Software application development
This blog is intended to provoke discussion and exchange between like minded software application developers, engineers, architects, project managers - and keen hobbyists too.
Tuesday 3 June 2008, 11:47 PM
Show blog day 2: IBM Rational Software Developer Conference 2008
IBM really did bring out all the news on day one of this show, so this morning a little space cleared for the partners to try and get a little attention.
Before I mention a few of the IBM partners that have proffered forth their wares this week, we were been given a few little extras today. There was a tour of the IBM labs to meet the men in white coats – actually just part of the exhibition floor area, but it was a pleasant distraction between the bagels and the boxed lunches.
We also had a boardroom style meet and greet with the man at the top of the Rational tree, Dr Danny Sabbah. I put a few of last year’s open admissions to him where he had pinpointed IBM’s failings such as poor customer service, overly complex all-or-nothing installs and the high cost of his company’s software. Sabbah said that there was still work to do – sorry I can’t be more insightful, but that’s the company line at the moment.
It’s a culture thing
The real trouble (said Sabbah) with globalised software application development is that it has to try and transcend location, time, space, culture and language ... IBM is staying sensibly clear of saying that it can manage and control human elements as huge as culture and is instead asking for implicit transparency in the lifecycle process to try and combat the gaps that exist between teams around the world.
Anyway, partner time...
Canadian company Protecode whose software focuses on Bill of Materials (BOM) management and Intellectual Property (IP) determination did a bit of flag waving. These guys claim to have a product that resolves IP uncertainties by detecting 100% of external content in any stage of software development projects. Well, anything that claims to be 100% of anything is usually not so in software –approach with care but interest then perhaps.
Not so much an announcement, but a vendor I spoke to personally (Philippe Cohen, VP of products at Mainsoft) was happy to go on the record with the following comment in relation to this week’s show.
“When you look at the software development process, about 50 per cent of the people in the process are not developers. They are program managers, operation managers, security officers, project managers, marketers and so on. The new Jazz platform and Rational Team Concert product are open and process-aware and that’s a good thing,” said Cohen.
Strangely from a timing perspective, Microsoft is actually hosting TechEd Developers right across town on the same days as this IBM event. I’ve been too Big Blue’d out to focus much on it to be honest, but one company that clearly has had to spread themselves over both shows is Coverity.
The company announced a product called Prevent for C# which uses an analysis engine designed specifically for detecting defects in applications built on Microsoft’s .NET framework.
Then there was Instantiations Inc, who made a few waves (well, ripples I suppose) about its quality and productivity solutions for the Eclipse platform. The company’s GUI building tool, WindowBuilder Pro, got some kind of badge from IBM too by all accounts.
As a side note, just to bring in some comment from a competitor, I also this week spoke to Damon Poole, CTO of AccuRev, to see what he thought of IBM Jazz’s Rational Team Concert product. He said, “It’s still overly complicated, especially for Agile, complex parallel and geographically distributed and offshore development.”
He went on, “Jazz looks like a nice framework for managing your instant messaging environment. But IBM’s customers might find Rational Team Concert, Jazz’s software change and configuration management (SCCM) capabilities, primitive compared to ClearCase UCM. While Jazz provides interesting framework capabilities, Jazz customers will find themselves relying on Team Concert to do the heavy lifting of software process and configuration management.”
Grady Booch: The Developer’s Developer
Rounding out today we got a chance to meet and chat with The Developer’s Developer Mr Grady Booch who kept us entertained with his relaxed approach. He talked about the weight of software and the inertia that can exist in legacy systems if they are not given a lift. For him, much of that buoyancy will come from open source initiatives.
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“I’m pretty unmanageable. Part of my role is to make IBM uncomfortable so that we don’t get complacent,” said Booch.
Although as an IBM Fellow (just about the most senior position in the company) one can only imagine that they don’t feel too uncomfortable about him.
Always keen to amuse, he also said, “Don’t forget – 80 per cent of everything is cr@p! Including this statement.”
Tomorrow I will step aside and ask you – if you have had any interest in reading about this show – to take a look at my wife Terry-Lynn’s blog. She has attended classes and intends to write up her perceptions of the event – in particular, looking at the requirements management side of programming.
