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Chasing the Long Tail in IT development

This November we were very fortunate to have the possibility of interviewing Frederic Richer, EMEA Operations Responsible for Serena Software, as he enlightened us on various interesting themes. If your are wondering what has a tail to do with IT, please read the full interview: Richer’s explanation is not only clear on that point but also on other intricate aspects of the current IT market like business users’ empowerment through new technologies.

1. Please introduce yourself to our readers.
I am Frederic Richer responsible for operation across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), I have been working for Serena for 6 years, the last 5 years as head of European operations, so I got through all the changes that Serena has been through in the last nine months, from the change of business to that of the central administration.

2. In practice, you have been a witness to the various changes Serena has known lately. Could you tell us more about Serena’s mission throughout the years?
Serena has been focusing on software, not for providing the development tools themselves but for providing for example Application Lifecycle Management tools that helps you move through the application lifecycle from the initial requirement over the design phase, construction phase, the verification phase until the implementation phase. It is also helpful for making sure that every single step of that lifecycle is traced so that you can have control over the whole lifecycle. We have run Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools over the last 27 years providing IT the support needed to give efficiency, to make sure things are made the right way.

3. Is the last year’s acquisition important for Serena’s strategy?
Yes, on top of the ALM support we added a Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solution one year ago from a company we acquired, which is called PacificEdge. It gave us the ability to balance the resources against the request so that you can make sure the resources meet the needs. For example, if somebody has a great idea for a new application, a project manager has to understand if the resources he/she has match the requirements for building an application. If she/he actually has fewer resources than what is needed, it is necessary either to have a budget increase and hire more people or to talk about the specs and the project more, so that it can be scoped down and fit into the existing resource scheme.
It also helps you say: these are all the projects that we are running, and take a look at the total portfolio. Not as most people do: they approve a project and then they kiss it good bye and wish it well and hopefully it will eventually arrive. The portfolio solution looks at all the projects that are on their way in a constant basis and it measures whether the projects are still inline with the expectation, for example the timing expectation or ROI perspective.
So we added that to our offer, in fact with the PPM solution we help our clients focus on the right projects this means the projects that have the highest return on their expectations.

4. Are the ALM and PPM solutions integrated?
We have an integration between the lifecycle management and PPM. The nice thing if you can combine those two is an increased ability in managing projects. Typically, when people today look at their projects, at the beginning of the project they do an estimate of how many man hours or days/months/years are required to finish that project. Then they compare the hours that are written against the project, so, for example, people fill in time sheets. The problem with that approach is it gives a very limited perspective: you can know that you have burned 90% of the time that you have estimated to fulfil the project but you do not know if 90% of the time actually represents 90% of the tasks. If you combine PPM with ALM you can off course go down and see what tasks have been performed against the expectations and compare it with the time scheduled against the project. Based on this, one can decide if the budget is alright or needs an increase in order to realise all the tasks desired. The integrated solution really helps people manage the whole it environment much better.

5. What is the basis for all this?
In the middle we have something which is called Team Track, a process engine. Initially and for development purposes most people have used it for issue and defect tracking, and these is how we positioned TeamTrack for many years, unfortunately I should say. Because we have learned something more from our customers – for example our customers helped us understand why they need project portfolio management so they kind of forced us to buy a PPM solution.
Now we learn something again from them when we look on how they used TeamTrack in the past. We have customers that used TeamTrack for the documentation of start up and shut down procedures in Power plants, which is very far away from issue and defect tracking. We have customers who use TeamTrack for mobile device configuration: how should the mobile look like. Then again we have customers that use TeamTrack for package-cash reimbursement or for holiday requests. So we learned that people use TeamTrack in many different ways than what we envisioned first.

6. This was a learning point for Serena.
All the things that we represent we learned from our customers. Initially we were very focused on Application Lifecycle, and our customer said it is not good enough: we need to overview all of our projects not just how one project runs but we want to know how all projects run, so we added PPM. Now we learned something else that one can use TeamTrack for something completely different. We learned that from our users and now we have a very different business opportunity than what we envisioned first. We enriched TeamTrack, the new version that comes up will be called Business Mashup, the Mashup Composer is the first thing that you can see from the new suite.

