Democratization of Architecture

Many IT professionals know they should do their architectures. How can you build a system, or preferably a capability, without an articulated architecture to backstop it? But UML is a complex inscrutable art. The tools to weild it can be daunting. So very few IT professionals, going by the name architect, actually build them. Most times, when built, they are a snapshot of whatwas wanted and are sent to the bookshelf to live out a long life.

It is with this as context that we undertook an effort, about 6 months ago, that we now understand as 'the democratization of architecture' - making it safe for the masses. The gist is that we wanted to accomplish 2 things:

1. Lower barriers to entry

2. Make IT capabilities more accessible at design time

Using a simple spreadsheet input approach we eased the entry barriers into a real UML tool, Rational Software Architect (RSA). Now we can consume customers' mission elements via a simple excel spreadsheet breakout. Customers sit with client personnel and talk about their 5-7 major mission elements that they need in the solution. Next they break each of those down to its constituent parts, and so on down to 4 or 5 levels of detail. RSA consumes these mission elements and produces a strategic mission model - simple, done!

On the IT capabilities side, we've done a market survey. For each of the major IT capabilities groups, e.g., Security, User Experience, Development Tools, Information Managment, Transactional Management or Enterprise Service Management. See pic below

.Basically all the horizontal middleware capabilities, we build simple models. These models were labelled using the customers' vernacular - the way they talk about these capabilities.

Now that we have consumed the mission elements & have resident the IT capabilities, we can produce a simple set of spreadsheets, one for each IT capabilties group. However, we can also put in juxtaposition, to the IT capabilties, the mission elements.

See pic for service management example of RSA produced spreadsheet that maps mission elements (columns) against the IT capabilities (rows). This simple form allows the user to sit with a client person and map IT capabilities, that could satisfy requirements, against the corresponding mission elements.

The cells, where IT capabilties and mission elements intersect, is where we note the correspondence. A simple x in the intersecting cell is all that is needed. Now, if we have a statement about that relationship, then that can be easily entered, in the cell, and will show up on the actual UML model. Once the six xlses are filled out (reference 6 pieces of the core above) then using a simple RSA plug-in (authored by Fred Mervine, the Grandaddy of this Democratization effort) we re-c0nsume the IT capabilities crossed with mission elements and produce a UML joint capabilities diagram. Essentially we join the mini-models from each sheet into one overall model that shows the collection of relationships. UML was never this easy (for the client).

A real UML jock, at this point, can take that joint capabilities diagram and decorate it with NFRs, sequences, and other essential architectural elements and produce a final actionable architecture. However, what we've done is to ease the process of IDing the basic mission elements in the solution and IDing the basic COTS architectural elements needed to satisfy those requirements. Architecture for everyone.

SOA Ecosystem & Sets of Systems

As net-centricity becomes a common term and SOA moves into its productive phase we increasing see sets of systems coming together. The tendency is to take the term system and extend it to 'System of Systems' SoS. However, I'll argue that this approach takes the hyper-specified method of defining and engineering a system and imposes it on a set of systems. Gone are the days where the world moved so slowly that requirements stayed put long enough to waterfall a system out. Now that the global village is hyper-connected change occurs in real time. We need a new method by which we conceive of and implement sets of systems. Even sets of systems themselves are being linked together. Organizing principles change as we go up the hierarchy of sets.

If I join 5 systems together I can not do so rigidly like they were built. One system can be built to clearly define its inputs and outputs & its behavior given them. However, once I conjoin several systems I must live with the randomness of their individual operations. It is not random in the sense that it is unpredictable - they are, after all, computer systems. Their individual behavior is random in respect to the goals of the set. This means that the operational rules of the Set of Systems (SetOS) must be at a higher level of abstraction than the individual systems. The SetOS must scavenge resources when it can get them and offer back, to the individual systems, resources as they may take advantage of them. The term loose coupling has been used for this kind of idea, however I believe this term misleads. It is all about the focal point. Loose Coupling puts the focal point back on the individuals systems - which are loose coupled. We need to pan out. We must come up with a language about sets.

Set talk makes people uncomfortable. It is the pluralistic nature of such talk that disarms us. How do we conceive of system operations (a system like Gregory Bateson would use it) that apply to the whole set of constituent systems? An ecosystem is a good model for such things. Sets of individual actors interplay with each other according to operational principles that show behavioral organization at a higher level. Using SOA as an example. We can have individual SOA-based systems but it is only when the aggregate decide to collaborate that you actually see useful cross-program services begin to populate the enterprise registry. A group of ACAT 1 program managers who all, individually, implement SOA will never place one useful service in the enterprise registry. It is only when these individual operate as a set of PMs that we begin to see the benefits of SOA as an ecosystem enabler.

