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Thursday, September 26, 2002

Agile Software Development Methods: Review and Analysis

Abrahasson, Pekka et al. Agile software development: Review and Analysis. ESPOO 2002, VTT Publications 478. 107p.

Keywords: Software development, agile processes, agile methods, extreme programming, agile modelling, open source software development, software project management

Abstract: Agile--denoting "the quality of being agile; readiness for motion, nimbleness, activity, dexterity in motion"--software development methods are attempting to offer an answer to the eager business community asking for lighter weight along with faster and nimbler sofware development processes. This is especially the case with the rapidly growing and volatile Internet software industry as well as for the emerging mobile application environment. The new agile methods have evoked a substantial amount of literature and debates. However, academic research on the subject is still scarce, as most of existing publications are written by practitioners or consultants.

The aim of this publication is to begin filling this gap by systematically reviewing the existing literature on agile sofware development methodologies. This publication has three purposes. First, it proposes a definition and a classification of agile software development approaches. Second, it analyses ten sotware development methods that can be characterized as being "agile" against the defined criteria. Third, it compares these methods and highlights their similarities and differences. Based on this analysis, future research needs are identified and discussed.

Sunday, September 22, 2002

Agile User Groups

There are user groups springing up around the Agile Alliance focused on improving development processes along the lines of the Agile Manifesto. I attended the New England Agile User Group on Thursday, 18 September, and a good time was had by all. Ken Schwaber's comments provide a summary of the meeting.

There is also a new user group in Calgary: Calgary Agile Methods User Group (CAMUG)

Friday, August 23, 2002

How Stuff Works: Wireless Security Blackpaper

Where do you go to get a good description of how wireless security works, how it gets hacked, and how to prevent intrusion? You can go to vendor sites and weed through the hype, or to hacker sites and sort through dense technical detail. Maybe you just need a good technical description. Trey "Azariah" Dismukes has written a Wireless Security Blackpaper that fits the bill.

"While wireless networks have seen widespread adoption in the home user markets, widely reported and easily exploited holes in the standard security system have stunted wireless' deployment rate in enterprise environments. While many people don't know exactly what the weaknesses are, most have accepted the prevailing wisdom that wireless networks are inherently insecure and nothing can be done about it. Can wireless networks be deployed securely today? What exactly are the security holes in the current standard, and how do they work? Where is wireless security headed in the future? This article attempts to shed light on these questions and others about wireless networking security in an enterprise environment."

Wednesday, August 21, 2002

SCRUM vs. Waterfall: Point and Counterpoint

Note: CMM is a service mark of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Shawn Presson, Director of Organizational Practice, ITS Services, Inc. says:


Why, why, why does everything think the waterfall life cycle is exclusively linear? It was designed to be extremely iterative, it allowed for the fact that there may be parallel, non-sequential sets of requirements under development (hence multiple, simultaneous "waterfalls"), it in no way assumed that requirements will be static during a project. It was only after the DoD got its hands on it that this interpretation of the model came about, but why are we listening to the DoD on something like this? ...

Why, why, why do we assume that "repeatable" and "defined" models preclude emergence? These terms are obvious reference to the CMMs, but the CMMs don't lock you into waterfall, spiral, or any other life cycle or methodology. With reference to requirements, the CMM says, "don't let your junior developer bet the farm on meeting a requirement that the project doesn't know about." Does SCRUM cover this point? Great, then SCRUM is the METHOD whereby this important principle (NOT "process") contained in the model is carried out...SCRUM (or JAD, or whatever) is the METHOD whereby your company avoids inadvertently lying about its capabilities (which is what the CMM planning is largely about, anyway.)... (See full text)

Ken Schwaber of the Agile Alliance responds:

Reading Shawn Presson’s comments regarding CMM, waterfall, and agile reminded me of Barry Boehm’s comments at XP/Agile Universe’02 and the comments of several CMM authors at INCOSE’02. I was reminded of the good intentions and sound footings of CMM and Waterfall, both initiated to address problems in systems development and systemic project failures rates that have only marginally improved over the decades...

...CMM, waterfall spring from a different theoretical basis than agile processes. Increased precision and definition are at their core, which is one of the alternatives for controlling a process. However, this approach only works when the definition and the problem have a mapping approaching 1:1 and the problem domain (technical, requirements, and people) is relatively simple: “It is typical to adopt the defined (theoretical) modeling approach when the underlying mechanisms by which a process operates are reasonably well understood. When the process is too complicated for the defined approach, the empirical approach is the appropriate choice.” Process Dynamics, Modeling, and Control, Ogunnaike and Ray, Oxford University Press, 1992.