7. TeamTrack was one of the main focus of your Las Vegas Conference in 2006, from what you are saying we understand that Mashup Composer is an evolution of previous and existing technology. In practice can we say that Serena’s evolution is mirrored in the tools evolution?
Yes, that is the perfect description. A couple of years ago we launched an application that can still be downloaded for free from the Internet: the Prototype Composer. Mashup Composer is pretty much making use of the same technology: it has a beautiful UI, very intuitive; it is easy to understand and is easy to work with. We use that front-end for TeamTrack, which is a slight upgrade but it is not a deviation of our strategy. We worked on that and the Mashup Composer is improved by the UI functionality and we also worked on system’s persistence communication. Before when you looked at TeamTrack very often it was a people workflow: somebody has something and needs to pass it to a system, the system then performs the task and then passes it to the next person and so on, but there was no orchestration between two systems, so we worked on things like web services. This is the next wave we are now after.
Are you familiar with the Long Tail concept and Chris Anderson’s book?

8. We are familiar with the main concepts, but it might be better to introduce it to our readers.
The author, Chris Anderson, focused in his research first on the music industry and on the impact the new technology, the Internet and all the related activity, had on the business and what this will mean for future. When you look 20 years ago at how music was sold, and it is still the predominant model today, you only have a limited number of music titles in a music store, simply because it has a limited space. There are many more music titles in the world than any possible space can host. Because it was very expensive to produce music and the space to sell music was very limited most people focused on the hits, the blockbusters. Now you have the following that everybody can produce music or videos, as we can see on YouTube, plus you have nearly unlimited bandwidth and everybody has Internet access at a flat rate that takes away the problems with the production but also with the distribution. When you now look at the curve for those hits there is a very high revenue stream (see diagram above for an example of Long Tail in IT) in which all the hits are on the left hand side, because a few number of hits produce a high volume of sales. For example Rapsody that is an online music store, they have 2 million titles in their DB, that customers can buy and download online, and how many of those titles the customers download? My estimation was 8%, but in reality is: 98%! Pretty much every title is downloaded per month. So there is way more demand than our current system can satisfy.

9. The music market is quite concentrated on the first titles in the tops.
In fact, Chris Anderson looked as an example at the number 100000th title, not the first, not even the second, and saw that it was downloaded several thousand times a month, the same for the 200000th and 400000th title. So there is a market beyond the blockbuster market.
Turning back to IT, the IT with development jobs focus on the big and hairy tasks: the next billing application, the next training application, but there are so many application demands that they will never be able to fulfil! Unless we do the same as in the music and video industry: we give the people the tools to produce their own videos and music, and we make sure that people can deploy it wherever they want. The Mashup Composer has a very simple, intuitive GUI, people can easily play with that, and build their own mashups effortlessly and easily do systems to system communication.
A classical situation is that of SalesForce.com, an on demand CRM application, that does not support credit checks, which is quite an often task to fulfil when you got a new customer. In my organization, if we do not know the customer we do a credit check before we send the proposal out. Before it was always a very cumbersome process because you had to phone call somebody, or just enquire a lot. Now, as Salesforce.com has a web service and Dun and Bradstreet, the company that does credit checks, has a web service as well, all you need to do is go to that web service and combine those two web services and generate. The user will get an automatic action as the new application goes to the D&B website, it checks if they have the credit rating, it brings the information back and confirms it is good and the offer goes out. In a traditional world of web services this was very cumbersome because you had to be a java programmer or a .Net programmer.

10. So now business people can build business workflows themselves?
Yes, the way we do it is by giving them the opportunity in a graphical way to combine two web services, without Java programming. I will be honest with you, it is not simple, it is not for everybody’s use, it is not that a CEO could do it by himself. You need to have more information. But what we think is that a BA, someone that works a lot with excel and writes complex macros and so on, for her/him it will be simple to combine the two services, she/he definitely does not need to have Java or .Net knowledge any more, it is just combining web services via a graphical user interface, no JAVA programming required.

