March 2010 Archives

We've just posted the full session list for our upcoming user conference, NextStep 2010; April 15-16, Lisbon, Portugal. Check out the FULL AGENDA! 

Just to recap our first day: Paulo Rosado, OutSystems CEO, will be discussing ways to address the "last inefficient industry of the 21st Century" - yes, our very own IT industry! Gartner Research's VP & distinguished analyst, Massimo Pezzini, will then provide insights from Gartner on how they see changes in tools, methods and architecture impacting IT efficiencies. And last but not least, a look into the future of the Agile Platform.

Day Two of the NextStep Conference starts with a networking breakfast and roundtable discussions on specific topics. We will then split into two tracks, with presentations by customers, partners and OutSystems technical experts. Finally, at the end of the day we will get back together for demos of the upcoming Agile Platform 5.1 and a conference wrap up.

Track ONE: Improving Performance & Predictability - seven presentations are slated for this track that cover lessons learned in the field and case studies from Bacardi, Glintt, Turismo de Portugal, COOLProfs, Pessoas e Processos, INOV and Estradas de Portugal.

Track TWO: Agile Platform Techniques - seven presentations that focus on best practices and techniques for using the Agile Platform to maximize your ROI. Presented by customers, partners and OutSystems specialists. The presentations range from a comparison of BPMS technologies and the Agile Platform Business Process Technology by AKI Corp; OutSystems & SAP by Reditus and achieving success with Agile in the real world by HYFAS. Check out the full agenda for a summary of all presentations.

It's shaping up to be a great conference - be sure to register now and keep your eye out for more blog posts and tweets from us!

Follow us at http://twitter.com/outsystems and you can follow our conference tweets and blog posts using the twitter hashtag #nxtstep

This year's conference will focus on 'Addressing the last inefficient industry of the 21st century - IT'. We hope you can join us in Lisbon for the event where you will have the opportunity to network with the whole OutSystems community, last year we had over 450 people registered to the event!  But if you can't make the trip to Portugal, don't worry - you can still stay on top of what's happening at NextStep by visiting the About Agility blog before, during and after the conference. 

Starting today, we invite you to regularly visit the blog for more information and we will put an extra effort in making sure that here you will find all the latest Conference news. This year we have increased our team of bloggers and promise you constant real time posts that will allow you to feel a part of this event.

For this first post we decided to share with you a sneak preview of what's coming!

Day One of the Conference will include our very exciting keynote speaker -  Massimo Pezzini, distinguished analyst with Gartner Inc.!  Massimo will bring us Gartner's view on methods, technology and architecture that will shape impact your IT efficiency in the next decade. You will also hear from OutSystems CEO Paulo Rosado on the latest news from the company and see a sneak preview of the Agile Platform 5.1.  

Day two will include two tracks:

• Agile Platform Techniques, for those interested in how to get the most out of our Agile Platform technology, and;
• Improving Performance and Predictability, which will focus on getting the most out of your existing IT operations.

We are just finalizing the process of picking the best set of presentations from our customers, partners and R&D team so stay tuned for more info on the detailed agenda.

You can learn more and register for NextStep 2010 by visiting www.outsystems.com/nextstep or if you have any specific questions or points you would like us to blog about don't hesitate to leave us your comments!

Hope to see you there!

Last week, the OutSystems team attended the Enterprise Software Development Conference (ESDC) in San Mateo California. This is the first year for this show and, as Alan Zeichick notes, it takes up where the old SD West conference left off.  As gold sponsors of the show, we got to both attend the sessions and talk to the conference attendees at the OutSystems booth. I just wanted to share a few highlights & take-aways from the show:

On Monday afternoon I was pleased to take part in the MythBlasters session and offered the crowd two myths to choose from : #1 "You Cannot Scale Agile in Enterprise IT shops" or #2 "It is less risky and more cost effective to buy a package than to do custom development."

The audience chose to 'blast' the Buy vs. Build myth.  My premise for blasting this myth is based on the success of our customers in building new custom applications for things like customer relationship management, call center management, various HR applications like recruiting, expense management, company portals, etc.  I shared the top three ingredients for successfully building vs. buying:  Speed to develop, rapid change and business involvement at each step.  Of course, our customers accomplish this by using the Agile Platform and an agile methodology.

