TEAM Zarate Tarrani Notes From the Field

A Place for Everything, and Everything in its Place. Yesterday I made my debut by posting a short entry in Postcards from the Revolution to add to Mike's earlier discussions that touched upon knowledge management. Since this weblog is the one Mike and Linda intended as a diary into which interesting documents and links were to go, I am going to use this for its intended purpose.

Data Management. I am not an IT professional. I am, however, a knowledgeable (and demanding) user of IT services and have a keen appreciation of the tools that are made available by technology. The adage that a craftsperson knows their tools is applicable. I first want to share a collection of documents that introduce databases and data warehouses to any reader who does not routinely work with either (i.e., network support, technical writers and others in IT who know only the bare fundamentals). The first set of documents is in a Zip archive that contains four PowerPoint presentations that introduce database and data warehouses at a basic level.

The next document is a data mining tutorial, which will lay the groundwork for a more in-depth set of PowerPoint presentations about data mining and online analytical processing, which is a business intelligence specialist's most powerful tool set.

For the more technically inclined I've put together a collection of PowerPoint presentations about modeling and schemas that cover the basics, and discuss star vs. snowflake schemas, and get deeper into multidimensional databases.

General Interest. I have more to share than database-centric documents. One of the better presentations I've read lately is Building Business Intelligence Systems, which is an excellent overview of the issues you need to explore. Be aware that this presentation was designed to showcase a specific vendor product, but that does not diminish the value of the message and information in the first seventy-five percent of the document.

Another vendor-specific document that contains excellent information that can be applied in a vendor-neutral environment is eContent Management. Not all data is neatly housed in a data structure, and the overview of challenges that is provided in this presentation is invaluable.

Some Things Just Don't Fit. In parting I want to share three documents that do not fit the theme of this entry:

1. eLearning Standards, which is surprising because the document was put together by Cisco, which most of us associate with networking and routers. A little research revealed much about Cisco, such as the company has a sophisticated customer relationship management approach, and is heavily involved in distance learning and other initiatives.
2. On Enterprise Integration is more slanted towards Mike's Zachman Framework theme in Postcards from the Revolution, but with a little imagination and vision you can see how the data mining and OLAP topics I addressed above relate to this PowerPoint presentation. It's all the more valuable if you're an architect who is visualizing a big picture that includes business intelligence, CRM and knowledge management.
3. I included Overview of the Internet and Data as a "101" presentation you may find useful as a tool for educating your end users.

Parting Note. If your interests are more focused on information warfare than competitive intelligence you should visit the Information Warfare page that Mike and Linda created. This page is on their IT Security site and covers the darker side of information intelligence in depth. My favorite link from that page is Robert D. Steele's OSS Net Whitepaper collection. Mr. Steele is also one of my favorite Amazon reviewers. I'm currently reading The Ends of the Earth by Robert Kaplan because of Mr. Steele's insightful 12 July 2001 review of this fascinating book.

Setting the Stage. I've been focusing on the Zachman Framework and business rules in my latest Postcards from the Revolution entries. Since that theme is going to continue for a few more days I want to use this weblog as a vehicle for discussing process models.

Catalyst. The reasons why I want to discuss process models are:

• Linda and I frequently write about, or make reference to, processes in both of our weblogs. To many readers the term process may be too abstract. It's time we clarified this by providing definitions and approaches that we use for process analysis, design and implementation.
• There are direct relationships among policy, process and procedures. Many practitioners focus on process and procedures without taking into account the fact that policy governs process. In the same manner that a direct relationship exists between policy and process, there is also a direct relationship between business imperatives and policy. I want to portray those relationships in future entries.
• Standards, both de facto and de jure govern the continuum of policy-process-procedure.

Since Linda and I use these weblogs to share information the reasons cited above provide ample justification for a series on process.

Prelude. I've gathered material that will accomplish two things: (1) give background information about domain specific processes, such as supply chain management, software process improvement, etc., and (2) provide common standards and techniques. The material is diverse and is more valuable when studied to see how the embedded processes were derived. To be sure, it will take careful study to accomplish that; however, if you're feeling ambitious you may want to see how the processes, models and standards in the material fit within the Zachman Framework described in the last three Postcards from the Revolution entries.