11. Who will be the ones that will benefit the most?
I think the benefit can still be to both: the central IT department / Development department as well as business users. If I look at the scenario, before we had a situation in which the business users went to the IT department/development shop and asked for an application, and the IT development manager came back and said of course, but it takes 3 years and 2 million euros to be implemented. From the IT department side it is different: they do not want the business users to deploy their own applications because they believe that they will ruin the IT infrastructure.
We need to say: shadow applications already exists! I met a client that said he had 6000 applications outside his control. There are a lot o applications, from excel sheets to macros created by the people which are not from IT anymore, it becomes more and more often. The new generations have more IT knowledge. The developer says: unfortunately I can not work on it, and if the business people can do it themselves they won’t wait. What IT can do is provide the tools to the business users and build the process around it.
We said before that people can download Mashup Composer for free as well as Prototype Composer. So they can write their own application, they can test their application, but before they deploy it, they need to pay. The way we do it is bring it up to everybody that wants to use it but in the moment they want to run it we want to have our share of it.

12. How is your offer structured?
There are two models, one is that they buy a license from us, the other model is that if they do not want to run it on their computers we have a SaaS (Software as a Service) offer as well. So they can put it on our computers, while they only send us a monthly fee. They create the application but it will be hosted by us.

13. Could you give us more details about the on demand vs. licence solutions?
One License for Business Mashup costs 950 euros /month/user and it allows hosting on own machines. For small applications it is more convenient to host also because of the costs that is only a fraction of the license. At the moment we do not have a price for the SaaS offer as we are going to run it from next year.

14. For your clients that already have TeamTrack, how does the upgrade to Mashup Composer work?
It is a very straightforward upgrade like every upgrade. The customers that have TeamTrack get a free license and it is very simple. They do not need to work on anything. The graphics look different but they do not loose anything, they do not need to have any manual interaction

15. At the moment, in the market there are various other mashup solutions available, which are the characteristics of Serena Mashup Composer in comparison with the competition?
First of all we have a great graphical user interface, intuitive, extremely easy to use. I am not a programmer but I am able to use it and guide someone through it. It is a totally web based application, so it is on a server and you need a browser, it is extremely fast, high scalability 20 000 users access.
Moreover it is compatible with all the most spread browsers, the major browsers are supported.

16. Serena is now empowering business user, so that they can create their own applications, how does Mashup Composer take care of control and security issues?
The way the currently applications are deployed is a process oriented way. In the past when you built a workflow it was also implemented. There was no staging functionality, so first you had to stage it and then deploy it. Now we can do business test, unit test, integration test, staging before deployment. Moreover, everybody has to approve before it goes into the life system: you can implement everything and test it, but you can have a step before the final deployment happens which means sign off and approval from all parties. We also have a version controlling and version management function for all the processes and all the things you do with the Mashup Composer.
We give the authority to the business users to write their own applications, but the central IT will still control what will be deployed and what not.

17. The IT market is quite challenging at the moment as globalization, off shoring and new technology are impacting it. What would you say about the impact Mashups are going to have?
I think that when it comes to these things, people still try to offshore big, large application. It is still the traditional model of the development department, it is not the tiny little application that someone needs and than forgets about it. I think off shoring will still happen to a degree and that the trend will continue, but it will be for larger applications not for smaller applications. If you offshore smaller application, the communication needs outgrow the advantages that you have from the outsourcing model. So I think people will be helped write smaller application, giving business users that capability will help them because neither outsourcing their development nor the internal IT department will be able to help them.

18. In a world where more and more large applications are outsourced and business users will have the power of creating their own applications, what will be the role of IT department?
Central control, making sure that security mechanisms are implemented, that quality specs are respected, that you have process implemented in such a way that is coordinated and controlled, you know managed.

