Community Blogs

Blog Post: Real vs. Perceived Security

John McDonald — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:30:00 GMT

Let’s say you wanted to buy a new book. You go to Amazon.com on your computer, and you select the book you want. Then you get to the page where you type in your credit card information, and you freeze in your tracks.

Why? You know it’s safe: it’s Amazon, after all. You know that the data you’re sending is probably encrypted, and the chances are so low that you’d be the one who’s card is stolen. But still, as you type the number, you get that feeling in the pit of your stomach, hoping it’s all OK.

That feeling in your stomach turns into a growl, and so you decide to get up and go get some lunch. At the end of your meal, the bill comes, and you reach into your wallet and hand over your credit card.

And the waiter walks away with it. For ten minutes. With all your numbers. And the numbers on the back. And your signature.

And you think not a thing about it.

So what is the difference? Why do you “feel” less secure when you type those numbers into your browser, but much more secure when you hand over your credit card to the waiter? Clearly the card handover is much less secure in reality, but your perception of security is so opposite of the facts.

The answer lies in how people process trust. Specifically, it’s very difficult for humans to trust objects or institutions or companies. Said succinctly: people can only trust other people.

The difference between Amazon and your lunch is that with Amazon, you are interacting with a computer: your own, connected to a web server. You have just enough trust in Amazon to know that it’s probably OK, but no more: because your interaction is with a computer, not with a human being.

In the case of the lunch appointment, in spite of your limited interaction, you actually build a simple but powerful trusted relationship with the waiter. So much so, that you know that if an errant charge appears on your card, your mind will immediately go back to that waiter, and you will try to assess if that person betrayed your trust. You will think of that first, before any computers, vendors, stores or other places who have your card number on file.

That’s the core of the difference between real and perceived security, and it’s the core of resistance to the cloud that’s based on security concerns. At CloudOne, we are necessarily compliant with every security standard available for the cloud, including ones that are emerging and ones we are helping to develop.

But none of that really matters to potential customers of CloudOne. In the end, they are most interested in having a trusted relationship with the people of CloudOne. It trumps all other considerations and worries about security if you know the people who are managing your data and systems.

This is why companies have abided extremely lax security within the four walls of their own organizations, because they are in the end trusting the employees to do the right thing. Once those systems leave the trusted envelope to the cloud, that implicit trust relationship disappears, and must be rebuilt by the vendor supplying the cloud service.

Blog Post: The Deployment wiki and community needs you!

Jazz.net — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:31:00 GMT

We are constantly striving to reduce the time it takes for you to gain value from our products and solutions. The sooner you can effectively deploy a Rational development environment, the faster you can start using it and gaining value! We are pleased to announce a number of initiatives around improving your deployment experience: A new ... Read more >

Blog Post: IBM Partners for Automotive Systems

John McDonald — Mon, 13 May 2013 11:57:00 GMT

CloudOne is proud to be a founding member of a new group of IBM Business Partners dedicated to helping companies in the automotive industry adopt new practices, technologies and skills.

The automotive industry has always been a competitive place. The drive to source components at a lower cost, on-demand, anywhere in the world has created a dynamic ecosystem of supplier and vendor relationships. Concepts like globalization, contract suppliers and integrated development may be new to other industries, but they are a way of life for the automotive company.

Recently, though, new regulations such as ISO 26262 and processes such as Automotive SPICE have driven the need for tighter integrations and hand-offs between different companies. Propagating change requests to your own supplier network becomes even more important when you’re relying on them for innovation in your own product, and ensuring safety standards compliance is critical when you are being held accountable yourself.

This need for tighter, seamless integration is the unifying theme behind IBM Partners for Automotive Systems. We’re proud to count as members:

BigLever Software, who brings you Gears, the industry-standard product line engineering tool and lifecycle framework for systems and software.
Electric Cloud, who automates and accelerates your software build, test, deploy, and release processes for faster time to market and improved quality.
Method Park, who produces Stages, the leading Business Process Management (BPM) system for managing and improving development and engineering processes.
Sodius, who delivers interoperability solutions that unlock your assets and accelerate your engineering processes, empowering innovation.

Together with CloudOne, the supplier of dynamic, cloud-based storage, processors, software and managed services for systems development, the united partner’s mission is to help automotive companies become more dynamic, produce at a lower cost, and collaborate globally.

You can check out all the partner’s information on our website at http://oncloudone.com/customers/automotive/

Blog Post: Agility@Scale: Strategies for Scaling Agile Software Development

Scott Ambler — Fri, 03 May 2013 12:00:00 GMT

This blog originally posted on IBM.com.