The agile process is based on the empirical approach, accepting the complexity of the problem and addressing it through frequent inspection and constant adaptation...Empiricism is seen even in the Agile Manifesto, where the signatories pose agility as an empirical counterpoint to a defined approach, rather than as a new set of defined absolutes. The various agile processes implement empiricism with the underlying practices of iterative development, frequent inspection of status and increments of work, self-organizing teams, emerging architecture and requirements, and solid collaboration... (See full text)

Tuesday, July 30, 2002

Architecture: Component Based Development

Ratio Group Ltd. has some interesting papers in its technical library. I was recently reviewing:

Collins-Cope, Mark and Matthews, Hubert. A Reference Architecture for Component Based Development. Ratio Group Ltd.

The paper propose a reference architecture for objet=oriented/component based systems consisting of five layers... More specific (and therefore less reusable) components are placed in the higher layers, and the more general, reusable components are in the lower layers. Since general non-application components are less likely to change than application specific ones, this leads to a stable system as all dependencies are downward in the direction of stability, and so changes tend not to propagate across the system as a whole.

In general, systems implementation I have reviewed do not do a great job of eliminating dependencies across components so this paper is worth reading by all developers. There are deeper issues of unavoidable dependencies across well implemented components that merit serious analysis. I'm currently writing a paper on this which will be a sequel to a forthcoming Communciations of the ACM publication.

Monday, July 29, 2002

Microsoft courts VB faithful: Java competition pressure mounts as XML determines .Net's future


By Tom Sullivan, InfoWorld, July 26, 2002 1:01 pm PT

CENTRAL TO MICROSOFT'S grand vision of unifying its entire software stack through use of XML is the task of keeping its loyal following of VB (Visual Basic) developers in the fold. "Our developers are an important asset, if not the most important asset. Developers drive everything. They're the ones who are going to take us into tomorrow," said Chris Flores, Visual Studio .Net product manager at Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft...

But as Microsoft asks its developers to leap from VB 6 to VB .Net, a growing band of competitors, including BEA Systems, Sun Microsystems, IBM, and Macromedia, are attempting to increase the size of their own developer communities. The learning curve associated with VB .Net is creating an opportunity for competing vendors. "Microsoft has cause to worry that VB developers will think about moving to Java," said Jason Bloomberg, a consulting analyst at ZapThink Research, a Waltham, Mass.-based market research company that specializes in XML and Web services.

Microsoft, in turn, is fighting back, working to protect its legion of developers by "doing what we always do," Microsoft's Flores said. On the surface level, the software giant's plan has included upgrade tools and an increased concentration on training its corps of developers through seminars and conferences and via its MSDN (Microsoft Developers Network) Web site, which provides lessons and sample code. Microsoft is also making its toolbox work more cohesively with the rest of its products by planting the .Net Framework in all of its servers over time...

According to a survey by Evans Data, more than half of all developers plan to use Java during some part of the time they spend programming this year and next year, whereas only 3 percent will use it exclusively. Use of VB, on the other hand, is expected to decline slightly, with 43.5 percent of respondents planning to use VB next year, down from 46 percent this year.

Saturday, July 27, 2002

Unsafe At Any Speed? C#'s relaxed security model may not be the best fit for your business

Excerpt by Al Williams, New Architect, August 2002

Another new-style language, Microsoft's C#, has a slightly different way of handling security—one that might appeal to you if you're an old-fashioned C programmer like me. Some analysts dismiss C# as Microsoft's attempt to replace Java out of spite for Sun. Certainly, Microsoft's reluctance to use Java must have played a major part in the decision to develop C#. Still, it's natural for new languages to imitate older languages to some extent. The real test isn't how much a language borrows; rather, it's how much it adds.

I've often said that Java by itself isn't such a spectacular language. Its main strength is its well-designed standard library. I've often thought that someone could clone the Java library for C++ and have a winning product. C# manages this to some extent, and it goes even further. It not only has libraries that compete with Java's, but it also imitates many Java language features.

One of the most interesting qualities of C# is the compromise it makes between the freewheeling style of C and the rigorous restrictions of Java. Sun could even learn something from Microsoft in this area.