19. Do you think organizations and people are ready to share knowledge and services in an open way?
I will answer this question by making an example of a company called Facebook. It is not an old company, nevertheless they are experiencing a powerful evolution. They have only 2 databases: one of them keeps photos and the other profile information. They figured out after a while that they did not have the resources or were not able to build applications based on profile data and photo’s. So they opened up the APIs and they gave it to the world and since they did that they have every month 1000 new applications. What software company has 1000 software applications every month?
Moreover, people using Facebook share a lot of their lives online, especially photos but also different other information like who is their best friend, the members of their social network and their hobbies and preferences.
Facebook can be mashedup with google maps, so you can see where your friends are. There are other applications that provide information based on your location and your preferences like information about your favourite’s band concerts, ticket prices and where they can be bought.

20. Nevertheless, there is quite a difference between sharing of personal data and of company or business data.
I think so too, but I think that people will be ready to share more information and more data openly. If I look at Facebook it is incredible because persons share all their life and I think there is going to be a trend in the world in this direction. I do not know what impact will have on business overtime, and if all the integration of these workflows and services will enable this things or not.

21. Getting back to Serena, would you say you have a strategic interest in CRM?
We are not interested in the CRM market, it is not our goal. We just want to help people develop applications. If with Mashup Composer one can construct applications that bring value to SalesForce.com it is ok, but we are not going to go after the CRM field. Our main focus remains: help people develop applications, help people in the central IT department build these hairy applications that need to follow a certain process and help other people with small and tiny application to develop them easily, but we don’t go after the CRM market, we go straight our way.
We hope that our mashups will actually enable CRM vendors to have things that they don’t have, for example SalesForce.com in their own technology does not have a discount approval mechanism. In every sales company, if you go beyond a certain discount you have to get and approval from a manager, you can do that by writing an email, you can do a phone call or contacting him directly. But you can also start a process. Mashups can ease the way.

22. How do mashups fit with change governance, the central point of Serena’s strategy over one year ago?
Change governance is not as market attractive as mashups. We talk about mashups as our primary strategy at the moment, but this does not mean that we will go away from ALM, PPM and Process management, as I said before we help people develop application, we help central IT through the ALM products, project protofolio management products, process management tools, we help them do their work. We help these other people in the business to write their own small applications through mashups. Change governance is something that needs to happen on top, and I think that with mashups you can be sure to follow a process so you know who did what, deployed when, what application to what server and version these things. Change governance is still important, but it is just a part of what we do, it is completely gone into what we drive right now and we don’t do noise about it anymore.

23. Could we say that Serena is the software company that is helping IT towards business?
Where before we helped only the IT department, now we help business users themselves. I think it is a good description to say that we help people develop application efficiently and effectively and it does not matter if it is the central IT department or business users. We continue to help the IT department but the new trend that we have is to enable business users and not let them wait for the IT. The IT is always seen as the bad boys because the business requests certain things but the IT department usually answers “no or maybe in a year”, and than the business says: “they do not know what they are doing”. Also delaying, everybody is now used to delaying IT projects, it is rather a surprise when it finishes on time. So we help IT guys getting the business off their back, for the small things they can say: do it yourself, I do not concentrate on that because I am after the big and hairy project, where you need professionals and you can not do without them.

24. Our last question is about your marketing strategy for next year, what are your objectives?
We will follow the mashup root, we will familiarize everybody with our new concept, with what we have brought to the market place in addition to what we already did before - ALM and PM, but mashup is the next big wave. Having people write their own applications and that some people will want to deploy them on their own premises while other will make use of on demand services. Our strategy is to rollout MC to everybody in the world because is free, make everybody aware of what we are doing here and how we can help them with that and how they can build their own mashups. We will have a mashup exchange so people can buy already build applications and customized as they want. We will continue to invest in this market and on the market strategy as well.

Lack of CRM?... Even worse...