On April 25, 2013 I gave a webcast for the Global Rational User Community entitled Disciplined Agile Delivery: Going Beyond Scrum. During the webcast, a large number of questions were asked, but unfortunately I could not get to all of them. So, I've taken the opportunity to write up the answers in this blog posting.

Fequently asked questions. Many of the questions are addressed in the DAD FAQ.
DAD elevator pitch - I will be starting work in a couple of weeks for a company that has just started its Agile journey this year by implementing Scrum. What would Scott put in an elevator chat as to why they should be moving towards DAD. The Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) decision process framework is a people-first, learning-oriented hybrid agile approach to IT solution delivery. It has a risk-value delivery lifecycle, is goal-driven, is enterprise aware, and is scalable. There are clearly some interesting aspects to the DAD framework. DAD is a hybrid approach which extends Scrum with proven strategies from Agile Modeling (AM), Extreme Programming (XP), Unified Process (UP), Kanban, Lean Software Development, Outside In Development (OID) and several other methods. DAD is a non-proprietary, freely available framework. DAD extends the construction-focused lifecycle of Scrum to address the full, end-to-end delivery lifecycle from project initiation all the way to delivering the solution to its end users. It also supports lean and continuous delivery versions of the lifecycle: unlike other agile methods, DAD doesn’t prescribe a single lifecycle because it recognizes that one process size does not fit all. DAD includes advice about the technical practices such as those from Extreme Programming (XP) as well as the modeling, documentation, and governance strategies missing from both Scrum and XP. But, instead of the prescriptive approach seen in other agile methods, including Scrum, the DAD framework takes a goals-driven approach. In doing so DAD provides contextual advice regarding viable alternatives and their trade-offs, enabling you to tailor DAD to effectively address the situation in which you find yourself. By describing what works, what doesn’t work, and more importantly why, DAD helps you to increase your chance of adopting strategies that will work for you. The article Introduction to Disciplined Agile Delivery provides a more detailed description.
The book: Could you please repeat the name of the book that Scott is talking about? The book is Disciplined Agile Delivery: A Practitioner’s Guide to Agile Software Delivery in the Enterprise published by IBM Press, June 2012. The Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) website and the Disciplined Agile Consortium website are also good DAD resources.
The Surveys: Where is the data published about geographic distribution and effectiveness? All of my survey data, the original questions as asked, and my analysis can be downloaded free of charge from my IT Surveys page. If you ever see a request from me to fill out a survey, please take a few minutes and do so. I think you'll agree that my surveys page is in fact a very useful resource, so please contribute when you can.
Project success criteria: Where would a goal of defining success criteria fall? In the DAD book we describe how the success criteria for the project should be initially identified during Inception. Success criteria, like other things, could evolve throughout the project. You might find theIT Process Success Surveys to be of interest as several of them explored what success criteria projects actually have. Interestingly, its rarely “on time, on budget, to specification”.
Transitioning to DAD: How would you typically phase a DAD implementation, let's say in a project pilot where they haven't been exposed yet to Agile? Same question, any variance if the development team has already started Scrum? This is a fairly complex question to answer. The short story is that you need to invest some time to understand what your strengths and weaknesses are so that you can identify what you need to focus on. You will then likely need to pilot strategies/techniques which are new to your organization before rolling them out widely. You may also need to invest in training and coaching/mentoring depending on your needs. My company, Scott Ambler + Associates, offers these sorts of services and more for organizations interesting in adopting disciplined agile strategies.
Skills: I am aware that ideally developer should also be able to test but in reality theses are usually separate roles. Is it in line with your beliefs\suggestions? Many organizations that are new to agile still have roles that reflect their existing strategy. Non-agile approaches often have people in specific roles such as programmer, tester, designer, and so on. In DAD we promote a different set of agile roles that reflect agile thinking. The implication is that you’re going to have to help individuals transition over to the new way of thinking, something we cover in Chapter 4 of the DAD book. You might also find Mark Line’s blog, No role in DAD for an Analyst? to provide some insights into issues surrounding the transition from traditional to agile roles.
Teaming: What happens with the Product Owner and the Architecture Owner don’t Agree? See my blog What Happens When People Don’t Agree
Skillsets: Different people of the team have different skills, experience, and time horizons. We can't all be generalists, can we? There are several agile roles in DAD, each of which have different rights, responsibilities, and skillsets. So we’re not promoting the idea that everyone have the same skillset. However, we do promote the philosophy that people should strive to be T-skilled generalizing specialists so as to improve their productivity.
Teaming: What are your thoughts on team cohesion? Teams will gel over time. Being co-located helps. Having people who are dedicated 100% to the team helps. Building a team of people who want to be there helps. Self organization helps.
Tool support: Is there an RMC plug-in for DAD + Is there any software behind DAD... or some software that supports it... such as Jazz (RTC) for Agile/Scrum? Yes, IBM Rational does in fact have an RMC plug in for DAD. There is also a templatefor Microsoft TFS from RDA Corp,Software Development Expert’s Practices Advisor supports DAD comprehensively, and I’m currently working with MethodPark to do so too. Stay tuned to the Disciplined Agile Delivery website for information about tool support.
Governance: Regarding enterprise governance and enterprise IT, how do you start taking a culture that imposes common-process, common-tools, central (often outsourced) IT services, and heavyweight stage/gate across all organizations, and get that evolving toward a (still enterprise aware) lean/agile approach? This is a hard one. I’m often called into organizations to help with this very issue. The challenge is that you need to have a deep understanding of IT governance techniques as well as how to govern agile teams. Governance is something we discussed in detail in the DAD book as well as on the DAD site, see Adopting Agile Governance Requires Discipline.
Executable specifications: TDD was mentioned, can you comment on Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and any impact on this lifecycle? BDD is a slight nuance to acceptance test-driven development (ATDD). BDD/ATDD and TDD are both potential practices that you might choose to follow on a DAD team. I’ve written a fair bit about agile testing and quality strategies and about TDD in detail.
Architecture: When does the first version of architecture gets established and what would require to establish it? You typically start thinking about architecture early in a DAD project during Inception following a practice called architecture envisioning. I’ve also written a fair bit aboutagile architecture techniques and the potential misconceptions about agile architecture that you may find interesting.
Travel plans: Will you becoming to South Africa at some point? I hope to be visiting SA later this year but exact dates haven’t been set yet. So, please stay tuned on Twitter at @scottwambler for further announcements.
Other travel plans: If you'd like me to speak at a local event, including corporate conferences or training events, please contact me.