SOA is not dead, but the ACAT 1 acquisition system is trying its hardest to kill it off. SOA will continue to shear at the cultural & programmatic aspects of our acquisition system until the SOA ecosystem arises. There are interesting examples where it is beginning to happen. Portfolio owners are beginning to see that they can organize across their SetOS to drive a higher level benefit. This benefit is almost always to the greater good and echews the hyper-specific needs of individual programs.

AFEI.ORG Industry SOA Acquisition Reform Recommendations

(See attached file: SOA_Acquisition_Final_Report.pdf)
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Ooops, for some reason Blogger didn't clip it, so let's try this:

http://www.afei.org/whitepapers/SOA_Acq/SOA_Acquisition_Final_Report2.pdf

Let me know  if you an access it without being surveymonkeyed with.

Tim Pavlick, PhD Deputy CTO & DoD Chief Architect
V: 301-523-6694 TXT:3015236694@txt.att.net
SL: Gregor Slunce Skype: Timpavlick
Federal Blog: http://communicat.us

VWs as 3D Visualization of Complex Technology

The commodification of user experience technologies & immersion methods have presented an opportunity to leapfrog a generation of user interface innovations. 3D Virtual Worlds & Flexible gaming engines present the possibility of bringing 3D immersive user experience to everyday applications. The example clipped below shows an environment mocked up in a Virtual World that both accepts data (X,Y,Z coordiantes) from the real world & dispatches new X,Y,Z coordinates back to the real world. The coordinates coming in are a directive to move the warfare platform to an exact location and that is done automatically. Then, when the commander desires, he directly manipulates a warfare platform and then that (new) location is dispatched out to the real world. Imagine that is a commander receiving an order to move his warfare platform to that spot, i.e., those new X,Y,Z coordinates.

Changing the Mindset from Systems of Systems to Sets of Systems

The problem with Systems of Systems is that they are the rigid stepchildren of their Systems(Hyper)Engineered parents. Replete with design-laden characteristics they belie the core functionality they were built to embody ~ agility. Agility, if truly desired, must be the core design principle. What this means is that as important as determinism, or your Most Important Requirement(s), agility must be. A SySofSys ends up with additional functionality but no leverage to change and add additional additional functionality. A SetsofSys approach takes as a guiding principle that you are creating an IT toolbox which parses functionality into meaningful chunks and provides for quick assemblage. This requires an overlay approach where an organizing principle, the overlay, is created. An overlay governs which capabilities are brought to bear, not the original design. The original design design is of the IT backplane & the core capabilities. An overlay design facility must exist that allows mildly experienced analysts to whip up an new app config quickly. Not during run time mind you; we must allow for solid run time performance & rarely does reconfig occur during the execution of business. It is normally during a pause, or lull...business is still occuring, like a heartbeat, but you are not hot in the race.

next post: SW moves from a design-time activity to a run-time (design)

What Makes the Millenial Gen Tick

Someone asked recently "What do you technical peers think of Second Life"? The question was aimed at a potential culture war. If the technorati didn't believe in Second Life, or its peers, it wouldn't be worth getting involved - even though the 3Dsocialnet is a very real evolution. My answer is...If you are over 35, and you go into SL, you look around, see, perhaps, interesting things, but are not compelled to act. You may never go back in, or if you do it is unlikely that you will become part of the socail fabric. If you are under 35, this is how it works. You are sitting next to your friend, say close enough to reach out an touch them, but you are text paging him on your cell. This is the equivalent of passing (paper) notes in class, but does not take place in the physical world. Similarly, when you are liesuring, you sit on the couch, across the room or next to your friend - doesn't matter. You are interacting, with your vehicle or avatar, through the TV screen. Since you can remember the internet, IM, and online video games have existed. SL is nothing but a more faithful rendering of the IT disintermediated world in which you live - - why wouldn't you gravitate toward it? Why doesn't Gen X or Gen Boom think this way? Why does IT often seem like an impediment to interacting with other humans?

Gen X. If you think about it, this is how it worked, once you woke up in the morning, got dressed, ate your breakfast, you were out - of the house. Playing with your friends, on the weekends all day long. One game after another, whether it was city stickball, combing the woods, or kickball, you were physically interacting with other humans as your primary means of social interaction. Even today, when I call my friend, we spend about 2 min.s otp, and only to determine where, in the real world we will meet. IT was not the social fabric of our formative years. Can we adjust, yes, but it is just that an adjustment from dead center.