Some time ago, not so far to be honest, I was commenting the CRM consultancy scenario, underlying how poor this approach to services is among the stakeholders involved in a COTS application development and deployment.
Actually, too many times the implementation of a CRM platform is entrusted to people that, in the best cases, are technically skilled in the specific platform, but know not so much regarding the reason of CRM as a strategy that should involve all the organization levels. And, believe me, I am on the side of these technical experts (I am an IT engineer, in the end), because at least they know what they are talking about and they will surely explain you what is reasonable to be done with your brand new Package, or what is really absurd to implement. I would have much more to say regarding the so called "strategy experts", that often have never challenged themselves with concrete problems and the daily routine tasks that a lot of employees have to execute every working day.
But this consideration cannot bring me to accept what is happening in the IT scenario in relation to off-shore consultancy. Cheaper? ok; Practical? Perfect; efficient? Great... but if we arrive at the point that our European consultancy skills are evaluated by thousands of kilometers distant technical consultants.. well, no, now there's something that does not work properly.
Apart from the total lack of a European identity and, above all, the pride of belonging to the most ancient history and prestigious culture, what surprises me is some organizations' perspective.
Is it possible that a European client selects external consultancy entrusting off-shore companies that make selections evaluating European skilled consultants? Yes.. and it has already happened.
So what about quality? what about CRM? what about the ability to offer services that imply not only the specific platform knowledge, but also a good awareness of the market, of the culture, of the hidden needs that always an organization implicitly have?

At the beginning of this year I was already doing some considerations about Packaged Applications (PAs) - such as Siebel or SAP, and the relation to off-shore development. From my point of view, the raise of this kind of "development" witnesses the defeat of the PAs concept: a ready-to-be-used application that can be easily customized and that enables the internally retention of the business processes knowledge. This is the concept that have made Siebel's fortune at the end of the 90's, for example.
Then everybody has understood that all those gold promises, apart from being good marketing, had not so solid basis... Ok, it's straightforward that every organization wants to implement its own strategy, its own processes, and cannot accept to rely on the 80% of the off-the-shelf functionalities; otherwise how one company could be better than another??
But the answer cannot be now applying the old pattern of the custom development! We are returning to the old, pure, development model!
The fact that PAs have disappointed its customers, does not mean that the original idea was bad or wrong! It simply demonstrates that customization, even if not development (as Siebel initially stated), cannot abstract from a good Business Analysis, a Design Methodology or IT Engineering, otherwise who customizes the application cannot be totally aware of the original requirements!
So what has happened? That we are returning to the origins, and now a PA is treated just like a custom Java application! And that's even worse..

Personally I will continue investing in applied research, in an approach to modeling, designing and customizing, that enables my clients to walk by their own in their CRM journey, with the certainty that they base their application management on a solid methodology and that, when change happens, they can always refer to me or my methodology aware colleagues.
This has been the aim of my Ph.D. thesis and this will be my effort in the consultancy offer, together with the new approach and possibilites offered by tools like TIBCO Business Studio or the Oracle BPA suite.
Our aim must be correcting the errors and lacks of the first and second PAs generation, not overstaying on a wrong but trendy and third-parties remunerative model.

CRM 360° chooses Microsoft Dynamics CRM

There is one big contradiction in the consultancy area related to the CRM scenario. When a company, acting in whatever industry field, requests some kind of support to a consultancy company for the implementation of their own CRM strategy and the related Packaged Application, it expects something that goes beyond the possibilities it has internally.
Apart from the mere expertise on the customization of the platform (being Oracle Siebel, SAP CRM, Microsoft Dynamics or others), the consultancy should postulate a professional expertise in the business context that the application supports, that is the Customer Relationship Management as a general integrated approach to identify, acquire and retain customers.
Have you ever asked your provider which platform do they use internally to support the services they are offering to you, as a client?

Our point of view is that last five years and hundreds of unsatisfactory implementations around the globe should have taught that CRM is not just deploying a more or less customized Packaged Application in a company. We know, there's never time to do a complete analysis of the business and an optimization/adaptation of the processes, once we decide we have to implement something that helps us in the daily interaction with our customers. But this, moreover, underlines the importance of a qualified and business aware consultancy. Once delimeted the business sector, and (why not) the immediate low level requirements for a CRM implementation (salesmen need a concrete support? Contact Center operators should have access to the history of a client to provide better quality services?) a good consultancy should indicate the best solution for you and, above all, how to implement it not to throw your money in something you will never use or, on the contrary, bribing you with easy, light and simple solutions that will cost you in time, facing integration problems and an unrealistic view of your customers.

