TEAM Zarate Tarrani Notes From the Field

On a Tangent. My current topic in Postcards from the Revolution is the Zachman Framework, and I want to stay focused on that topic and two closely related topics: enterprise architecture planning and business rules. So, I'm going to use this entry to address a wider view of architecture.

Being Rational. Although I've discussed the Rational Unified Process (RUP) in previous entries, I have some PowerPoint presentations that tie the RUP to architecture:

• Introduction to the Rational Unified Process
• Software Engineering Best Practices (based on the RUP)
• Architectural Analysis within the context of the RUP
• Subsystem Design using RUP techniques
• Describing Distribution about modeling the distribution decisions of the system in the Deployment Views

All That's RUP is Not Gold. Or, put another way, the RUP is but one way to look at architectures. It is also not the final word on processes either. While I happen to be both a fan and advocate of the RUP, I look for best practices anywhere I can find them. Requirements is one of my areas of professional interest. I tend to collect any artifacts I come across, and I've recently discovered three, which I've zipped into an archive of requirements artifacts that contains a requirements engineering process, an elicitation worksheet and a whitepaper about requirements quality. There is an outstanding book on requirements management within the RUP titled, Managing Software Requirements: A Unified Approach.

Another of my passions is project management. I'm always on the lookout for best practices, documents, forms and templates and new techniques. I've zipped up two new discoveries, the Department of Energy project management guide, and a project planning questionnaire, both of which are in MS Word format. These project management artifacts can be tailored to your specific organizational requirements. Walker Royce's excellent book titled, Software Project Management: A Unified Framework. If you're working with the RUP you'll want this book. I personally found the approach and techniques to reflect best practices in software project management, and recommend this book regardless of whether or not you're using the RUP.

Other Topics. I'm going to take a shotgun approach and share a few links and documents that I discovered earlier in the week. These are random and loosely related, so there is sure to be something for everyone:

• Solving the Measurement Dilemma (How EVA and the Balanced Scorecard Fit Together), will provide insights into the challenges and issues faced by the business process owners that we IT professionals support.
• IT - Business Relationship is an article that discusses strategic information system evolution. The source of this article is Enterprise Works, which has a large number of interesting articles on IT/business topics. As an aside, I am currently reading Information Systems Success Measurement, which is a nine-essay book edited by Edward J. Garrity and G. Lawrence Sanders (both of whom authored some of the essays), and can recommend this book without reservation to anyone who is interested in the subject.
• Method 1-2-3 is a site that describes a fairly straightforward project life cycle called Method 123, and contains a repository of free artifacts, an example of which is the Change Management Process in MS Word format.
• XLink, XPointer and XPath at the Social Security Administration is a 48-slide PowerPoint presentation that combines the RUP and XML topics.

End Note. Linda and I are in a race to post a review of Rich Schiesser's book, IT Systems Management: Designing, Implementing, and Managing World-Class Infrastructures. The book is about processes, and includes application acceptance, change control and other essential service delivery topics. In my opinion this is the best book so far among the excellent titles in the Harris Kern Enterprise Computing Series. Bravo Mr. Schiesser!