When it comes to signing code, Microsoft's .Net uses a similar architecture to that of Java. The .Net Common Language Runtime (CLR) expands on the idea a bit by replacing the idea of a certificate with the concept of evidence. Evidence might be a certificate, or credentials established by some other authentication method. Based on the evidence provided by a piece of code, the system grants or denies rights.

C# differs sharply (pardon the pun) from Java in the amount of self-protection it affords programmers. C# derives much from C, and true to its heritage, it lets you use pointers and control memory management.

C#'s developers realized that while not including these capabilities might be acceptable in a perfect world, things aren't always so simple. If you have to interface your code with other programs, those programs (or their data structures) might require pointers, however error-prone they might be. Likewise, high-performance software might require pointers to squeeze out that last microsecond of performance.

Tuesday, July 23, 2002

Taking Programming to the Extreme

By Erik Sherman July 19, 2002

"The quest for quality software may require programmers to lose the cowboy attitude and learn to cooperate.

"Mansour Raad had a big problem. His start-up firm, DiscoverCast, was developing collision-detection software for the airline industry—mistakes in the code could cost lives. But money dried up after a first round of funding, and hiring additional programmers to finish a bug-proof version was out of the question... So Raad instigated a relatively new coding discipline called extreme programming."

Agile programming has been a hot topic in every major publication from the Economist to the MIT Technology Review. It's time to get on the bus!

Wednesday, July 10, 2002

Technology Adoption: Google


How fast can a new innovation gain dominance, cross the chasm, become a household word. Google may hold the record at 3 years.

Investors Business Daily reported on 9 Jul 2002 that Google was the leading search engine with visitors averaging 25.9 minutes per month. Second place Yahoo visitors averaged 10.8 minutes per month followed by MSN at 5.9 minutes per month.

When Google was initially gaining acceptance, I reported on it in 1999.
-----------------------
21 Mar 1999 Coolest search engine!

What does a search engine have to do with Object Technology? Well, if you type in Jeff Sutherland and then click on "I'm feeling lucky" you will get this page at light speed. Google is awesome!

Google uses a complicated mathematical analysis, calculated on more than a billion hyperlinks on the web, to return high-quality search results so you don't have to sift through junk. This analysis allows Google to estimate the quality, or importance, of every web page it returns. The importance of a web page is entirely independent of any query. A page like www.google.com has high importance if other pages with high importance point to www.google.com and lots of other pages with high importance point to www.google.com. This definition seems circular, and it is. Nonetheless, it yields a well-defined notion of importance that makes finding high quality sites easy.

Tuesday, July 09, 2002

Rugby, Anyone?

Scrum is a good alternative for flexible programming that turns around a fast product.
by Brian Noyes, June 28, 2002.

In a rugby game, a scrum is a part of the game that is a cross between a kickoff and a quarterback snap in American football: a "play in which the forwards of each side come together in a tight formation and struggle to gain possession of the ball when it is tossed in among them," as defined by Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. In a software development context, Scrum is an agile software-management process characterized, among other things, by quick daily meetings to report on project status. It has not received nearly as much attention as EXtreme Programming (XP) or Rational Unified Process (RUP), but it's gaining popularity and it's simple to understand. Like XP and RUP, Scrum tries to address the shortcomings of traditional software processes, where the assumptions that software development can be repeatable and well defined were often flawed.

Friday, July 05, 2002

Cellular Automata: A New Kind of Science

It's the latest buzz so you need to have an opinion on Wolfram's new book. Reviews have been clouded by the author's egocentricity. My recommendation is to read it and sift the wheat from the chaff.

Wolfram, Stephen. A New Kind of Science. Wolfram Media, Inc. 2002.

This is a large book and I am only part way through it, studying it carefully a small piece at a time. It merits that level of attention. Wolfram's basic argument is that cellular automata can exhibit complex behavior with a few simple rules. Adding more complexity to the rules doesn't necessary add more complexity to the behavior.

More interesting is his view of conventional mathematics which has been the primary tool for describing natural systems. Unfortunately, complex calculus and differential equations can only adequately describe simple phenomena. You quickly need to move to computer simulations to describe any complex behavior. One you move to computation, simple rules are more useful than calculus for generating complex behavior, such as the growth of a tree or rendering of a natural scene. This is obviously heresy to mathematicians. In a previous incarnation, I was assistant professor of mathematics at the U.S. Air Force Academy so I have some background in this field.