The background material is as follows:

• Supply Chain Management, which is a Zip archive that contains seven PowerPoint presentations. The presentations cover a full range of topics, including: Supply Chain Operations Reference Model (SCORM), supply chain process mapping methodology, metrics and the integration of supply chain and customer relationship management.
• Software Engineering Standards and Processes, including documents on software process improvement, software configuration management, CMM and SQA.
• ISO/IEC 12207 Software Life Cycle Processes, consisting of a PowerPoint presentation and MS Word document describing this important international standard.
• Software Development and Implementation, an esoteric and eclectic collection of documents covering development processes, technology management, Oracle Financials tips, and E-business scalability. There is something here for everyone.
• System and Software Selection Techniques. An interesting collection of documents about the processes for selecting an IS architecture, business applications and integrating commercial off-the-shelf software.

End Note. In earlier entries Linda and I discussed the state of software engineering at the international level. If you're interested in Asian initiatives the whitepaper titled, Software Entrepreneurism in Korea is worth reading, as is the collection of reports and presentations from the 14th Asian Forum for the Standardization of Information Technology.

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!

Fair is Fair. I provided security tools in my 3 and 4 March entries in Postcards from the Revolution. I'm going to provide advanced testing tools here to even things out. These tools will be of value to performance and capacity planners, as well as members of QA teams involved in conformance testing.

Network Test Tools and Simulators. The tools listed below are free, but you will be required to fill out a request form before you can download them. The form is used for internal project justification purposes. After you complete the request form(s) you will be immediately given a link to download the tool. Also note that many of these tools are provided as source code (usually C or C++).

• ABRtest, an implementation tool for conformance testing the ATM ABR Service Rate Control.
• PNNItest, for Private Network-Network Interface (PNNI) Routing Interoperability Tests.
• APROPS, a Private Network-Network Interface (PNNI) Simulator.
• ATM/HFC Network Simulator.
• NISTnet, which is a general-purpose tool for emulating performance dynamics in IP networks. The tool is designed to allow controlled, reproducible experiments with network performance sensitive/adaptive applications and control protocols in a simple laboratory setting.
• Integrated Services Protocol Instrument. ISPI is an interactive, integrated tool for measuring the performance of quality of service (QoS) sensitive data streams while conducting experiments with emerging Internet resource reservation protocols and real-time network services.
• IP Security Web Based Interoperability Tester.

Integration Tool. WebSubmit is a Web-based utility providing access to applications on a collection of heterogeneous computing resources. Its goal is to make it easy to use computing resources via the Web without requiring knowledge of the specifics of unfamiliar operating systems and dynamic application environments. Users can effectively log into distinct computing environments and perform tasks without needing a detailed knowledge of their operating environment.

End Note. Outsourced software development is a reality. I am not going to open Pandora's Box by expressing my opinions on the problems in the US software industry, but am going to share a whitepaper I found titled, Applying Software Quality Assurance to Outsourced Software Development.

Testing ... testing .... This theme allows me to tie together assurance from my last entry here and security topics from my recent Postcards from the Revolution entries.

Statistically Speaking. Testing and quality require knowledge of statistics, and ready reference to this dry subject is a good resource to have close by. I recommend bookmarking the Engineering Statistics Handbook, which will always be available as a reference if you can connect to the web.

If you're doing statistical analysis with a spreadsheet you will soon run into limitations. You may want to obtain a copy of Dataplot, which is a free, public-domain, multi-platform (Unix, Linux, PC-DOS, Windows NT, etc.) software system for scientific visualization, statistical analysis, and non-linear modeling. The price is certainly right.

The "M" Word. Yes, it stands for Microsoft. Manisha Saboo of eRunway shared two links that will be of interest to anyone who is in a Microsoft-centric environment, either by choice or by necessity. The first link is a page devoted to Load Testing Tools for Windows DNA Solutions. The second link is to an article titled, Why Microsoft.com Believes in Testing the Web. It's a well-written article. Given the ongoing stream of patches coming from Microsoft's application and operating system folks perhaps they can learn a lesson from their dot com brothers and sisters.

Compliance. The 28 Feb 2002 issue of LWN.net has an update of the NuSphere/MySQL issue that is the first court case to test the validity of the GPL. This is a clear signal to anyone who is developing open source software. If you are an open source developer you should check Lineo's GPL Compliance Tool.

Other Testing Resources. Data Network Penetration Testing is a short whitepaper in MS Word format that adds to the QA body of knowledge by providing guidance for conducting penetration tests.

Testing Software Product Lines is just what the title implies. Software Test Performance Benchmarking in MS Word format is an interesting whitepaper that will provide ideas about test process improvement.

I'm including A Risk Driven View of Electronic Contracting because I forgot to add it when I wrote my previous entry. This document can be used as an assurance tool for electronic contract transactions.

End Note. If you're looking for test tools and artifacts try QA Downloads which is an excellent repository for QA professionals.