On occasion I am fortunate enough to participate in various Vendors early adopter programs in getting bits of products before they are publicly available.  WIFM is by the time the product goes mainstream, I will have had a number of pilot projects under my belt and be ahead of the technology adoption curve, which is what keeps me employed.

 

Of course the Vendors want something in return, usually a customer reference as the idea is to have a partner work with a customer to use the early software bits as a pilot project.  The good news is that you and the customer get to see a real early and generally working view of the product.  The bad news in being a bloody beta tester is that more often than not you jump through (sometimes massive) hoops, cause the product simply aint ready yet.  Thats the trade off.  However, Vendors could do more for their Beta testers as we will see.

 

The amount of time it takes to install these products and get them configured right, particularly when various dependant products are also in various Beta stages, makes it a necessity to use Virtual PC (VPC).  Virtual PC allows you to run a software emulated computer in your host OS.  So I am running XP as my host OS and the VPC image is Windows 2003 Server configured as an App Server, along with SQL Server 2005, VS2005, WinFX 3.0 Beta 2, Community Technical Previews (CTP) of various other bits and pieces.  The list goes on and on.  Something like a dozen items over two days to get it installed and it has to be done in a certain order.  Dear Mr. Vendor, would it be so hard to have all of the software on one DVD and a single button that says install this scenario, just like you have in SQL Server and VS 2005.  How hard can it be?  Btw, the VPC lifespan is about one month as new Betas and CTPs will appear, making your image obsoleto as it may (read: will) not be upgradeable as we shall see.

 

VPC works great, but you spend a lot of time loading ISO images and restarting the (virtual) computer.  Of course the VPC software emulation (even with 2 gigs RAM) is much slower than your host OS, but the advantage is that you can take snapshots of your VPC image after each item is installed and if things go wrong, you can copy your previously working image and be up again very quickly.  One problem is that our image is now 16 gigs in size and takes a while to copy across the network.  The other major advantage is that all of the developers are working on the same VPC image, which if your code does not work on someone elses image, its your code thats broke, not the config, which makes our requirement for single unit under test condition true.

 

Now enter the Beta product I have been testing. We have been working on Beta 1 for a little while and it took a while to get the image running right.  There also is little documentation.  Which is a bit unusual from this particular vendor cause generally they are very good on docs and code samples.  Dear Vendor, please at least have how the tools work documented so we can at least try them out and not guess how they work.

 

Then comes along a Beta 1 refresh.   This is the Vendors response from the crush of feedback for Beta 1, coming to the realization that we cant wait for Beta 2, so lets give em a refresh, which really means, whats the latest known good build, ok, ship it!  The documentation says that there is no upgrade path.  No upgrade path to this Beta 1 version nor will there be an upgrade path for future versions.  Now I know this is Beta software, but I think it is a bit inexcusable when the end user (the developers in this case, including me) need to go through massive hoops of uninstalling the previous version, including other add-on bits like WinFX, etc., and then installing the newer version, only to be told that you still have not removed enough of the old version to continue, even though according to Add and Remove Programs it looks like I have already uninstalled everything.  Argh!

 

So now what?  Back to a previous VPC snapshot, that now needs Windows updates, a restart , plus a newer version of WinFX with a restart, plus I needed a virtual DVD software emulator to mount the ISO images, in the virtual PC, (wha?) and man, on it goes and I have not even got to the new Refresh install!  Which by the way the refresh has a list of 20 components!

 

During the installation process on a restart, I got a message that said, Since Windows was first activated on this computer, the hardware on the computer has changed significantly (authors note no it has not).  Due to these changes, Windows must be reactivated in 3 days.  Do you wish to reactivate now?  I said yes, first to find out on-line that the number of licenses has been exceeded.  Then I was given a number to call which an automated attendant asked me to read a sequence of 40 characters (took forever) and then was told that this was not right and that I need to talk to a customer service representative (ooooohh a human being, how rare).  The customer support rep, who was very nice and gave me another 40 characters to enter in (after I read my characters back to him) and activate my version of Windows.  Btw, this was done before I uninstalled all of the previous Beta 1 software and tried installing the new products Refresh only to be told I had not uninstalled everything previously.  So I just trashed the entire image.  So much for the activation.  Double aarrgghh!!