It is not heresy to computer scientists who are familiar with cellular automata. In fact, it can be shown that many simple automata are computational complete, i.e. they can generate any calculation that is possible on a computer. Thus the computer can simulate all of the results of calculus and in a sense, cellular automata can be shown to subsume calculus. Calculus is just not as useful in computer science as it is in physics.

Many of Wolfram's ideas are forshadowed by Edward Fredkin. A fellow fighter pilot, I first met Fredkin in 1988 when he provided seed money for one of my startups, Individual.com. His view is that the universe is driven by unique discrete events, and a few simple rules generate all the complexity. He was saying this long before Wolfram even started writing his book. It is helpful to understand Fredkin's ideas when forming an opinion of Wolfram's work, so check out his Digital Philosophy site.

Tuesday, July 02, 2002  

Web services are hot and here is a fun way to learn about them ...

salcentral Web Services Brokerage has lots of web services you can play with, examine XML schemas, understand SOAP syntax. You can create web services of your own and even offer them for sale.

I remember years ago when the Web first appeared and I learned you could build web pages without any content of your own by hyperlinking to other sites. If was fun, exciting, and the Web was clearly going to make a big splash. This was before most people even knew what the Web was. I got the same feeling playing with web services on salcentral. Recommended.

Monday, July 01, 2002  

Apache's Xindice Organizes XML Data Without Schema

A native XML database can make a lot of sense for organizations that want to store and access XML without all the unsightly schema mapping required to store XML in a traditional relational database system. Several commercial native XML databases exist; now, we take a first look at Apache's open source offering, Xindice.

Matt Liotta, DevX, 25 Jun 2002

XML is well deserving of its popularity. Developers are finding myriad uses for it, including application configuration files and object persistence. While using XML in this capacity has many benefits, it can also become an organizational nightmare.

At first glance, a relational database management system (RDBMS) seems like a good way to organize all of your disparate XML data. However, mapping XML documents to relational models is not only difficult, but often results in ugly schemas. For many the answer lies in using a native XML database instead of a traditional RDBMS. This article will describe what a native XML database is, introduce Apache Xindice, and show how to make use of Xindice in a Java application.

Wednesday, June 19, 2002

Beam Me Up!

Australian Scientists Teleport a Beam of Light By Belinda Goldsmith

C A N B E R R A, June 17 — In a world breakthrough out of the realms of Star Trek, scientists in Australia have successfully teleported a laser beam of light from one spot to another in a split second but warn: don't sell the car yet.

A team of physicists at the Australian National University (ANU) announced today they had successfully disembodied a laser beam in one location and rebuilt it in a different spot about one meter away in the blink of an eye. Project leader Dr Ping Koy Lam said there was a close resemblance between what his team had achieved and the movement of people in the science fiction series Star Trek, but reality was still light years off beaming human beings between locations.

Sunday, June 16, 2002

Agile Processes: Ken Schwaber's letter to IEEE Computer

I read with dismay “The Agile Methods Fray”, where two of the luminaries of software processes discuss traditional (defined) and agile approaches. The discussion was irrelevant to those attempting to understand the distinction. A sentence characterized the apparent purpose of the article, “ …found a sensible middle ground and identifying some baby to be saved and some bathwater to be replaced.”

There is no middle ground between traditional and agile processes. The practices of traditional software development processes are inadequate to control projects with complex technology and sophisticated requirements. Agile processes are based on empirical process control, a technique widely adapted by competitive manufacturing and development environments over the last twenty years. I quote from the bible of process control (Process Dynamics, Modeling, and Control, Ogunnaike and Ray, Oxford University Press, 1992), “It is typical to adopt the defined (theoretical) modeling approach when the underlying mechanisms by which a process operates are reasonably well understood. When the process is too complicated for the defined approach, the empirical approach is the appropriate choice.”

Empirical process control relies on frequent inspection and continuous adaptation to minimize risk and produce quality product. Agile processes implement empirical process control through iterations, frequent increments of working, tested functionality, emergence of requirements and architecture, self-organization of multiple small teams, and collaboration. These are not spot practices shared by defined and agile processes since the underlying theory is different … using a defined approach for a complex problem is like using algebra to solve complex, non-linear problems.