Roll on Captain Kirk tomorrow am. He probably will.
Monday 2 June 2008, 11:46 PM
Show blog: IBM Rational Software Developer Conference 2008
My guesses for what would constitute the bulk of the show news this week at IBM's 2008 Rational Software Developer Conference seem to have been mostly accurate. It’s teams, it’s collaboration and it’s integration – all within a ‘transparent’ process of course.
Rational Software general manager Danny Sabbah is going for broke on the soundbite front and we’ve already had, “We’ve moved from a time when the network is the computer – to a time when the network is the team,” and the even snappier, “You’ve got two ears and one mouth and it’s that way round for a reason.”
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It’s bigger this year though: 3500 developers, 300 sessions across 14 tracks and more Jazz-related product announcements than you can easily digest in a single serving. Note: it may just be a US-UK language thing, but when IBM says that most of its Rational portfolio will incorporate Jazz technology over the “next several years” – is that because they didn’t like to say “next few years”, or because they wanted to leave the door open for some ambiguity?
Open-source nirvana
Either way, we’re being urged to read Eric Raymond's book The Cathedral and the Bazaar this week as it details the move from the “confines and restrictions” of the cathedral to the “openness” of the bazaar. This tome will no doubt already be well known to those who seek enlightenment on the path towards open-source methodology nirvana.
The latest musings on the subject of software development as a whole made for pretty interesting listening at this morning’s keynote – and in between various dancers, comedians and speakers we got an insight into what IBM sees as the “state of the application environment” in 2008.
According to Dr Sabbah, we’re currently we’re looking at a situation with high maintenance costs, too many versions from too many vendors - and all this leads to poor visibility into our portfolios and unchecked proliferation of software that is often updated and replaced, but should really be retired.
Not making the big splash keynote headlines of some of this week’s announcements but definitely interesting was a quick chat I had with IBM’s Laura Bennett who is the senior software engineering manager of alphaWorks.
Over the last year, alphaWorks focus on early prototypes (some of which migrate to IBM developerWorks) has been extended to be more available to the student community. Although Bennett describes these with IBM terminologies such as ‘a new delivery model’ and ‘service’, essentially what it means is that a new communication channel is open for students of software engineering (in all its forms) to pose questions to the alphaWorks lab researchers.
It sounds like pretty cool stuff, as to how much IBM steers, owns or directs the creation of prototypes at this level I can’t say – but I will find out.
Big numbers
Back to the core news of the conference and there’s a rich scent of scepticism in the press room this afternoon as to whether all this talk of collaborative team development is coming from a company that itself may be argued to suffer from disconnected silo structures by virtue of its own sheer size.
But Danny Sabbah used the point of IBM’s size this morning during his speech to make a positively spun comment. He highlighted the fact that Steve Mills, senior vice president for IBM Software Group, runs what the company labels as the world's largest software development organisation. IBM makes this claim as it states that, on a global level, it has more than 25,000 developers in 77 locations focused on developing software. So, says Sabbah, the company can act as an extremely large-scale user of its own products and this helps testing and development.
Sabbah also specified that the development of any one particular product may involve a mix of technologies from agile to iterative to waterfall and that the perfect blend will depend on the task in hand.
You need proof? It’s survey time!
Colleen Arnold also made an appearance this morning at the keynote session. Arnold is general manager for IBM’s global application services division and she presented the results of what IBM calls its Global CEO Study – a survey it undertakes every couple of years. If you had any scepticism over whether there really is a burning need to extend our capabilities in ‘collaborative’ software application development, Arnold’s carefully selected results should allay your fears.
The latest findings state that: “Management of global applications, processes and systems with consistency, quality and security … all depending on collaboration and teamwork…”, is at the forefront of those CEOs surveyed. Happy now? Hmm, I thought not – well, let’s keep looking, reading and thinking.
Finally today, I had a session with Scott Ambler who is global lead (or practice leader if you prefer official designations) for IBM’s Agile development unit. We spoke about the ‘belief’ or ‘leap of faith’ element behind Agile and the fact that some disagree with it while others are firm converts.