 

So now I am installing everything under another VPC that I had saved off that does not have any of the original products Beta 1 bits on it for sure or the rest of the software I need for that matter.  I hope I dont get that reactivation message again.  Dear Vendor, if there is no upgrade process, please provide an uninstaller tool that can completely removes the Beta or CTP product thoroughly with absolutely nothing lingering around.  Would have saved me days of effort.  Triple aaarrrggghhh!!!

 

So what about the Refresh install?  It is almost growing season here in BC, maybe I will get a job picking grapes because it will be much easier and far less bloody than this!

I recently discussed variability as being software developments' nemesis.  One item I mentioned was that from a single vendor, Microsoft, there are seven user interface technologies to choose from.  My point is that there should only be one. Really, really.

 

The software game is a whacky biz to be sure.  All the way from iPods being dispensed by vending machines to the FBI scrapping the development of $170 million worth of software.  The recipe for success in the software world is just as variable as programmer productivity is trying to stay on top of the ever changing world of technology, let alone developing expert level skill sets in any one area.  As BarryV points out in his comment to my last post, I need a longer ferry ride

 

This variability becomes (much) greater when executives are making decisions about software projects/products without any real idea as to how software is designed and constructed or how it works as a finished product. It is a complete mystery to them, yet, they are in charge.  Ok, this is a blanket statement, but I have found more often than not that this is a truism in our industry.  I am not laying blame, just making an observation.

 

So what's the issue?  Education is a major factor.  Education about software development, which in most cases, is truly an exercise in trial and error, given the newness of our industry and the variability in everything that is software.  Btw, our trial and error software development process is a key reality point for anyone in our industry to fully understand.  And I don't mean trial and error in the traditional sense of just guessing at what to do.  It is more like guessing which way is the best way to accomplish any given set of tasks because there is so much overlapping technology to choose from, which also happens to be constantly changing.   For any given technology, especially programming languages, there are hundreds of ways to solve the same problem, some better than others, but all valid with no right or wrong way.

 

The so-called Software Architect is supposed to be the person that can figure this out.  Being employed as one, I say it ain't so easy.  For example, Microsoft has seven user interface technologies to choose from.  How does one become expert in each one of these so when the task comes to develop a user interface, you make the right choice based on the requirements?

 

From an executives point of view, why should they know this or even care?  They should care as it directly impacts the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the software being developed, which the executive is ultimately responsible for.  If the software gets born and is useful to the target user community, (in which our industry track record is less than stellar) it is usually around for a long time. Bug fixes, enhancements and general maintenance usually make up the bulk of TCO. Therefore strategic planning in technology selection is just as important as developing the software itself. 

 

Millions chose Visual Basic 6 to develop their business applications in.  However, there is no easy upgrade path to .NET.  I know of one large organization that has over 100 VB6 apps developed and running their business.  They are now pondering how to move to .NET not only from a technology perspective, but also from a training perspective.  Caught between a rock and a hard place as the TCO here is stratospheric no matter how you cut it.   Btw, the idea for this org is to consolidate many of the VB6 application functionalities into .NET shared components which will reduce the numbers of apps (and therefore maintenance costs), hence the transition.

 

So what does this have to do with why don't they get it?  The why don't they get it question is usually asked of me by fellow programmers that have seen an executive business decision made that makes no business sense at all.  In fact, I have asked that question myself many times while working for various companies that don't see what I (or other technology savvy) people see. What we see as part of any project is targeting the software development on the latest possible technology.  Immediately executives think, the programmers just want to work on the cool new technology and tools.  Yes, that is true, but you know why?  Usually the latest and greatest tools allow me to do my job faster, better and cheaper in some cases only the next technology makes something possible.  This also translates into lower TCO as the software moves though its lifecycle.  And most importantly, the life expectancy of whatever software that has been born has some chance living a full life, Instead of being re-architected in 3 years, when we may get +5 years using a different technology set.  Even longer if the technology chosen has a technology roadmap that shows it has a future as well.  This is what most executives dont get when in charge of software development, and have not come from a programming background.