We indeed are in the middle of a revolution, as we shed traditionally weak and inadequate practices and adopt agile processes. The issue isn’t merging the two, but successfully managing the change. Those who wish to tinker with either to reach a middle ground tread a dangerous path toward misleading those who rely on them for informed advice.

Ken Schwaber
One of the developer of the Scrum agile process
One of the founders of the AgileAlliance ken.schwaber@verizon.net

Tuesday, June 04, 2002

GE's take on SCRUM: Engines of Democracy


by Charles Fishman, Fast Company 28, p 174.

"Although engines go out the door of this plant at a rate of more than one per day, the air of calm is hardly its most unusual aspect. The plant is General Electric's aircraft-engine assembly facility in Durham, North Carolina. Even within Jack Welch's widely admired empire, the Durham facility is in its own league -- a quiet corner of a global giant, a place where the radical has become routine. GE/Durham has more than 170 employees but just one boss: the plant manager. Everyone in the place reports to her. Which means that on a day-to-day basis, the people who work here have no boss. They essentially run themselves.

"The jet engines are produced by nine teams of people -- teams that are given just one basic directive: the day that their next engine must be loaded onto a truck. All other decisions -- who does what work; how to balance training, vacations, overtime against work flow; how to make the manufacturing process more efficient; how to handle teammates who slack off -- all of that stays within the team."

Good article by Linda Rising on SCRUM meetings


Rising, Linda. Agile Meetings. STQE Magazine, May/Jun 2002.

"I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING: “OH, BOY, another article on meetings. Just what I need!” Believe me, I hate meetings as much as you do. In fact, I consider meetings the biggest time sink in organizations today. I can’t believe I’m writing an article about having more meetings. But please bear with me. Let me share some stories about how frequent, short meetings helped a few teams solve significant problems. Suspend judgment for just a bit..."

Sunday, May 26, 2002

Languages: Can other languages run on top of the Java Virtual Machine?

Roger Sessions comments in a recent ObjectWatch Newsletter article that Java is clearly not language neutral. The introduction to the article follows. Check the link for the whole picture.

"Is Java language neutral? This may seem like a silly question. Java IS a language. Isn't it? Maybe. And maybe not. It depends on what you mean by "Java". Some of us think of Java as being a specific programming language with an associated syntax and a set of language features (such as automatic garbage collection). Sun, however, has traditionally used the term "Java" to mean both the language and the platform (including the extensive Java platform API). In other words, Java is both what you program with and what you program to.

"I have no problem with either the language or the platform. Java is a great language, one which I have advocated since 1996 (in my book, "COM and DCOM; Microsoft's Vision for Distributed Objects"). The Java platform is very complete, and, with a few notable exceptions (such as entity beans), well thought out.

"One might argue that a platform and a language are closely related. But of the two forerunner technologies to the J2EE part of the Java platform, CORBA and the Microsoft Transaction Server, both took considerable pains to distance themselves from any particular language. The only serious competitor to the Java platform, Microsoft's .NET platform, has also been very careful to maintain language neutrality. It is hard to think of any successful platform (other than Java) that has tied itself to a specific language. Smalltalk tried something similar, and for a while appeared to be headed for real success, but eventually faded into obscurity."

Nik Boyd has built a Smalltalk environment called Bistro that runs on top of the Java Virtual Machine. He has an alternative point of view:

Language Neutrality and the Java Platform May 25, 2002 - Nik Boyd - A Somewhat Belated Response to the Assessment by Roger Sessions

Through web links, I recently found the ObjectWatch Newsletter from Roger Sessions dated June 5, 2001, which includes an article titled: Is Java Language Neutral? This article raised several questions for me, including the following. What constitutes language neutrality? What criteria should we use to judge the neutrality of a platform? Does it necessarily include complete language interoperability, or merely the ability to develop and integrate components written in multiple programming languages? Even if certain kinds of language interoperability can be achieved, what benefits does such interoperability confer? What are the natural limits of such interoperability?

Friday, May 24, 2002  

Open Source Wars at the Pentagon


Open-Source Fight Flares At Pentagon: Microsoft Lobbies Hard Against Free Software
By Jonathan Krim, Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, May 23, 2002; Page E01

"Microsoft Corp. is aggressively lobbying the Pentagon to squelch its growing use of freely distributed computer software and switch to proprietary systems such as those sold by the software giant, according to officials familiar with the campaign. In what one military source called a "barrage" of contacts with officials at the Defense Information Systems Agency and the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over the past few months, the company said "open source" software threatens security and its intellectual property.

