniel Nerenberg
If you have any ideas for future webcast series please drop me an email at dremmer@microsoft.com and share your ideas. I’m looking forward to having you join us next time around!
Dave Remmer, Architect Advisor, DPE Canada
| We are once again hosting the BC Architect Forum in Vancouver. Likely the last forum until the fall, we decided to focus less on tools and technologies and present a topic aligned with IT planning and prioritization. Given the economic forces at work, it not only seemed relevant, but a good topic to discuss before the summer was in full swing.
The format for the forum will be a chalk-talk as we work through a series of problem statements and discuss potential problem solving techniques. I will be co-hosting with Hal Bradwell, from Avantage Partners. We will explore various techniques to drive IT alignment, get executive buy-in and present financial methods to support your IT investment decisions. |
June 19th, 8:00-10:00 AM
Microsoft Canada
1111 W. Georgia St.
Suite 1100 (11th floor)
Vancouver, BC
Registration is required |
 |
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
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:
- 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
- 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.
- 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 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
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
+ 
= 
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.
_thumb.gif "aa905359_70x70_office07(en-us,MSDN_10)")
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.
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.
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
