David Strommer

The MOST acronym for strategy planning

david.strommer — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 16:36:00 GMT

I came across an interesting acronym called MOST – Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics. Original source - http://www.strategy.nildram.co.uk/most.html

MOST helps to clarify where the business intends to go (Mission), they key goals which will help to achieve this (Objectives), analyses what options there are for proceeding forward (Strategies) and how these strategies are going to be put into action (Tactics).

The key is for this whole process to hang together from top to bottom and in reverse. From the top, clarifying the mission drives the objectives, which creates strategic options, which forces tactical actions. From the bottom, every action at tactical level should help to make the strategies work, all strategies should help to achieve the objectives, and all the objectives should take the business towards the mission.

I like easy to remember heuristic acronyms. My three favorite acronyms are KISS, YAGNI and BYOB.

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com

Crazy Architects

david.strommer — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:33:00 GMT

Pest control is a constant battle especially if you live in Florida. A few months ago, while tending the lawn I noticed several ants. I promptly called the pest control service. I learned later that the ants are known as crazy ants (Paratrechina longicornis) and common in Florida. The name "crazy ant" arises from its characteristics of erratic, rapid movement and not following trails as often as other ants while foraging for food.

Similar to the characteristics of crazy ants, the term crazy architect describes an antipattern of enterprise architects. Instead of foraging for food, crazy architects forage for information in an erratic, rapid and seemingly irrational way. The crazy architect antipattern is typical of an architecture team that does not prescribe to an architectural framework and follow architecture processes.

Are you a crazy architect? If so, you are not alone. Let’s face it; you have to be a bit crazy to be an architect.

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com

A comprehensive analysis of BPM Suites

david.strommer — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 07:47:32 GMT

After months of tweaking and review, our coverage of IBM's BPM technology offering is now live. It joins our coverage of Appian, BEA (we're keeping an eye on this, of course, and will update it as soon as is practical), Lombardi, Software AG and TIBCO.
We've been working on this assessment since the autumn of 2007: the delay is mostly due to the breadth of IBM's portfolio (the assessment report runs to 33 pages, whereas most of the others come in around 20 pages) - combined with the fact that, just as we were about to finalise the report, IBM changed its portfolio positioning, introducing the BPM Suite. Anyhow the effort has been worth it - we think the result is pretty comprehensive and definitely worth reading if you're in the process of selecting a BPM technology vendor.
The IBM BPM assessment report is available as part of our Guest Pass library, here; the detailed comparative scoring information, which you can personalise in line with your preferences and constraints, lives in the online vendor comparison tool that's part of our BPM continuous advisory service. Although this service isn't free, you can get a 7-day free trial, so you can use the tool now to see how IBM stacks up in the context of your own environment and preferences - just fill in this form.
Next up is Pegasystems - the assessment process is already underway.

http://www.mwdadvisors.com/blog/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com

REST Services and Metadata EndPoints in WCF

david.strommer — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:26:02 GMT

http://www.danrigsby.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/29/rest-services-and-metadata-endpoints-in-wcf/

Dan Rigsby posted an approach to exposing REST services metadata using mexHttpBinding.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com

Free book samples from MS Press

david.strommer — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:23:00 GMT

· Linq

· Ajax

· Silverlight

http://csna01.libredigital.com/

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com

Bill Gates last day at Microsoft

david.strommer — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:18:00 GMT

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/geekend/?p=1111

"When Bill Gates gave his farewell CES keynote last week, he opened with a video that imagined what his last day at Microsoft might be like. A dozen guest stars, a string of self-deprecating references, and few vintage Star Wars action figures later, and we’ve got…well…not exactly an answer, but a least a few giggles for our trouble."

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com

Infosys Enterprise Architecture 2007

david.strommer — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 18:09:00 GMT

http://www.architectureandchange.com/2007/12/30/the-infosys-enterprise-architecture-survey-2007-results/

Infosys published an interesting EA survey for 2007.

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com

BS Management

david.strommer — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 21:43:00 GMT

http://www.schemalogic.com/

I just came across an interesting product from Schema Logic called Enterprise Vocabulary and Metadata Management for SharePoint.

They coined a term I’ve never heard in this context called BSM (Business Semantics Management). Watch the video "What we do" from the home page; it almost seemed like a Saturday Night Live parody.

I can imagine the conversation going something like –

“Dave, what do you do for your company?”

“I’m a BS Architect which manages the company’s BS”

LOL, you have to love a company with a sense of humor.