"But the effort may have backfired. A May 10 report prepared for the Defense Department concluded that open source often results in more secure, less expensive applications and that, if anything, its use should be expanded."

For a more amusing insight into Microsoft see: Microsoft and the Internet Wars: Freedom Fighters!

Wednesday, May 22, 2002  

Security: Pervasive Health Care Applications Face Tough Security Challenges


Check out the latest article on mobile computing security which details my approach at PatientKeeper to delivery of secure healthcare applications on a PDA:

Stanford, Vince. Pervasive Health Care Applications Face Tough Security Challenges. IEEE Pervasive Computing, Apr-Jun 2002, pp. 1014.

"... the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 dramatically changes the legal environment for medical records processing, defining felony offenses and penalties for disclosing individually identifiable medical records... There is nothing like the threat of going to prison to concentrate the mind, so health care IT executives are now concentrating on bringing their systems into compliance as deadlines phase in."

This paper is not on the web yet. Send me a note if you need a copy.

 
Network Capacity Scales with Demand


Recently, I posted a piece on a new patent for an energy device that creates electricity out of thin air. You probably wrote that off as impossible. Well, a good technologist needs to investigate these things and not dismiss them out of hand.

Here's another one. Pundit David Reed argues that with new techology and repeating stations for wireless devices, network capacity actually increases with the number of transmitting stations. Radio waves don't cancel each other out. Our old technology and the way we use the spectrum artificially limits us. In fact, the whole FCC approach to regulating spectrum is a dinosaur based on ignorance of fundamental physics.

Friday, May 17, 2002  

XML: Introduction to Xquery


When my team at a healthcare software company was developing internet distributed workflow systems a few years ago we had to write a homegrown query language for examining XML process definitions. The W3C XML Query Working Group has finally delivered a working draft of a general solution, XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language. Pandrangi and Cheng have published the first of four articles on Introduction to Xquery:

"Over the past few years, XML has rapidly gained popularity as a formatting language for information, finding constituencies in both the document-centric and data-centric worlds. The explosive growth of XML-based standards bears testimony to XML's interest to many different technical communities. Applications now use XML for both transient messages, such as SOAP or XML-RPC messages, and as persistent storage, such as in XML databases or content management systems. An XML-based web, as opposed to an HTML-based web, no longer sounds like fantasy.

"As the volume of information stored in XML grows, it becomes correspondingly more important to be able to access information in XML documents efficiently and effectively. To do that, you need an expressive query language so you can specify precisely what information you want to retrieve or update in an XML data source. XQuery intends to be that language."

Thursday, May 16, 2002  

Web Services: More than 65 articles to wet your appetite


Catch up on the Web Services buzz with dozens of articles on technical implementation. "Discover how XML-enabled Web services can connect your dissimilar platforms with these essential articles. Expert contributors show you how to implement Web services for efficiency, security, and mobility. They also help you distinguish reality from the hype, and explain what Web services mean for your business."


Friday, May 10, 2002

Coolest Search Engine: Kartoo


Kartoo.com is a search engine designed by French guys who were always the best user interface designers. When I was President of Object Databases, Gail Paquet came over to the U.S. for three years and built the best object-oriented multimedia applications I have seen before or since. Kartoo reminds me of his work.

The last search engine I recommended was Google back on 21 Mar 1999 before most people knew about it. Kartoo sits on top of Google and other search engines to give you an object-oriented views of relationships. You can click to emphasize certain words and the whole pattern will reconfigure itself. The advanced search selection features are way beyond cool!

It is always interested to see what it on sites that reference my object technology page. I immediately found: http://www.merchantstore.com/computer/science.html
which has the most interesting links to computer science resources I've seen in a long time. Check out at least one of them.

A couple of people in my startup have already made it their home page. Need I say more!!

Wednesday, May 08, 2002  

Agile Software Development: Wicked Problems


Mary Poppendieck has an interesting article, Wicked Problems, in Software Development magazine, May 2002. She notes that SCRUM is an excellent adaptive project-management approach for wicked software development projects. In fact, Degrace and Hulet's book, Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions, Prentice Hall, 1990, was one of the inspirations for the invention of the SCRUM software development process.