I think I'll keep Myth #1 for another blog post - but what are you seeing on Buy vs. Build myth? Do you agree that building is a better way to go for many apps where there is a package?
 
Another highlight: Kent Beck's keynote on "Responsive Design: Efficiency Through Safety."  This was the first time I had heard Kent speak.  He started off by referencing Ed Yourdon's work on Systems Design and how it led him to try and distill his own working process for design.  This was the premise for his presentation.  My take-away was that no matter what you do, your design will change. I think we all accept this as fact - especially for application software.  Kent then explained his techniques to reduce the risk when making design changes.  For each of his examples I found myself thinking 'This is not really a problem with the Agile Platform because the TrueChange™ engine will keep you from breaking stuff you did not intend to break, allowing you to move very fast with little risk."  If you are hand-coding, then Kent's four techniques (as described here by Alan Zeichick) to reduce risk when making change is great advice, but why do that if you don't have to?  BTW, I think Kent would love the Agile Platform.

Since this was a new conference we've been asked who attended and why. Here are some thoughts from the OutSystems team:

• The crowd we met included CIOs, IT directors, Enterprise Architects, project managers, analysts and software engineers. Interestingly, a large proportion of the conference attendees represented Enterprise IT (rather than just the ISV folks who usually attend Agile conferences) ...I'd say Agile is definitely going (or has gone) mainstream!
• Many people were there to learn more about Agile and find out if it fit into their world.  They realize that Agile really makes sense, and that they should implement it, but were trying to learn the best ways to do this - both with or without tools to help them.
• The general feeling was that Agile is the growing wave of the present and the future - and many felt they needed to add Agile to their resumes, because it is rapidly growing in popularity.  One attendee stated that he felt Agile was the only "fad" methodology that would last because it actually works and makes sense. 
• A few folks told us they were already using some Agile practices, but just had never labeled them as such and would like to get their organizations to officially adopt Agile.

 

As a follow-up to our previous post; here is the third and final interview question from our conversation with Lawrence Wilkes, Director and Principal Consultant with Everware-CBDi, on how IT departments are addressing their legacy systems: 

Q.3 What are the top three mistakes people make when addressing their legacy?

LW: I might have hoped that post Y2K, organizations would have more actively sought to avoid building yet more legacy systems. However, time and again we see organizations doing the following:

1. Creating another legacy. They fail to understand why they have legacy systems in the first place, and just rush into creating another one. They don't understand the requirement for on-going change, nor does the business encourage them to think about it. This could be due to:  a lack of process - i.e. they don't understand how to facilitate change at each stage of the life-cycle; or, stakeholders unwillingness or inability to express requirements for change.
   
   
2. Not designing for agility. Agility isn't just a process - as in agile development - agility is also an analysis and design requirement. Ensuring a new solution is better able to respond to change than the legacy systems it is replacing requires appropriate techniques throughout the life cycle. It isn't just a matter of creating a more agile implementation built with finer-grained components and services, but also understanding the business's requirements for agility and identifying those components and services in a way that aligns with that. Conversely, you don't need to over-compensate and waste time providing too much agility where it is not needed - although, that is always going to be difficult to predict...
   
   
3. Not cleanly separating the legacy from the new solution. The two become entwined storing up an even bigger legacy problem for the future. For example, a proper service architecture is not developed that is truly independent of the legacy systems, and so the new solution remains tightly coupled to the legacy. Even though they may use loosely coupled technology such as web services, their content and behavior is just a direct reflection of the legacy system.

What do you think? Do you have any do's and don'ts on addressing legacy that you'd like to share with the community?

Lawrence Wilkes is a Director and Principal Consultant at Everware-CBDI. Lawrence is a frequent speaker, author and consultant on best practice in SOA, Application Modernization and Enterprise Architecture. Via CBDI Forum, the Everware-CBDI research capability and portal, Lawrence has led the development of the CBDI-SAE methodology and supporting Knowledgebase, which is used by both end-user organizations and system integrators around the world. Lawrence has an extensive background both within end-user and vendor organizations having worked both in the business and IT side, which brings particular insight into business/IT convergence.