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com

CALM – Collaborative Application Lifecycle Management

david.strommer — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:18:00 GMT

The Application Lifecycle Management market is very competitive. If you work for a large company, the stakes are higher as are the politics. Rational, Borland, Collabnet, Microsoft, Agile, eXtreme programming, Waterfall, SCRUM, etc. ALM tools and processes are a hotly debated topic between not only developers but management as well. One thing is for sure - one size does not fit all.

One the one side you have a group that wants to reduce costs by stopping the proliferation tools/processes in use. This group is usually in favor of top-down heavyweight tools, processes and standards. On the other side, developers realize that software development is a process of creativity and construction rather than a process of control and management. No matter which side you take or which ALM tool/process you follow. ALM is fundamentally about collaboration and sharing information while developing/maintaining software.

CALM (Collaborative Application Lifecycle Management) is an acronym I coined today to describe the evolution of the ALM market to incorporate collaborative tools and methodologies into the software development lifecycle.

A few examples:

Microsoft Team Foundation Server - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/aa718825.aspx
Collabnet - http://www.collab.net/
IBM Jazz - http://jazz.net

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com

SDO support for .Net

david.strommer — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 05:53:00 GMT

Jean-Jacques Dubray of http://www.ebpml.org/about.htm is becoming one of my favorite blogs. I have only followed his blog the past couple of months. I admire him because he is one of a few technologists that attempt to step back from the platform specific SOA implementations and discuss SOA from an agnostic viewpoint. I just finished reading his book Composite Software Construction (http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/composite-software-construction). The book is easy to read and touches on several SOA topics as well as insight into the history of the WS-I standards. It is free and certainly worth your time. Jean-Jacques is also behind the WSPER specification, which he covers in his book (ref. http://www.wsper.org/). WSPER appears to have a lot of potential and something to keep an eye on.

While catching up with the thousands of blog subscriptions, my interests were peaked by a post from Jean-Jacques blog - http://www.ebpml.org/blog/30.htm. Apparently, Xcalia offers an SDO API for both Java and .Net - http://www.xcalia.com/products/xcalia-xdas-data-access-service-SDO-DAS-data-integration-through-web-services.jsp. SDO is similiar to the .Net DataSet but with a twist. Jean-Jacques states in his book that the .Net DataSet is based on an Entity Relationship Model and SDO is based on the Hypergraph Data Model.

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com

ARIS and BizTalk Integration Press Release

david.strommer — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:52:00 GMT

http://www.ids-scheer.com/us/en/News/IDS_Scheer_Previews_Integration_of_ARIS_Platform_and_Microsoft_BizTalk_Server/86824.html?referer=32430

Available sometime in 2008.

Future releases of BizTalk will use the .Net WF engine - just imagine the possibilities. A free workflow engine that integrates with ARIS and can run on the desktop, app server, web server, SharePoint, MS Office & integration tier. Not to mention the army of .Net developers in the market gaining experience on .Net WF development and the wave of blogs, code, wiki's and training available.

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com

John Kanzius - Cure Cancer and turn Salt Water into Fuel

david.strommer — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 16:58:00 GMT

Amazing...

Spiltting water by electrolysis and creating hydrogen/oxygen gas, you can replace gasoline.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6vSxR6UKFM

Check this out - http://waterpoweredcar.com/ and http://hydropowercar.com/

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com

SCA and Microsoft Support

david.strommer — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 15:34:59 GMT

If you don't subscribe to David Chappell's blog, you should. Once again he delivers a powerful and insightful post - "Why Microsoft Should Not Support SCA".

http://www.davidchappell.com/blog/2007/09/why-microsoft-should-not-support-sca.html

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com

Nice tip to speed up Tortoise SVN Cache

david.strommer — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 14:03:37 GMT

http://paraesthesia.com/archive/2007/09/26/optimize-tortoise-svn-cache-tsvncache.exe-disk-io.aspx

http://www.larkware.com/dg9/TheDailyGrind1239.aspx

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com

Situational Leadership

david.strommer — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 04:51:32 GMT

Nick Malik posted an insightful post titled "When they are not ready" - http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmalik/archive/2007/08/29/when-they-are-not-ready.aspx

I agree with Nick statement, "Architectural roadmap's have to take things into account that extend far beyond technology."

Architecture is about understanding people, technology and process. You are doomed to failure if all you do is recite Gartner, Forrester, ZapThink and other resources with out taking into account "corporate culture, technical readiness, availability of talent, financial implications, deadlines, strategic directions, company policies and politics."

del.icio.us tags: Architecture

Cross posted from www.davidstrommer.com