An enlightening aspect of this article is documenting who coined the phrase, "wicked problems," i.e. Rittel, H and Webber M. Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. Policy Sciences, Vol. 4. Elsevier, 1973. A wicked problem has these characteristics:

1. Wicked problems have no definitive formulation. Each attempt at creating a solution changes your understanding of the problem.
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule. Stakeholders, political realities, or resource issues change the end game.
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad. No definitive formulation and no stopping rule means the only success is when the stakeholders "feel good enough."
4. There is no immediate or ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem. Any solution generates a wave of unpredictable consequences.
5. Every implemented solution to a wicked problem has consequences. Unanticipated side effects are the norm.
6. Wicked problems don't have a well-described set of potential solutions. Stakeholders have different views of what is acceptable.
7. Each wicked problem is essentially unique. The art of not knowing what solution to apply too early is critical. Decision making must often be delayed until the last possible moment to assure success.
8. Each wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem. Changing constraints and interlocking issues are embedded in a social context.
9. The causes of a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. Stakeholders have varying views on what the problem is, who or what is causing it, and how to resolve it.
10. The planner (designer) has no right to be wrong. Scientists formulate hypotheses which may be tested and found wrong. Designers are not allowed to be wrong. They must get it right the first time.

I've been a VP of Engineering or CTO of nine companies. The goal for me at every company was to solve a wicked problem. That's why SCRUM was invented and why it has been used extensively in the last five companies.


Tuesday, May 07, 2002  

Objects: Has Bertrand Meyer gone over to the dark side of the force?


Object guru Bertrand Meyer has a three-part series in Software Development magazine along with a new book on .NET. He has also enabled the Eiffel language to interoperated in the .NET environment. In his first article, "Polygot Programming," he promotes the language interoperability capability of .NET where Microsoft has truly gone where no one has gone before.

As Meyer points out, no one has ever come close to this level of interoperability before.

See Bertrand's new book, The .NET Training Course. Pentice Hall, 2001. And his classic text on object technology, Object-Oriented Software Construction, 2nd Edition, Prentice Hall, 2000.

Saturday, May 04, 2002  

Agile Software Processes: Does Agility Work?

Check out the June 2002 Software Development Magazine for a great article by Jim Highsmith on Agile case studies. (Not on the web yet. I'll post a link when available.) One of them was a highly successful project that reimplemented a leading radiology software products in new technology. This type of project is high risk and failure prone. It took three years of 30 day SCRUM sprints. I was SVP of Product Development and Chief Technology Officer of IDX at the time and suggested to Deb Stenner, the development leader, that she bring Ken Schwaber in as SCRUM Master. According to Deb, the project was so successful that the average sales person was at 180% of quota and some were at 400%. It was "incredibly, phenomenally, successful ... almost too successful." They had difficulty shipping and supporting new installations. Oh well, how about an installation SCRUM?

Recent Publications

Minear, Mike and Sutherland, Jeff. Informatics - A Catalyst for Operating Room Transformation. White Paper Developed for the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC), US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, 2002.

Sutherland, J. and W.-J. van den Heuvel (2002). "Enterprise Application Integration and Complex Adaptive Systems: Could System Integration and Cooperation be improved with Agentified Enterprise components?" Communications of the ACM, October (in press).

Stanford, Vince. Pervasive Health Care Applications Face Tough Security Challenges. IEEE Pervasive Computing, Apr-Jun 2002, pp. 1014. Details my work on PatientKeeper PDA security for wireless applications. Send email for a copy.

Sutherland, J. and W.-J. van den Heuvel (2002). Enterprise Application Integration Encounters Complex Adaptive Systems: A Business Object Perspective. 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35), Big Island, Hawaii, IEEE Computer Society.

Sutherland, Jeff. Agile Can Scale: Inventing and Reinventing SCRUM in Five Companies. Cutter IT Journal 14:12:5-11, Dec 2001. Send email for a copy.

Sutherland, Jeff. Power to the PDA. Healthcare Informatics, July 2001. Send email for a copy.

Maamar, Zakaria and Sutherland, Jeff. Toward Intelligent Business Objects. Communications of the ACM, Oct 2000.

Sutherland, Jeff. "Big Workflow" for Enterprise Systems. OOPSLA Workflow Workshop Proceedings, 1999.

Patel , D., Sutherland, J., Miller, J., (Eds.) Business Object Design and Implementation III: OOPSLA'99 Workshop Proceedings. Springer, 1999. Order half price from Amazon.