Read the original blog post here.

Blog Post: What Happens When People Don’t Agree?

Agile Transformation — Thu, 02 May 2013 15:39:00 GMT

I was recently asked the question “What happens when the Product Owner and the Architecture Owner don’t agree?” and realized this is an issue for everyone on DAD teams in general. Here’s my advice: Talk it out. People aren’t always going to agree, and that can often be a very good thing. So talk it out amongst [...]

Blog Post: Oh, the places you’ll work (when you use RTC)!

Jazz.net — Wed, 01 May 2013 14:55:00 GMT

With Yahoo’s latest change of policy that restricts employees to only working in the office, people have been buzzing about working from home and distributed teams. At IBM, it’s common for teams to be distributed across nations and even continents. Working from different physical locations and various timezones brings its own set of challenges, but ... Read more >

Blog Post: April's Jazz.net library round up....

IBM developerWorks — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:00:00 GMT

This article was origially posted on IBM DeveloperWorks, by AcdntlPoet.

If you've not checked out Jazz.net recently, here's some of the great content you may have missed over the course of this month. There's a wide breadth of content types below, ranging from betas to videos, workarounds and known issues to workshops. There's something for everyone on jazz.net; we hope this will help you find what you need:

Rational Test Workbench Mobile Tester (version 8.5. Beta 2)- The mobile test capabilities of IBM Rational Test Workbench automate the creation, execution, and analysis of functional tests for mobile and web-based applications. [Read More]

Rational solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management Traceability Templates with Rational Publishing Engine- This article and the accompanying Rational Publishing Engine templates describe at a high level the required template elements and the configuration of those elements for traversing Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) traceability links in a report document produced by Rational Publishing Engine. [Read More]

Workarounds: Jazz Team Server problems in the Rational solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management 4.0.2- This article lists the known problems, workarounds, and limitations related to the Jazz Team Server functionality in the Rational solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management 4.0.2 release. [Read More]

Rational solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management 4.0.1 Reporting Workshop- This workshop is intended as an update to the CLM 2011 Reporting Workshop which provided insight into some of the details of the reporting components introduced with the CLM 2011 release. In this update, we will cover what's new with reporting in CLM 4.0, provide some additional exercises as well as include some links to tutorials and videos that have been created since the CLM 2011 release. - [Read More]

Integrating IBM Rational Requirements and HP ALM with Rational Lifecycle Adapters- If you use HP Application Lifecycle Management software (HP ALM) for quality management, you can use the IBM Rational Adapter for HP ALM to integrate data with Rational Requirements Composer, Rational DOORS Next Generation, Rational Team Concert, or Rational ClearQuest. Developers, testers, and analysts can then work in their own tools and collaborate with each other by using linked resources. The adapters also integrate the Rational solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) with selected non-IBM software. The first release includes adapters for HP ALM, Atlassian JIRA, and Git software. [Read More]