 

On rare occasions I have seen a planned technology roadmap that goes along with whatever project or product roadmap that has been developed.  Typically, once the software (ever makes) goes into production, any technology upgrades are extremely low on anyones list.  Then the bug fixes and enhancements ensue.  Over a time frame with no technology upgrades and/or refactoring the design, the software bits that got glued on eventually start dropping off or crush the architecture and the cost of bug fixes and/or enhancements goes exponential.  And then the project or product gets "re-architected" as a matter of course.  More often than not, on some new technology with no technology roadmap.  The cycle continues.  How to break that cycle?

 

One way is demand better and fewer tools/products from Vendors.  As a software developer, I dont need a new or different hammer every year and an entirely new toolbox of tools or frameworks every couple of years.  Know what I mean?  This person gets it.    Also, if vendors consolidate and simplify their product lines instead of making even more product variations will help promote the industrialization of software.  Even though I use Microsoft technologies, I am unimpressed at the many overlapping technologies and different editions or versions of the same.  Can you decipher how many editions of Visual Studio 2005 are from this blog?  There are 5 editions of XP and now 5 versions of Vista.  This is just the client OS!  10 versions, ridiculous, why not just one?  Sure I get the capitalistic thing, but capitalism also can be had with efficiency.  Our software development world is far, far, far from being efficient.  Sounds like a vendor opportunity to me.

 

In case it is not clear, the they in why dont they get it are executive/management people in software development decision making positions that have no background in software development - the process of or programming in.  A super-charged topic even for the largest software company in the world.  Next post I will discuss some of those why they dont get it decisions from the field.  To use Dave Barrys phrase, this really happened!

I have been using Vista Build 5308 since it came out a week or so ago, along with running VS2005 with Cider, Expression Interactive Designer (a.k.a.) Sparkle, Win SDK and WinFX.

 

It has been very interesting.  First, Vista is considerably more interactive than compared to XP or W2K3 Server. What I mean is that I am more efficient on using the OS as it looks like considerable interaction design has occurred in the design phase.  For example, in Vista Windows Explorer for file folder navigation, you will notice a different tree view control and address bar.  The address bar allows you to click on any part of the path in the address which allows you to navigate easier (i.e. fewer mouse clicks).  Given that I do spend (too much) time navigating the file system, this really is a major improvement.  There are many other improvements, which are not the point of this post, other than to say, I think Vista will surprise many people on its usability design, aside from the flash and gas of the graphics.

 

2nd I have been using Cider (think WinForms Designer but using XAML) and the Win SDK to evaluate WPF.  Of course on Vista, the graphics is outstanding.  My Acer 8204 laptop comes with a pretty high-end video card (ATI  Radeon X1600) with DirectX9 embedded into it, which allows Vista to fully utilize the GPU.  Vista graphics look awesome, aside from the Aero Glass (i.e. opacity) effects and the window fly-ins.  The animation and 3D manipulation of objects is ultra smooth and sharp at any level of resizing.

 

VS2005 Cider is aimed at the developer (or coder or programmer or software engineer, or craftsman, or whatever moniker you hang by).  You spend the same time on the design surface as you do traditionally do in the WinForms 2.0 designer surface, but mostly you spend your time in both XAML and C#.  Contrasting this is Sparkle which is really aimed at designers.  Btw, the March CTP of Sparkle was just released.  The difference is that you spend more time in the design surface than writing code (and XAML).  In fact, another one of Steves blogs points out, Sparkle, development teams, and what no code means.

 

Now this raises an interesting conundrum which you can read Clemens excellent post about Visual Studio Overload And The Specialization Gamble.  Clemens does an excellent job explaining what the conundrum is in trying to learn too many languages and tools, The reason is very simple: Capacity. Theres a limit to how much information an individual can process  I totally agree and I described this phenomenon in my previous post as variability instead of capacity.  I do believe that they are very much interrelated or synonymous with each other, in fact, maybe we are saying the same thing but differently.