Patel , D., Sutherland, J., Miller, J., (Eds.) Business Object Design and Implementation II: OOPSLA'96, OOPSLA'97, and OOPSLA'98 Workshop Proceedings. Springer, 1998. Order half price from Amazon.

Sutherland, J.V. , Patel, D., Casanave, C., Miller, J., Hollowell, G., (Eds.) Business Object Design and Implementation. Springer, 1997. Order half price from Amazon.

Sutherland, Jeff. The Emergence of a Business Object Component Architecture. In Patel , D., Sutherland, J., Miller, J., (Eds.) Business Object Design and Implementation III: OOPSLA'99 Workshop Proceedings. Springer, 1999.

Beedle, Mike; Devos, Martine; Sharon, Yonat; Schwaber, Ken; Sutherland, Jeff. SCRUM: An extension pattern language for hyperproductive software development. In Harrison, Neil; Foote, Brian; Ronhert, Hans (Eds.) Pattern Languages of Program Design 4. Addison-Wesley Software Patterns Series, 1999.

Sutherland, Jeff. OOPSLA'98 Workshop Report: Business Object Design and Implementation IV: From Business Objects to Complex Adaptive Systems. 13th Annual Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, and Applications Addendum to the Proceedings. OOPS Messenger, ACM/SIGPLAN, 1999.

Sutherland, Jeff. Business Objects and the Evolution of the Internet. In Zamir, Saba (Ed.) Handbook of Object Technology. CRC Press, 1998.

Sutherland, Jeff. Distributed Object Computing: Healthcare Technology Futures. Distributed Computing 1:9:62-64, Sep 1998.

Sutherland, Jeff. Why I Love the OMG: The Emergence of a Business Object Component Architecture. ACM StandardView, March 1998. ACM Citation. Full text.

Sutherland, Jeff. OOPSLA'97 Workshop Report: Business Object Design and Implementation III. 12th Annual Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, and Applications Addendum to the Proceedings. OOPS Messenger, ACM/SIGPLAN, 1998.

Sutherland, Jeff. Database Development for the Web. WEBAPPS 1:3:26-33, May/June 1997.

Sutherland, Jeff. The Object Technology Architecture: Business Objects for Corporate Information Systems. In Proceedings of the OOPSLA'95 Workshop on Business Object Design and Implementation. Springer-Verlag, 1997.

Sutherland, Jeff. OOPSLA'96 Workshop on Business Object Design and Implementation II. 11th Annual Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, and Applications Addendum to the Proceedings. OOPS Messenger, ACM/SIGPLAN, 1997.

Sutherland, Jeff. The Java Revolution. SunExpert 8:1:42-54, Jan 1997.

Sutherland, Jeff. Integrating Java, Objects, Databases, and the Web. In 1996 International Conference on Object Oriented Information Systems. D. Patel, Y. Sun, and S. Patel (Eds.). 16-18 December, London. Springer, 1996.

Sutherland, Jeff. The Smalltalk Manifesto: Avoiding RoadKill on the InfoBahn. Object Magazine 9.96

Sutherland, Jeff. Microsoft and the Internet Wars: Freedom Fighters. homepage.journal 3.96

Sutherland, Jeff. Road Kill on the Information Highway: JavaDay. homepage.journal 2.96

Sutherland, Jeff. Business objects in corporate information systems. ACM Comput. Surv. 27, 2 (Jun. 1995), pp. 274 - 276. Citation ACM Digital Library.

Sutherland, Jeff. OOPSLA'95 Workshop on Business Object Design and Implementation. 10th Annual Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, and Applications Addendum to the Proceedings. OOPS Messenger 6:4:170-175. ACM/SIGPLAN October, 1995.

Sutherland, Jeff. Smalltalk, C++, and OO COBOL: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Object Magazine 5:2:32-35, May,1995.

Sutherland, J., Pope, P. and Rugg, K. The Hybrid Object-Relational Architecture (HORA) : an integration of object-oriented and relational technology. In SAC '93. Proceedings of the 1993 ACM/SIGAPP symposium on Applied computing: states of the art and practice-1993, pages 326-333. Citation and review in ACM Digital Library.

Paquet, Gaël. Hyper9002: an online operating manual for a chemical manufacturer using hypertext integrated with an object oriented database. In: SAC '92. Proceedings of the 1992 ACM/SIGAPP symposium on Applied computing (vol. II): technological challenges of the 1990's, pages 976-984. Citation in ACM Digital Library.
 

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