Using IBM Rational Team Concert with HP ALM- This video demonstrates how users of IBM Rational Team Concert can integrate their HP ALM work by using the IBM Rational Lifecycle Adapter for HP Application Lifecycle Management, or HP ALM. [Read More]

Be smart with virtualization- If you're currently using virtualization methods with IBM Rational software, is everything working as smoothly as you expected? Three IBM experts explain the Rational perspective on virtualization and the key requirements for virtualized environments to get optimal performance from Rational applications. They also share details of two case studies and troubleshooting tips. [Read More]

Rational Requirements Management 4.0.1 sizing and tuning guide- This document covers the results of the scalability and performance tests conducted in a RRC-only deployment. Scalability results may vary when introducing other CLM applications. [Read More]

Find the original post by AcdntlPoet here.

Blog Post: Designing Graphs and Tables (part 3)

Jazz.net — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:15:00 GMT

This is the third part of a series of blog posts describing what we’ve learned about the visual display of quantitative information as it relates to CLM predefined reports (continued from part 1 and part 2). How to show data effectively in graphs In part 1 we pointed out that effective design practices are aligned with the following ... Read more >

Blog Post: Webinar – “Disciplined Agile Delivery: Going Beyond Scrum”

Agile Transformation — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:48:00 GMT

Webinar – “Disciplined Agile Delivery: Going Beyond Scrum” Join me as I introduce and moderate this presentation and discussion with Scott on 25th April at 12noon EST. Key topics will include: 1. What the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) framework is. 2. Why a hybrid approach is necessary for enterprise development. 3. How to take a [...]

Blog Post: DAD Instructor Certification in London

Agile Transformation — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 20:45:00 GMT

Mark will be running a DAD Instructor Certification workshop for business partners and consultants in London May 15-17th. You can find more information here…

Blog Post: Join us for an independent analyst webcast: Achieving innovation and faster time to market with effective ALM

Jazz.net — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 20:14:00 GMT

You may recall that back in October 2012, I was thrilled and yet humbled, to announce in my blog that Forrester Research Inc ranked IBM as achieving the highest scores in both current offering and strategy for our Application Lifecycle Management solution among all vendors. Well I am pleased to tell you that Tom ... Read more >

Blog Post:

Agile Transformation — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:46:00 GMT

Mark will be speaking about “Disciplined Agile Delivery: Going Beyond Scrum” at a St. Louis IBM Rational User Group event on April 11th. Details are here…

Blog Post: Mark doing DAD talk at St. Louis IBM Rational User Group

Agile Transformation — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:46:00 GMT

Mark will be speaking about “Disciplined Agile Delivery: Going Beyond Scrum” at a St. Louis IBM Rational User Group event on April 11th. Details are here…

Blog Post: One of a Kind Class Offering: DAD + Advisor

carson.holmes_F385 — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:56:00 GMT

Disciplined Agile Delivery + Advisor Coaches Clinic

Earn credit towards a DAD Black Belt and be qualified to use the Advisor Coach license!

This 3-day class is focused on empowering those who are active with improving software development capability. Participants receive a plain talking, unbiased vision and roadmap for introducing pragmatism into Enterprise IT organizations. Structured around the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) Framework and The Software Development Practice Advisor, this offering qualifies coaches and other enterprise change agents to deliver successful transformational services. Candidates earn credentials that certify that they will be effective in executing the change management strategy manifested within DAD and Advisor. Beyond the branding and rhetoric commonly found in the industry, this combined lecture, workshop and demonstration venue addresses the toughest issues faced on the ground by real organizations. The objective is to deliver an actionable, credible approach to materially improve modern software development adoption success rates, something typically elusive to date. The means is through leveraging the industry leading 2nd generation Lean and Agile DAD framework with the support of Advisor, the industries first Lean and Agile Transformation Infrastructure.

Upcoming Public Classes:

April 29-May 1, 2013 :: Vancouver, B.C.
July 8-10, 2013 :: Toronto, Ontario
September 9-11,2013 :: Los Angeles California
December 9-11 2013 :: London United Kingdom

Blog Post: Call For Papers: Disciplined Agile Delivery for the Enterprise – Cutter IT Journal June 2013

Agile Transformation — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 21:08:00 GMT

Call for Papers: Cutter IT Journal Guest Editor: Scott Ambler Abstract deadline: 1 April 2013 Article deadline: 3 May 2013 Disciplined Agile Delivery in the Enterprise Recently there have been rumblings within the industry along the lines of “what’s next after agile?” and “what does the post-agile landscape look like?” These rumblings reflect the challenges [...]