 

The conundrum is what tool I use (Sparkle or Cider) given the limited amount of time I have to play with this, which amounts to an hour or so per day on my ferry commute to and from Vancouver.  As someone who grew up on Visual Studio, I am immediately inclined to stick with it.  However, having played in both environments, I find I can do way more quicker in Sparkle, once I get past how different it is than Visual Studio.  Sure, Sparkle has an IDE, and while not as complicated as VS2005, it does have a funny tool palette with what looks like a dozen objects from Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop which means I am starting from scratch with these tools, not only the usage, but also because they are more graphic art type tools, in which I have no talent for or formal training in.

 

Not to complicate matters, but there are other XAML tools available, most notably is Mobiform Aurora Designer in which I got a demo of about a month ago.  It certainly is a candidate, but where to find the time to fully qualify?  Finally for building designers, there is Microsofts excellent Domain Specific Language (DSL) Toolkit that code generates designers, but at the moment, can only be hosted in Visual Studio and does not do XAML.  Heck, you can even hand code craft your custom designer in .NET 2.0 Framework (thanks BarryV!).

 

I have a vision for my Story Board Designer application.  All the 3D objects and animation interaction plays nicely in my head, but how many years is it going to take to program into any one of these tools?  And which one would that be?

 

Maybe I will ponder that over a few (more) pints of Guinness...

 

This blogs topic is about software industrialization, which means making software development a predictable and repeatable process.  The only other requirement for software industrialization is that the software created meets the end user's requirements.

 

Why is software development not a predictable and repeatable process?  I can partially explain this through a small story where after spending 10 years in the software development business, a friend of mine and I opened up our own consulting company in 2001.  Our company was based on one single Microsoft product in which we would offer consulting services for.  That product was BizTalk Server which is a message oriented middleware product for exchanging disparate data and orchestrating business processes across multiple applications.

 

Over a four year time frame, we custom designed and constructed twenty-five or so integration solutions using every version of BizTalk Server. Even after that many projects, our process for designing and constructing these solutions was still far from being predictable and repeatable.  Sure we got (much) better, but we realized it was the variability that was so difficult to overcome.  I mean variability in everything that is software and the processes used to design and construct it.

 

For example, there is always large variability in the quantity and quality of software requirements.  A very small percentage of customers know exactly what they want, more still know exactly what they want, but can't articulate it, all the way to the other extreme where customers have no idea what they want, but still want something built.

 

For every single "discrete" chunkable requirement, there seems to be at least a dozen ways to design it.  For every design, there seems to be almost infinite ways to implement it.  When I say design, I mean a particular design for a particular requirement in which the chunkable output of the design is on the order of 40 hours effort per one developer to complete the requirements, finish a detailed design, code, test the chunk and done.  The culmination of designs to meet all of the requirements is called the software architecture.

 

Case studies and industry reports point to inadequate and/or always changing requirements as one major contributing factor as to why software development is not a predictable and repeatable process.  Another contributing factor is size and complexity of software development where it is most always underestimated.  I would be the first one to agree with both statements, but I would say that this is more symptomatic then the root cause.

 

Yet another contributing factor to why software development is not a repeatable and predictable process is programmer productivity.   I have worked with over a hundred software developers in my 15 years in the industry and I can say that programmer variability is just as broad as the other contributing factors as discussed above.  There are several books that quantitatively put programmer productivity variability levels in the range of 20 to 1 and even 100 to 1 between programmers that have been assigned the same code project to, design, construct and test the software.  I have seen the extreme with my own eyes where some developers can't write the code no matter how much time was given, while others can write it in two weeks flat.  Thats off the chart in terms of variability.

