SE News

There’s no technological panacea for the mobile workforce; technology alone won’t enable enterprises to manage the full scale of mobility challenges. Yet depending solely on skilled people is unrealistic and non-repeatable. Organizations need policies and related processes balanced with the technological and human elements to successfully support the growing mobile workforce.

Simon Liu

http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/abs/html/mags/it/2010/03/mit2010030004.htm

In these turbulent times, with increasingly constrained capital and diminished labor resources, organizations are focusing on deriving measurable business value from their IT investments. Forward-looking firms see this as an opportunity to transform their business models to better satisfy demands for new types of services and products. These strategic shapers expect IT to enable business transformation.

Elby M. Nash

http://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/homepage/2010/0110/rW_IT_ITandBusiness.pdf

Michael Poulin elaborates on the differences between of governance and management and tries to explore the ‘wonderland’ of governance in a service-oriented environment. He defines SOA Governance, explores the relationship between governance and enterprise architecture, and discusses accountability and ownership of governance efforts, and how practitioners can instrument SOA governance.

Michael Poulin

http://www.infoq.com/articles/poulin-wonderland-soa-governance

In a previous article, The Myth of the Interchangeable Programmer, I discussed the flawed Software Management Formulas (SMFs) that form the basis for many decisions in computing. The SMFs suggest to anyone foolish enough to use them that the cost of software development is primarily dependent upon the per hour cost of programmers. Thus, the SMFs suggest the best way to reduce development costs is to find cheaper programmers.

The ultimate manifestation of the SMFs within industry is the current offshore outsourcing (offshoring) fad. To find the cheapest programmers, one moves operations to the lowest wage countries he can find. The hype on offshoring is so frenzied that experience in offshoring has become a mandatory requirement for nearly any senior level computing management job.

John Miano

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/article.php/3784616/Why+Offshoring+Software+Development+Will+Fail.htm

Today’s enterprises know that continuous improvement of quality and productivity is a prerequisite for survival. Ever-changing market circumstances place a strong demand on agility and flexibility. Now that an increase in labor productivity has caught people’s attention again and off shoring has become the de facto mode of operation, Industrialization and Global Sourcing are key elements in the present-day IT strategy of organizations. Transforming the IT operations from a project mode to a factory mode is part of this strategy.

Hence, the Software Factory becomes more than just a metaphor, both during times of economic recession when companies wish to minimize their costs, and during periods of economic boom, when short time-to-market is essential to increase market share. From the twelve years of practical experience it has become apparent that the productivity and predictability of software solutions through a Software Factory approach have improved drastically.

The book “Managing a Software Factory” provides a complete and integral view of all aspects of a software factory. Catch words are predictability, reliability, quality and high productivity focusing on cost reduction and short time-to-market. Managing a Software Factory can be used as a guide to professionalize your ICT organization and provides a manual for setting up software factories.

Kees Kranenburg (author)

http://www.sdu.nl/catalogus/9789012128261

Typically, information technology ranks highly among most companies’ top five expenditures. Yet IT continues to be one of the least understood and most poorly managed areas in business. While all executives recognize the importance of technology as a means of improving customer service and of making work more efficient, few understand how to leverage IT strategically and how to use it as a driver of business success. Managing IT as a Business provides executives with practical advice on how to unleash the full potential of this critical function so that companies can derive maximum benefit. It offers a proven plan for bridging the gap between CEOs and CIOs that has, until now, impeded their ability to work together in order to craft objectives, establish budget guidelines, and develop metrics for measuring IT value and success. In short, with this book as a guide, business leaders will learn how to manage IT as they would any other functional business unit.

Mark Lutchen

http://www.pwc.com/extweb/pwcpublications.nsf/docid/501f06413c9854b785256e1b0062002a

Every enterprise now lives and dies by the data stored on its computers and networks, and none can long survive if that data isn’t accurate and reliable. In addition to the damage that can come from the actual alteration of data, the impact on a company’s reputation can be substantial if customers are faced with unreliable, poor-quality products. Quality assurance (QA) and information assurance (IA) programs play crucial roles in protecting assets and developing trustworthy products and services.

Jeffrey Voas,
Linda Wilbanks

http://csdl2.computer.org/comp/mags/it/2008/03/mit2008030010.pdf

The term “governance” has been regularly appearing in IT publications and conferences for some time, but among technical circles, such discussions are often yawn-provoking at best. This article provides a developer-friendly guide to SOA Governance, starting with the general notion of IT governance down through design-time and the second runtime Governance.