Ambler insisted that Agile will always be with us despite the fact that many developers don’t buy it. “Many developers who criticise Agile have probably never tried it,” said Ambler. “If it is like a religion, then if you continue to discuss it you will never reach a real agreement and consensus and find belief,” he added.
Part of the problem is that Agile depends on highly collaborative environments where there is a high degree of team trust (now you know why Ambler is here this week) – and so it does suffer from a lack of adoption in areas where those factors do not exist such as, according to Ambler, government and what used to be Russia.
We’re only 24 hours in and many of us already have news overload syndrome, but that is expected and it’s probably better to get a heads up on the big announcements early rather than in staggered form. In the words of IBM’s vice president for marketing and strategy Scott Hebner, “We’ve seen the biggest product announcements ever under the Rational brand this week.”
The times they are a changin’
Tonight though it’s a case of The times they are a changin’ – as our evening “do” is a performance from the Wallflowers whose lead singer Jakob Dylan is in fact the son of Bob. Will tonight’s bash provide us all with a clear head for tomorrow’s Grady Booch keynote? The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.
Sorry – couldn’t help that, long day.
Sunday 1 June 2008, 6:10 PM
What to expect from IBM Rational Software Developer Conference 2008
It's opening Sunday night down here in Orlando at IBM's 2008 Rational Software Developer Conference. Having attended and reported on this event since 2004 I thought I would be able to make a few predictions as to what the week ahead might hold. But I don't think it's going to be as easy as I first thought, as IBM appears to have changed its tack slightly.
The last few years has seen this event running with tag-lines that have been somewhat similar in nature: 'Better software = better business' was followed by 'Software runs the world' and then we had 'Software in concert'. IBM clearly feels that it has got the 'business must connect with IT' message across by now and this year looks like it might be more focused on the collaborative side of software development.
RU ready?
IBM Rational Software Developer Conference 2008 - Where teams R heroes! Did you see what they did there with the R?
If it is the team-based aspect of programming that enjoys the limelight this year, then I hope we'll see some comments that reflect back upon what Rational Software general manager Danny Sabbah said last year in his opening keynote. Sabbah's 2007 comments were intended to highlight Big Blue's focus on how we measure business success in a web 2.0 world with distributed teams and functions trying to collaborate.
“Leveraging community effects from Open Source, to Metcalfe’s Law and social networking should be what we are all about with today’s Rational,” said Sabbah last year. It'll be good to see how he feels we have all progressed.
All that Jazz…
Last year's major news was the launch of IBM’s Jazz offering. This is a scalable Eclipse-based team collaboration platform with transparency at its core. It is targeted at organisationally, geographically and even temporally dispersed development teams.
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So of course this year the partners have a chance to shout about their work with Jazz. Thus far, the only player to show their hand is Mainsoft, who will use Monday to announce a new launch in the web 2.0-based collaboration space. Expect to hear product names like Jazz itself and IBM Rational Team Concert.
At its launch, Jazz was criticised for looking and sounding a lot like Subversion. I spoke to Lee Nackman, VP of product development & support about this issue face-to-face last year and he told me, “Subversion is a SCM-focused solution, Jazz is a bigger and broader offering as it is focused on integration across the whole development lifecycle. This is a middleware infrastructure technology if you like, this is not a replacement for Eclipse.”
Again, as to whether the passing of one year has clarified Jazz’s position remains to be seen.
Other headlines from last year included IBM's concern over the lack of architectural governance in software projects today. We also got Big Blue’s open admission that its customers are saying Rational products have high TCO and are overly complex with ‘all or nothing’ installation options.
I’ll be looking to see whether products which were new last year such as IBM Rational Team Concert Beta 1 (a real-time collaborative portal optimised for Agile development teams) have helped address many of the failings that the company said it had identified as areas for concern.
To boldly go... “CAPTAIN’S BLOG – STARDATE: 01.06.2008AD”
Day three keynote is bound to be a crowd pleaser. Not to be outdone by Sun wheeling out Neil Young last month at JavaOne, IBM has brought in Captain Kirk himself William Shatner. No doubt he'll be among friends – unless he starts reminiscing about TJ Hooker I suppose.