 

One of the reasons for the wide variability in programmers, aside from the skill sets discussed in the previous paragraph, are the tools that are available for programmer use.  The tools themselves are incredibly complex environments and sometimes require people to think in ways that they may not be able to grasp or it is so complicated, no one can figure it out.  I can't grasp C, but I grok Smalltalk from a programming language point of view.  When we asked a printer to print the help file that came with BizTalk Server 2004, he called us to say it is likely going to be 10,000 pages and cost $500.  That's just one product!  And we use a half dozen other products for designing and constructing our integration solutions including, SQL Server, ASP.NET, Visual Studio IDE, Windows 2003 Server, SharePoint Services, C#, FrontPage, .NET Framework, and on it goes.  While some of these products are not the same size and complexity of BizTalk Server, they require deep understanding of just what they heck they do and how all the products fit together in order to provide the tools and framework to design and produce the Customer's solution in any reasonable time frame (read: cost).  Even the .NET Framework Class Library alone has over 5,000 classes to get to know, some very intimately.

 

These are tools and technologies from one vendor!  What about multiple vendors?  Also every vendor seems to be pumping out the latest and greatest tools and technologies every year.  Where does one find the time?  Answer: one does not find the time which results in peoples knowledge of these tools and technologies, plus the specialized skills required and experiences to use them effectively, varies wildly.  This is another major contributing factor as to why software development is not a predictable and repeatable process - the programmer never gets a chance to gain years of experience using one tool or even small set of tools - so everything is (always) new.

 

Even within the Microsoft technologies mentioned above, there are many technologies that do more or less the same job (but the tools are totally different) for one specific area - user interfaces.  There are (at least) five Microsoft technologies for developing user interfaces. To me, it is mind boggling why even within a single vendor, that not only are there five different technologies to develop user interfaces (actually 7 if you count InfoPath and SharePoint Designer), there are multiple tools for each technology.  For example, ASP.NET - there is Visual Studio and FrontPage.  Both have very deep features, but the tools are completely different.

 

Some would say introducing standards would alleviate this problem.  While I concur and it has proved to help industrialize other industries (e.g. electronics), it is still early game in the software world and the technology advances far outpace the speed at which standards can be ratified.  Also, believe or not, Microsoft's latest technologies are all (mostly) standards complaint and all with public specifications. So what's the value of standards?  What our industry needs is innovation.  What would be truly innovative from Microsoft (and other vendors) is simply one technology and tool that produces any type of user interface you want.  From a developers perspective, this means being able to focus on "one" tool or technology to do a specific task, like designing and constructing any type of user interface.  With one tool and language (for user interfaces), then we might have a hope of industrializing software development.

 

Let me put it another way, how many people do you know that are fluent in six foreign languages or more?  How many of those people are fluent in both the spoken and written word?  Have you ever tried learning a foreign language so you are just as fluent in it as your native language?  Learning and becoming fluent in any foreign language is no easy task.  But for software programmers, we must learn multiple foreign languages to design and construct software.  It may even be tougher than learning a traditional foreign language as our programming languages regularly change including the introduction of brand new ones (e.g. XAML). This gives some insight as to one of the major reasons why software development is not a predictable and repeatable process even for the software programmers.

I live in a small town of about 5,000 people on the Sunshine Coast in BC, Canada.  Meeting my neighbors Grandpa was an interesting experience.  Grandpa grew up in the Northern part of the Sunshine Coast and has lived here most of his life.  I got to know him a bit when we were launching fireworks (its big here!) last Halloween with our families.

 

Over 4 months I would have occasion to bump into Grandpa on the ferry as I take a 40 minute ferry ride into Vancouver everyday, as does anyone that needs to make it to Vancouver from the Sunshine Coast.

 

Yesterday, I was sitting at the local Tim Hortons having a coffee and working on my new Acer 8204 laptop (which I purchased specifically for WinFX, Vista development), and I met Grandpa after I had been sitting for an hour, long enough for me to disappear completely into the computer.  He said, Are you actually doing something or trying to look intelligent.  I said I was coding.  He said, What do you do for a living.  "I write software".  He said, that he used to program assembler way back when.  He said, "if just one letter or number is off, it doesnt work!.  I said nothing has changed.