As a follow-up to our previous post; here is the second interview question from our conversation with Lawrence Wilkes, Director and Principal Consultant with Everware-CBDi, on how IT departments are addressing their legacy systems: 

Q.2  Is there a role for model-based tools like the Agile Platform in legacy modernization?

LW: Although a large part of the functionality may be based on those that already exist in legacy systems, there is still a need to design and assemble the new solution that is typically focused on supporting a new business process, channel or product.  This requires a layer of new development that 'wraps' the legacy systems, and the capabilities created out of the legacy still need to be integrated into that new solution. For example, capabilities in the legacy systems might become service providers to the new solutions.

At the same time, new capabilities are likely to be required since legacy modernization usually entails more than the need to re-skin, or re-process the legacy system. There will be new business requirements that the legacy system didn't address.  Hence, model-based tools can be very useful in terms of:

a.      Designing and implementing the new process and UI layers
b.      Creating the services that wrap the legacy capabilities
c.      Creating both new business functionality, and new components & services to support them
d.      And finally, assembling it all together into the new solution.

Have you used a model-based tool to help with your legacy? What have been the benefits?

In the next and final question, Lawrence offers the top three mistakes people make with their legacy modernization efforts.  

Lawrence Wilkes is a Director and Principal Consultant at Everware-CBDI. Lawrence is a frequent speaker, author and consultant on best practice in SOA, Application Modernization and Enterprise Architecture. Via CBDI Forum, the Everware-CBDI research capability and portal, Lawrence has led the development of the CBDI-SAE methodology and supporting Knowledgebase, which is used by both end-user organizations and system integrators around the world. Lawrence has an extensive background both within end-user and vendor organizations having worked both in the business and IT side, which brings particular insight into business/IT convergence.

We recently met with Lawrence Wilkes, Director and Principal Consultant with Everware-CBDi, to talk about how IT departments are addressing their legacy systems. 

We will post Lawrence's response to the following three questions over our next few blog posts:

• What are the top three things you've seen people do to successfully address the competing demands of new build vs. legacy modernization with limited resources?

• Is there a role for model-based tools like the Agile Platform in legacy modernization?

• What are the top three mistakes people make when addressing their legacy?

#1   What are the top 3 things you've seen IT do to successfully address the competing demands of new build vs. legacy modernization when faced with limited or shrinking resources?

LW: My experience is enterprises that are really successful tend to buck the trend. They are more radical and don't just "follow the crowd". Rather, there are usually one or two key people who have an architectural vision that breaks new ground - at least from their organization's perspective. Typically they will:
 

1. Combine application modernization and business improvement programs. They get business stakeholders involved in understanding the options for modernizing, both in terms of business needs and the applications that allow a more radical approach to be taken to requirements.  They avoid the knee-jerk reaction of buying a package or simply outsourcing the entire problem because they are seen as expedient options that, however, often results in something that is no better able to respond to change than the legacy it is replacing. Instead, they are keen to search out economies of scale and cost; capitalizing on existing investments in applications where possible, rather than just throwing them away, and break-down organizational and application silos to create solutions that are genuinely more flexible.
   
    
2. Keep business design and architecture in-house; create strong architecture and Centers of Excellence (CoE) roles that are able to exert strong architectural governance over outsourcing and delivery. They do not allow the outsource parties to gain control, nor do they lose knowledge of their business, applications and environments.
   
   
3. They use agile approaches but are not slavishly following the conventional "agile" manifesto - agile needs to be used within an architected, governed framework, not ad hoc. They establish a formal reference model and framework, which allows rapid delivery and governance of products, delivered by an agile process.
   

What steps has your organization taken to successfully address legacy systems while delivering new systems?

In our next post we will address Q.2 and the role of model-based development tools play with legacy modernization.

Lawrence Wilkes is a Director and Principal Consultant at Everware-CBDI. Lawrence is a frequent speaker, author and consultant on best practice in SOA, Application Modernization and Enterprise Architecture. Via CBDI Forum, the Everware-CBDI research capability and portal, Lawrence has led the development of the CBDI-SAE methodology and supporting Knowledgebase, which is used by both end-user organizations and system integrators around the world. Lawrence has an extensive background both within end-user and vendor organizations having worked both in the business and IT side, which brings particular insight into business/IT convergence.