For sure, this is generally one of the better developer shows to attend. IBM’s firmly implanted status on the technology landscape means that the Rational Software crew are a pretty relaxed bunch and they don’t give you the hard sell. Last year I was impressed to see developers attending some sessions out of pure curiosity to broaden their knowledge base. The best example of this is Terry Quatrani’s “Introduction to UML”, which is always standing room only.
If IBM does come up for criticism it's when Sabbah comes out with soundbites such as, "Vision without execution is hallucination." Whether he is trying to mark his territory in the Top 10 Great IT Quotes of All Time is open to debate. But with so many developers in attendance who put their nose to the actual grindstone everyday, it's for sure that we'll want some meaty substance this week as well as the warm hand of the corporate message masters.
Friday 30 May 2008, 12:31 PM
Friday down time: my fantasy technology dinner party guests
The weekend will soon be upon us and many of us will be gathering with friends and acquaintances to share a repast in the time honoured tradition of the dinner party. Although I’ll be attending one with relatives to feast on Chesapeake Bay crabs, I wonder who I would invite to my fantasy technology dinner party?
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Image source: Wikimedia
First to mind comes Mary Lou Jepsen, founder of One Laptop Per Child. Her work for the world’s developing nations endears her to many of us (not least myself, having grown up as a child in Tanzania) and her redoubtable persuasiveness would surely come in handy if a fracas were to develop among the other guests at any time.
To cover the programming purist side of things, I think Grace Murray Hopper would be a perfect guest. She is widely credited with inventing COBOL and naming bugs as, well, “bugs” – and as a Navy Rear Admiral in her own right, she’d clearly not stand for any nonsense between the main course and the cheese board.
Hedy Lamarr would have to come next. How many Hollywood screen sirens can you name that also co-invented something like spread spectrum encoding? After all, has Sharon Stone been working on new cloud computing techniques recently? I think not.
Ms George Oates the lead designer behind Flickr would also have to come along. George describes herself as an online application designer fascinated by the human condition and is a founding member of the team that built the Flickr photo sharing web site. You know you’re going to get a colourful person when you read someone’s bio and among her interests she lists ‘sunsets’. I’ve spoken to her before now that she’s under the Yahoo umbrella and I’m convinced that she’d be good for a good glass of Merlot or two.
Finally, VMware’s Diane Greene would probably be my most current guest. She’s quietly powerful, but in a ‘technology’ kind of way – rather than in a Carly Fiorina ‘do you like my shoulder pads’ kind of way – if you know what I mean. She’s also from Annapolis Maryland and that’s ten miles away from where my better half is from, so I’d make sure I also include my wife who is a mean Java software engineer in her own right.
Whoops – just realised, this is an all female list so far. So what would I serve these charming techno-leader ladies for dinner? Hungry Man instant microwavable TV dinners of course!
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Image source: Wikimedia
Thursday 29 May 2008, 12:27 AM
Die Hard 5: The Developer Bites Back
Gartner’s latest tenets on the subject of lifecycle management (LM) appear to have channeled the relatively widely accepted concepts of LM towards an additional acronym: namely IAM - Identity & Access Management. No surprise then, to find that Gartner has a ‘summit’ in the pipeline to champion the cause of this very topic this summer.
According to Gartner, “Reputational risk can arise from retaliatory or predatory moves by former employees or competitors in an increasingly volatile market seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in an identity infrastructure.”
My question is short and simple. Does this really happen to a measurable degree? Do outgoing disgruntled employees walk off with anything more than a few bags of paper clips of and more than their fare share of Post-it notes?
Perhaps it’s because I watched Live Free of Die Hard last night on DVD – the cyber terrorist at large is a hacked off hacker who wants to get his own back on his former employers who form part of the military security services (or something like that) so he tries to shut down the entire city, country etc…
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Photo: Fox Movies Japan
Yes application lifecycle management has to feature a good deal of security provisioning and this is closely related to testing and debugging and system stability. But the lion’s share of traditional ALM is about hitting development project goals and functionality requirements.
Security and testing as a whole are often argued to be rather more ‘baked in’ elements of ALM. After all, Borland acquired Segue for precisely this reason when it began its move towards ALM credibility. To set the discipline apart on its own almost sounds like repacked technology for the sake of extra publicity. To promote an analyst seminar series even!
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