 

First, I was a bit taken back that he could even remember assembler, I cant, and he does not even remotely look the type.  Second, I was surprised by my own comment of nothing has changed since assembler.  Now really, we have come a long way since assembler, see Raising the Level of Abstraction .  But otoh, it is still true today one character or number is off in your source code that you are hand writing and it wont compile.  It is much easier to find the compile error today, I suppose.  And with Intellisense, how can you miss? (ha ha).  The point is, the computer is excellent at repeating precision instructions and we humans are not.  So why not get the computer to do the work of writing precision code based on a higher-level abstraction (i.e. tool) where we don't concern ourselves with hand writing low level code.

 

This makes me wonder about how far programming languages have come over the last twenty five years.  Personally, I am a Smalltalk fan.  The concept of everything is an object and message passing made much more sense to me than C.  The fact that objects in Smalltalk could do only three things made it easy for my brain to understand what was going on.  However, from an employment perspective, I chose and have been working with Microsoft technologies since 91 when VB1 was first introduced.

 

The only language that has come my way that makes me as excited like Smalltalk did is XAML.  I have discussed a bit about XAML in my previous posts.  Here is a snippet from the WinFX SDK help file for Build 5308:

I am impressed with XAML.  It is early game, but GDI has done well for 20 years, Microsoft is betting on XAML, WPF, WinFX and Vista as a worthy successor to GDI and hoping it will last as long.  For the computer user, the next generation XAML based applications will be like when HTML first hit the web, (then FLASH), where everyone, all of a sudden, is a web site designer   However, what shakes out is the next level of computing interactions based on these Microsoft technologies.

 

However, to make life a bit confusing, XAML is but one of the 5 ways, just using Microsoft Technologies to develop user interfaces.  Tim Sneath has an interesting angle on explaining these five UI technologies called, "Windows Forms, ASP.NET/Atlas, DirectX, WPF, Win32 - that's five UI technologies to choose between. How do I decide?"

 

Having read his article I am satisfied that using XAML and WPF to develop my Storyboard Designer Application is the right choice.  Once I have developed something, I can say to Grandpa that we dont have to worry about each individual character or number anymore, thats what the software tool does!

This last post in the series is to describe a few more details around the Storyboard Designer application I am building.  Storyboard Designer is targeted at Power Users and/or Business Analysts (BAs) to enable a quick way to design and construct custom business user interfaces, which will in turn become business applications. The application will allow for the design and construction of workflows, business rules and data access associated with these user interfaces.  This is done so in a storyboard fashion similar to what has been successfully done in the film industry for over sixty years.

 

Whats different about Storyboard Designer than other storyboard type applications?  From a marketing perspective it is targeted at business Power Users and/or BAs tasked with defining the requirements and specifications for a custom business application, including the UI, workflow, business rules and data access.  The idea is that requirements become specifications as defined (read: modeled) by the BA using the designer.  Since we are using XAML, the resulting specifications become the implementation.  Key point.

 

Storyboard Designer has a drawing canvas that will allow the organization of businesses and business applications.  A Power User can drag and drop UI components onto a canvas to build a user interface in XAML.  Storyboard Designer will offer catalogs of composite UI parts that are commonly used in business applications, plus the capability to reuse complete user interface definitions for common business objects like Invoices, POs and any other set of forms for that matter, built or purchased, all XAML.

 

One design goal is to ensure the BA can define (read: design) a business application using Storyboard Designer without writing any code.  Or at the very least meet the 80/20 rule.  Another goal is to provide an intuitive drawing tool that will allow the BA to specify (and as a result, implement) a business application in the shortest time possible.

 

Toolboxes of components will represent real world business application constructs, for example, an invoice form, people interacting with the invoice form in a workflow, invoice form business rules and invoice form data, all need to be easily specified (i.e. drawn) on the canvas.  In addition, objects need to be configured and hooked together to represent a real world business application.

 

Using XAML, we can more easily come up with a 3D virtual world that represents these objects in a way that dozens or even hundreds of user interface screens (plus associated roles, workflow, business rules and data for those screens) can be easily navigated to on the canvas, as thumbnails.  Clicking on any thumbnail will zoom the object to screen for editing.  Those that have played with the workspace zoom in Expression Interactive Designer will know what I mean as an analogy.  XAML will provide, layering, zoom capabilities and levels of transparency to show the connections to the various objects without the screen real estate becoming overwhelming or cluttered.  Look at how Google Earth or Virtual Earth is displayed essentially on one canvas using layers and zoom.  AutoCAD works in a similar way.  Storyboard Designer will implement similar concepts except we are looking at a map or CAD blueprint of a custom business application from a 3D drawing perspective.

