Systems Journal

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Struggle for Better Software

In the article of Sten and Per Sundblad "Business Improvement Through Better Architected Software" different roles of the architect are suggested.

"Business architecture should be established and managed by a new breed of business architects rather than by the old business analysts. Software architecture should be established and managed by solution architects with a more business-oriented and a less technical background than yesterday’s application architects. Business and solution architects should work together to design and suggest improved business processes that take better advantage of technical
opportunities than the original ones did.

But still it is difficult to find a company where all these roles are performed by different people.

In the most cases the person who is responsible for project business-technical vision takes all these roles. I see the shift of roles, but all together they are the same :)

Microsoft Dynamics Nav 6

Found the architecture of new Nav 6 here . A small step for Humanity but rather a huge jump for Navision!

Communication Skills

This here, 5 useful communication skills:

1. Make sure the person you’re talking to is ready to hear what you’re saying.
2. Instead of complaining, ask for what you want in concrete, measurable terms.
3. Give feedback if expectations aren’t met, even if the effort is good.
4. Take responsibility to make your boundary needs clear.
5. You must keep talking. That’s the only way to make progress.
   

Some Like it Hot

Personality Type

Passed the test by JT O’Donnell to find out personality type. My result is EMPATHIZER !

By the way the last word cast a plot of the "Funny Face" 1957 where many things were connected to "empathic" :)

Technorati Теги: personality,management

VS2005+3 has been released

So, VS2008 has been release today. In the blog post it was announced that source code of .NET 3.5 will be available shortly after VS 2008 will have been released. Well...... :)

Technorati Теги: .net,development,microsoft

Is that in recent times?

Technorati Теги: fun,management

SaaS vs Software+Service

Technorati Теги: SaaS,architecture

Again! Why they are constantly mixing these things: SaaS and Software+Service? Even in the channel9 video cast with Steve Swartz, Clemens Vasters and David Chappell the approaches are identified.Besides they talk about connected systems and do that in a very simple manner.

.Net Framework Poster

Technorati Теги: .net,development

A big picture of .net framework can be seen on the poster.

Developing Project Scope

Found this post devoted to creating the project scope statement.
There were some priciples that are quite reasonable when employing visual communications to create project scope statements.

Manager's Style

Technorati Теги: management,fun

Having read an article "Ten commandments of Steve Job" I found it interesting to share my attitude to each clause. So here they are:

• Never let people know where they stand. - Partially agree
• You don’t have to hire the best people. - Agree
• Only promote stupid people. - Disagree
• Never tell people what is expected of them. - Partially agree
• A manager should be inconsistent and unpredictable. - Unpredictable - yes, inconsistent - never!
• No praise. Ever. - Disagree
• Keep people’s spirits broken. - Disagree!
• Throw tantrums. - Disagree
• Don’t speak to employees in elevators. - Why?
• Start with the ad campaign. - Partially agree

Complexity does not go away, it just changes hands...

A fascinating idea from Gianpaolo's blog "In a closed system, software complexity does not go away, it just changes hands"

Fine for NOT being PCI DSS Compliant

You know that since companies are constantly at risk of losing sensitive cardholder data, which could result in fines, legal action and bad publicity, achieving compliance with the PCI DSS should be high on the agenda of companies who store, transmit or process credit card data. Furthermore, PCI DSS compliance needs to be achieved by December, 2007 – this is the deadline posed by credit card companies. Organizations that fail to comply face fines of up to $500,000 if the data is lost or stolen and risk not being allowed to handle cardholder data.

Did you know that? I did not. Think many of you too :) Beware! Keep your $500,000 !!!

Plan for the next several days

I have beared in mind that project envisioning steps might be the following:

1) Gather and organize both technical and business requirements
2) Envision and create a solution that meets requirements and can be implemented
3) Model the pieces of an infrastructure and their points of integration
4) Prove the feasibility of a design, the toughest thing :)

Just 4 steps. And I need to walk them over in a few days.

SaaS - Integration Value

David Linthicum in his blog post defines the problem SaaS consumers faced with.
Sometime it's very important to think as a customer. So what he writes:
"When planning to integrate your SaaS applications, certain things need take place. First, you need to define the information you need to integrate, what it is, who owns it, and how it's accessed. While most SaaS vendors have APIs or Web services to support integration, many of these interfaces are not well thought out or are limited in some way. Next, you need to define the interfaces and information on the enterprise applications side, answering many of the same questions. This means you should have a semantic- and interface-level understanding of the integration domain, including all systems connected, SaaS and non-SaaS."
A good case comment. It must be owned we often do things nobody particularly needs. And that's a pitty.
The article can be found here.

Imagine You are a Point in the 2D space...

Imagined? So where do you think you are?

I found this chart at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb945098.aspx
In the article the author shows what an EA does and how his/her role relates to other architecture roles within the enterprise. A good way to represent architects in terms of breath and depth and for developers either.

Twelve

Watched "12" by N. Mikhalkov. This is the right film. It's not only about Russia, justice or that concrete case.

It's about us. Me. You.

Art of Presentation

by Alexei Kapterev. A well made slide show how to make your apperance better.

Service Delivery Platform in a Nutshell

Today on my way home I read an article from The Architecture Journal devoted Service Delivery Platform. This is the same as SaaS but from a little different point of view.

Efficient Software Delivery Through Service-Delivery Platforms by Gianpaolo Carraro, Fred Chong, and Eugenio Pace

Summary: Delivering software as a service (SaaS) has gained a lot of momentum. One reason this one-to-many delivery model is attractive is that it enables new economies of scale. Yet economy of scale does not come automatically; it has to be explicitly architected into the solution. A typical architectural pattern allowing economy of scale is "single instance multi-tenancy," and many Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) offering SaaS have moved to this architecture, with various levels of success.
There is, however, another means of improving efficiency which ISVs have not adopted with the same enthusiasm: the use of an underlying Service-Delivery Platform (SDP). Adoption has been slow, mainly because service-delivery platforms optimized for line-of-business applications delivery are still in their infancy. But both existing and new actors in the hosting space are quickly building compelling capabilities. This paper explores the goals, capabilities, and motivations for adoption of SDP, and describes the technology and processes related to efficient software delivery through SDP.

In addition I have to make a note that the article is quite intelligible and makes many things related to SaaS clear. My verdict - RECOMMENDED