You might be able to gauge someone's level of IT disintermediation by walking the sequence of IT across which they have traversed. Just to use myself as an example:
-1. A Pong console
0. 1982 purchased a Smith Corona Correctable Typewriter for college
1. 1983 Second semester I was acquainted with an Apple IIe for wordprocessing, $325 down the drain on that SC. Very difficult to use, cntrl-x for 20+ key combos
2. 1984 Moved to the computer lab, maybe 20 IBM ATs/XCs with which we did word processing on wordvision. I was hooked at that point
3. 1985 Took Fortan 77 & Pascal on the Burroughs 5500
4. 1984 Took Fortan IV on another MF
5. 1985 Commodore 64
6- IBM PCs
7- Sperry-Univac
8-Prime
9-Mac
10-and so on util today IBM T43

Somewhere in the middle of the span, which is still moving, is my burn in point for the computer concept & my relation to it. Sure, it will change, but it is an anchor nonetheless, from which I perceive the world.

Conrtol Points on the Internet

Google has declared its mission 'to organize the World's information'. How is this relate its movement into 'commerce brokering'? Google's attempt to capture commerce as an internet control point is, however, a common business model strategy. The strategy is to own a critical nexus of the internet complex through which internetting behavior must pass. Google earth is a similar control point. Perhaps there are a set of control points which users rely upon to use the net. Commerce, 3-D backplanes, media exchanges, social backplanes, and other nexuses will become the control structure of the internet as it moves beyond Web 1.5 into a true 3-D internet that moves from centralized control points to value-based control points.

Vectored Thought

Our educational system is inherently sequential. One page follows another, chapters follow each other, classes follow each other, and so it goes. This is a bad template for understanding the natural world. By our system for inculcating information into children we decieve, not purposely, them into believing that one thing usually follows another. One thing is usually inside another. Teaching a fair amount of pedagogical skepticism is probably the best innoculation against this bad thought template.

Likewise, I am not sure that the Euclidian 3-space alternative is any better. I suppose it's not worse, but something nags me about it. Perhaps "linear" algebra was the best 'user exit' from these. Interestingly enough, Wikipedia has this to say about the Euclidian method of describing space: "An implication of Einstein's theory of general relativity is that Euclidean geometry is only a good approximation to the properties of physical space if the gravitational field is not too strong." Maybe that's the answer, teach our children that each description is just 'a good approximation'.

Advancing Reality, at the Expense of its Distinctions

Computer technology is growing new appendages, e.g., 3-D, haptics, sound, collaborative, high trust, time-based. Each of these enriches the capability of automation to model the real world and interact with it. With these computer capabilities we come closer to making the computer disappear into the landscape. Computers took our world and first made it 1-space (command line), then moved us into 2-space (motif, OS2, windows), now we are moving beyond flatland. Virtual Reality, High Fidelity Simulations, Gaming & Virtual Worlds are creating hi touch computed environments. These environments will take us beyond 3-D and cause us to blur the boundaries among concepts normally separate, like media vs education, or work & play, or advertising vs eduction. A feeling of immersion, in a computer-based environment, entails mastering the combination of these recently enablable factors to recreate our real world experience.

A Tolerance For Ambiguity

As the shift happens an interesting personal litmus test takes place. Some will pass through the shift, while others will be asked to stay. In a conversation with a friend recently an idea occurred to me. He has had a number of successful careers, first as a guitarist, then as a designer of spacecraft, and now as a software avante garde. He was wondering why he made it through paradigm shifts that trapped others. I noticed a theme running through the variety of solutions he had developed - a tolerance for ambiguity. Others were deeply engrossed in their point of view, but he explored multiple points of view. The more deeply invested, involved, or otherwise glued to a framework on is, the more difficult to see outside it. A healthy skepticism for whatever paradigm in which one sits will make it easier to escape it when its limits are found. This skepticism of complete solutions and tolerance for the ambiguity it assumes both appear as mileposts on the journey through a breakneck cognitive evolution. Given the complexity of the natural world, it is likely that the limitations we see in our explanations for it are indicative of the cognitive limitations we own. As we develop cognitive tooling, like computers, we are able to decomplexify the natural landscape. Innovation of those tools and mastery of them will be the guiding principles as we surf the n-space that is the natural world with its constantly reconfiguring set of factors.

Shift Happens

I believe we are in the middle of a technology perterbation. While most technorati consume themselves with Web 2.0 muse, the technology continues to be nothing but a set of tools for improving the 'expression of the crowd'. A more fundamental shift is occuring...technology is being parted out and recovered in ways that we can never anticipate. Web 2.0 is a pluralistic parting & reassembly method. To that end it accellerates the shift from a system being defined by its physical boundaries to ephemeral systems. The new e-systems are more akin to carbon-based, rather than iron or silicon-based. As these whole systems are parsed and reassembled, there will be mistakes. But as the parse becomes right, the reassembly will happen more naturally. It will look & operate more like a biological entity.