 

Over the coming months I will put together a prototype of Storyboard Designer based on the specs described in this series.  I will come back to this topic when something is built.

 

The purpose of this ten part series was to discuss industrializing parts of the software development process we use to design and construct business software.  Storyboard Designer is my small contribution to industrializing software.  I have been in the software development business for 15 years and one conclusion I have come to is that the state of the art of developing software today is still trial and error most of the time.  Further, rarely does what we build meet what the business user actually required.  This is the semantic gap between requirements (i.e. the intent of the business application) and the executables (i.e. the ruin-time business application).  Talk about lost in translation!

 

Storyboard Designer provides the capability for business Power Users and/or BAs to easily draw business applications using a 3D visualization tool with the output being the actual executables for a custom business application.  Not only does the tool close the large semantic gap between requirements and executables, more importantly the tool can be used by the very people that know everything there is to know about their own business and what the business application is supposed to automate.  As a result of these tool capabilities, the time frame for designing and constructing business applications is dramatically reduced and on its way to becoming a predictable and repeatable process for delivering business applications that actually meet business user requirements.

 

Lets see if I can make this real

As described at the beginning of this series, I have a specific requirement for a Storyboard Designer application.  The specific requirement is to industrialize some level of the software development process used to design and construct business applications. The rational is that the end-user of a business application interacts with software through a GUI 100% of the time.  Therefore, provide a designer tool aimed at Power Users and/or Business Analysts (BA) who can quickly storyboard user interfaces, workflows and data access in the shortest time possible.  Storyboard Designer is not a traditional developers tool, but rather a visualization tool that can be used by a Power User and/or Business Analyst (BA) to quickly build scalable and robust business applications.

 

Think of it this way, senior management at FedEx, in the book, Reeenginering the Corporation, realized that the people actually performing the work on the shop floors knew their business processes inside and out.  And more importantly, knew what most of the solutions were to the problems they were encountering using traditional business applications and consequently, the business processes they imposed.  As a result of senior management listening to employees in the trenches, FedEx reengineered their way into an incredibly successful business.  In other words, they were the first to industrialize the way packages were shipped and delivered for a specific market.

 

Remember the introduction of FedExs online package tracking software?  So simple that anyone with some degree of being able to navigate the internet could use this tool.  Thats why it became #1.  Another example, closer to home in the software world, is MS Access and Excel, which are reasonably complicated software, but yet Power Users and BAs have developed an entire subculture of business applications running organizations today.

 

With respect to Storyboard Designer, a Power User and/or BA (the people that really know the business application in question), can create their own business applications in the shortest time possible.  The goal is to quickly create or reuse user interfaces, (composite controls and complete UIs from catalogs), plus being able to visually hook up the UI to a data source or workflow, with or without business rules and all without writing any a single line of code.  Is it possible? 

 

From a marketing point of view, all that is required is to put a usable storyboard designer tool in the hands of the people that know how their business works so they can build their own custom IT automation applications to suite their specific needs.  Just like how they build sophisticated Excel applications and Access database programs today, except I am hoping much easier using Storyboard Designer.  Thats the level of abstraction I would like to achieve.

 

As discussed in this series of posts, I came to the conclusion that XAML would be an excellent language to not only build a Storyboard Designer, but also have the output of the Storyboard Designer produce XAML as well.  XAML can be used to declaratively define user interfaces and workflows that run on WinFX without any further interpretation.  In other words, once compiled, it can be run directly on the OS.  This is very powerful.  Even more powerful is that fact that XAML is public specification and therefore portable language format that can easily be exchanged with our XAML enabled tools.  This means it is possible to create catalogs of real user interfaces and workflows that can be shared amongst people.  The specifications become the implementations using the designer tool.  This dramatically reduces the gap between requirements (i.e. intent) and deliverables (i.e. executables) that is so prevalent in the way we design and construct business software today.