Blog Post: CLM 4.0.2 is here!

Jazz.net — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 19:25:00 GMT

This release marks the first release in a new quarterly release rhythm for CLM. Some of you might be thinking “Does this mean I need to upgrade every quarter?!” The answer is “No, we don’t expect you to do that.” We understand that upgrades involve significant planning and testing, and most of you will plan only ... Read more >

Blog Post: Scaling Agile: The Software Development Context Framework

Agile Transformation — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:14:00 GMT

The Software Development Context Framework (SDCF) defines how to select and tailor a situation-dependent strategy for software development. The SDCF is used to provide context for organizing your people, process, and tools for a software-based solution delivery team. Figure 1 below depicts how several selection factors drive the choice and tailoring of your team organization (people), delivery process, and [...]

Blog Post: Convergence of Development and Operations - for Systems

John McDonald — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 02:19:00 GMT

Much has been written and said about the topic of "Dev/Ops", which I define to be the connection between the development process and the operation of developed software in production. Much of the conversation has centered around the automation of the process of build and provision, which is an important topic to be sure, but one which begins only to scratch the surface of the real possibilities.

One of CloudOne's customers is working on a very exciting idea, and we're proud to be a part of it. They produce an automotive component - a fairly complicated and expensive one - which is used at the heart of vehicles ranging from pickup trucks to heavy construction equipment.

For some time they've wanted to instrument this component - to gather data about it's performance and send it back for analysis. This used to be called "telemetry", which is to say "tele" meaning remote and "metry" meaning to measure. They built software to take performance measurements and embedded it within small mobile computers (based on Windows CE, now on Android), and started sending it to their nearest data center using cellular technology.

The challenge came in collecting and analyzing this data and doing something productive with it. Because it was scattered into whatever local data center happened to be nearby, it was complicated and expensive to consolidate it. Worse, once it was put together, it was a manual process to sift through it for any good information - information that would help improve the performance of the product were it made available to the designers of the software controlling the product itself.

The answer lies in the cloud - but more importantly, cloud-based analytics.

First, the cloud provides a centralized point for collection for all of the data. No longer do we need to open "doors" to different datacenters to collect whatever is sent - now the cloud offers us one, single place for pulling in real-time data from the field.

But that's not enough, because in the cloud goes powerful analytics tools - a real-time "extract/transform/load" (ETL) tool to process streams as they arrive and organize the data, plus real-time query and "what if" tools to allow ad-hoc questions to be formulated - and answered - quickly.

That allows product engineers (who are using Rational software) to understand how their product is performing, and make changes to enhance the software - and therefore the product - based on real world data.

That opens the door for something very exciting: the convergence of real-time analytics with real-time product performance information with real-time changes to software code. That's "Dev/Ops" on a scale that will change the world.

And that's really exciting.

Blog Post: Disciplined Agile Certification Launches Today

Agile Transformation — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:18:00 GMT

The Disciplined Agile Consortium is proud to announce the launch of our certification programme for practitioners of Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD). DAC is offering three practitioner certifications: Disciplined Agile Yellow Belt. This beginner certification indicates to colleagues and employers that you are eager to learn Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) strategies that enable you to increase your [...]

Blog Post: Upcoming ALM Office Hour Events for March and April

IBM developerWorks — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:57:00 GMT

The ALM Community is planning the following ALM Office Hour events for March and April:　

Is it better to deploy IBM Rational Team Concert incrementally or all at once?
Event Date/Time: March 8, 2013 from 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM (Eastern Time)
Are you gearing to adopt or you have already successfully adopted IBM Rational Team Concert (RTC)? Join us to discuss some successful RTC adoption patterns based on customer experiences. You will learn about tips and tricks on what has worked well for others when introducing a new set of development tools to your teams. This discussion will be led by Rolf Nelson, Senior Product Manager for IBM Rational Team Concert.

Agile Architecture
Event Date/Time: April 5th, 2013 from 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EST)
Agile development is a time boxed iterative approach that encourages rapid and flexible response to change through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams and customers. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary architecture and design and incremental delivery of software to achieve the earliest possible benefit based upon value, risk, priority and necessity. A well functioning, agile team works with just enough process to get the job done but to achieve real productivity improvements and continuously deliver on their objectives, they need sufficient technological infrastructure, or what some have termed "Architectural Runway."

Make sure you email, tweet, and/or blog about these excellent upcoming ALM events!

Author: Fariz Saracevic (@FarizSaracevic) Lifecycle Scenario Architect

Find the original post by AcdntlPoet here.