Gernot Starke

http://www.infoq.com/articles/governance-gernot-starke

De Sarbanes-Oxley-wet (SOx) van 2002 en het Basel II-akkoord stellen organisaties voor veel nieuwe uitdagingen. In het bijzonder Sectie 404 van SOx verplicht directieleden terug te keren naar de basisprincipes van goed economisch beheer. De kosten hiervan zijn hoog. Daarom aandacht voor manieren om de kosten van compliance te verlagen. Daarnaast staan we in dit themanummer stil bij het beheer van kredietrisico, operationeel risico en marktrisico door financiële instellingen, en beschrijven we een methodologie om SOx 404-controletesten routinematig te kunnen afhandelen.

http://www.informatie.nl/artikelen/2008/03/

An ancient Chinese proverb states that “The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” When embarking on a software metrics program, we don’t want that journey to begin by stumbling on the first step. We want a metrics program that gains traction and succeeds, and avoids the pitfalls of another famous proverb: “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

The Goal-Question-Metric Approach (GQM) is a powerful tool for taking the first step with confidence and direction. GQM helps us build the framework for a measurement model by putting the initial focus on goals, the objectives that we want to achieve with metrics.

Roger Dunn

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/edge/08/mar08/dunn/index.html

Agile methodologies for software projects can help organizations create better software faster. Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard that before. Here, experienced programmers explain the key ingredients to make those goals achievable.

Esther Schindler

http://www.cio.com/article/180402

For many enterprise architects, there is increasing pressure from CxOs to cut costs, reduce inefficiencies, and to foster agility in systems. Enterprises invest more than 70 percent of their budgets purely on maintaining their existing asset investments. This shows that there is a clear and present broken link between strategic business objectives and “keeping the lights on” in the IT department. This is verified by a recent report by AMR Research that reports that 75 percent of IT organizations have little oversight over their project portfolios and employ non-repeatable, chaotic planning processes.

By using an application portfolio management (APM) practice, IT decision makers can gain visibility into the application’s impacts that reside in the enterprise. This article describes how application portfolio management (APM) compliments an enterprise architect’s multi-faceted role. APM provides key information into the IT enterprise architect (EA) management process. It answers questions such as “Can yesterday’s applications meet tomorrow’s needs?”

Mike Walker

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb896054.aspx

Software has been difficult to bring under executive control. In spite of software’s importance to corporate operations, it has remained an intractable technology that causes almost as much trouble as it brings benefits.

Because many CEOs are 40 to 60 years of age, their background and training has included little information about dealing with software. This is also true for many vice presidents of operating units such as manufacturing, sales, marketing and human resources. However, every major corporation has largely automated its financial reporting, billing, marketing and manufacturing. Software is a critical factor for the time-to-market of many new products and may be embedded in the product itself. Ignorance is dangerous.

This article discusses 25 major software topics that CEOs (and other top executives) should understand, to ensure that the software their companies depend upon is an asset and not a liability to the corporations they control.

Capers Jones

http://www.cio.com/article/135250

The practices in this category promote strategies for running a project efficiently and effectively, so project teams and executives get the transparency and oversight required for lean governance, without unnecessary overhead. The specific practices associated with this category are:

• Iterative Development
• Risk-Based Milestones
• Adapt the Process
• Continuous Improvement
• Embedded Compliance

Scott W. Ambler and Per Kroll

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/jul07/kroll_ambler/index.html

Architects must often make architectural design decisions but are typically unable to evaluate their economic impact. Management is often interested in product-level decisions (such as features and quality) but not in the technical details of how those decisions are achieved. These differing interests can lead to inconsistencies between how executives and managers define and foresee value, and how architects can enable or disable those value propositions through their design decisions. This lack of effective communication results in a weak partnership between architects and executives, resulting in missed opportunities to make informed and technically feasible valuedriven design decisions. This information exchange is particularly critical when an organization must plan for architecture evolution in the face of uncertain future business and mission goals. Since software engineering artifacts exist to serve the business goals of an enterprise, optimizing the value of software systems is a central concern of software engineering [Boehm 2000].

Equipping software architects with the ability to reason about value will provide them with the vocabulary and rationale needed to articulate the value-driven impact of architectural decisions to management.

Ipek Ozkaya, Rick Kazman and Mark Klein

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/07.reports/07tr003.html