 

Storyboard Designer will be a visualization tool in which Power Users and/or BAs can draw their business applications on a canvas using toolboxes of objects that they can drag and drop on the screen.  Objects will represent UI, workflow, data access. people and businesses all connected together and can be viewed all together.  This is a key design goal.  It is in someway like traditional architectural blueprints in the construction or manufacturing industry.  Think AutoCAD for designing business applications. 

 

So doesnt Cider, Expression Interactive Designer (which I am still evaluating), SharePoint Designer offer this already?  No, all of these (low level) tools require highly skilled developers and designers to be productive with these tools.   Storyboard Designer is aimed directly at the Power User and BA for an organization.  We are raising the level of abstraction in the designer tool itself so that a Power User and/or BA with minimal training or expertise can productively build their very own business applications.

 

Next post will describe some of the design details of Storyboard Designer and then we will wrap up this series of 10 posts.

In this series of posts, I describe a real problem in the software development process of designing and constructing business applications.  Not only is the design and construction process trial and error, (i.e. not predictable or repeatable), there is a tremendous semantic gap between describing requirements (i.e. intent) and the resulting deliverable (i.e. executables).  The reality is that business users interact with software 100% of the time through a user interface.  Thats it.  Business users dont care about technology.  They care about getting their customized business application designed and constructed in the shortest time possible for minimal cost (including TCO) and perhaps more importantly, does exactly what they envisioned it do to.

 

Having designed and constructed software for business users over 15 years, it seems that using a storyboard designer application to define user interfaces descriptions and business workflows is one way to help industrialize the software development process.  Further a catalog or library of pre-built storyboards with corresponding workflows, would allow a business user to choose from a catalog a set of storyboards that would assist in defining their specific business application in a short time period.

 

After more research described in the previous post, it seems that completely abstracting user interfaces is still unrealistic given the immaturity of language standards and tools. XAML as an eXtensible Application Markup Language looks very promising for describing Windows user interfaces and workflow.  Since the reality is that the majority of business applications are targeted for the Windows platform, XAML appears to be a great way to quickly define business user storyboards that can immediately be run on XP and Vista.  XP and Vista can execute compiled XAML (i.e. C# code) on their run-time platforms with WinFX installed, and render the user interfaces and execute the workflows on the business users computer screen.

 

There are a handful of XAML applications and tools on the market that may provide an environment for quickly defining Business User storyboards.  As discussed in the last post, we are going to start to look at Cider and Interactive Designer, both from Microsoft and targeted at different audiences.

 

Cider is used inside of Visual Studio 2005.  Anyone that has used Visual Studio WinForms Designer knows how quickly one can define user interfaces.  However, using traditional WinForms, the problem is that the user interface description is tightly bound to the code-behind.  Cider on the other hand, uses XAML to define the user interface and is completely separate from the code behind.  The fact that Cider is embedded in Visual Studio means you can hook up your XAML with any programming language and other components, all within the IDE.

 

However, the quick synopsis is Visual Studio 2005 is a full blown Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and while fine for me as developer, it may cost too much and will be too complicated for a Business Analyst or Power Business User to rapidly define a business user storyboard.  Also Cider still presents a relatively low-level toolbox full of discrete controls, whereas I was hoping to have a library of common composite controls and even fully defined user storyboards (like an invoice storyboard) as catalog items to browse, select and edit.

 

While Cider is great for an IDE and directly targeted at developers, I was hoping to have a higher level of composite controls and catalog capabilities.  Also by raising the level of abstraction, I want a simple storyboarding application that is purpose-built to rapidly define business user storyboards that a Business Analyst or even a Power Business User can quickly define, including composite controls and cataloged items (i.e. completed storyboards) to select from.  This is the main goal of my storyboarding application.  Perhaps Cider can assist me in building this application.

 

We will come back to Cider, but first we will take a quick look at Microsofts Expression Interactive Designer which just released as its first CTP.  Next post.