The real question we asked ourselves is: "how can I really sell myself as a CRM implementation expert and seriously offer my services to my clients, if I don't apply CRM both strategically and technically in my own organization?". Well, it's not so obvious, and daily experiences in many international projects show how poor the strategy in the relationship among the different stakeholders is. No, look, think about it: in consultancy often we are still just on the ERP processes matter, above all on the billing side...

We are aware that, if we don't live the same approach, no real professional support on the delivery of a complete and coeherent CRM infrastructure can be offered.
Let's face the truth: a company that wants to be customer oriented and consequently puts care in the relationship with its customers, doesn't receive the same kind of quality level from the consultancy it receives. This does matter!

Following this concept, based on an analysis of our current business, we have done a coeherent analysis and a consequent software selection, finally deiciding to implement Microsoft CRM (for the moment).

The reasons of this coiche rely on a clear knowledge and awareness of our business and our action scope, together with the functional and technical experience in different platforms.
Microsoft Dynamics is undoubtedly one of the lighter and general purpose CRM solutions. In comparison with other PAs it currently lacks of specific ad-hoc verticalizations, and we cannot exactly talk of functional flows that reproduce business processes in the navigation of the application. Even technologically, above all on the Contact Center side, there are limitations.
Microsoft CRM has the advantage of a full integration with the spreaded Office Automation tools (shall we discuss about the main analysis tool of many sales people, even if the organization has a main BI Tool?).
In any case, the main CRM Domains are there, and a good Model of the main CRM components can be available directly on your Outlook client and that of your colleagues and employees.
After some days of installation I would personally have something to say regarding the platform and component requirements, as well as of the lack of some notes that should be included in the official documentation, but let's keep this for another post...
In the meantime, think about this, and feel free to share with us your opinion. Your impression does matter!

TIBCO Business Studio 1.1 & 2.0

This is a TIBCO Business Studio suite review that will be published next month on an Infomedia Group magazine. For the moment it is only available in Italian, but we will soon provide an english translation. In any case, our overall judgment on TIBCO Business Studio has been more than good!

Tibco, società software leader per le sue soluzioni di business integration e gestione dei processi, ha lanciato da qualche mese un tool free basato su Eclipse per la modellazione dei processi aziendali.

TIBCO, azienda pioniere nell’offerta di soluzioni basate su un processo unificato per il Business Process Modeling (BPM) e le Service Oriented Architectures (SOA), accoglie l’attuale tendenza di mercato introducendo TIBCO Business Studio, strumento per la gestione cooperativa di processi business aziendali, ottimo esempio di interazione sinergica tra business e tecnologia.
TIBCO Business Studio offre capacità potenziate di modellazione e simulazione che permettono un miglioramento della comprensione e della rappresentazione di processi complessi in un ambiente basato su Eclipse. Obiettivo primario è quello di facilitare la collaborazione tra utenti aziendali e utenti IT tramite un’ottimizzazione dei processi, favorendo una riduzione del time-to-market per i relativi progetti aziendali.
La strategia chiave di TIBCO parte dall’osservazione che altri vendor in ambito BPM hanno trascurato quei ruoli aziendali che ruotano attorno all’analisi e modellazione di processi business (BPAM) con il risultato di un’assenza di offerta di opportuni prodotti. Questo è vero soprattutto in ambiti business dove vengono utilizzati modelli cosiddetti “sconnessi”, vale a dire non direttamente coinvolti nell’automazione di processi nel software di supporto (come in ambito di produzione).
TIBCO Business Studio 1.1 è specificamente concepito per gli analisti business che necessitano di documentare, analizzare, perfezionare ed implementare tali processi. La nuova versione 2.0, disponibile da Maggio, offre inoltre la possibilità di scegliere fra due prospettive sul processo: quella dell’analista business o quella dello sviluppatore.
Dal 20 novembre 2006 TIBCO Software Inc. ha annunciato la possibilità di scaricare gratuitamente la loro suite. Il 19 Marzo 2007 Tibco ha registrato oltre 10000 download, segno di una strategia di successo.

TIBCO ed il BPM
L’integrazione delle nuove tecnologie nel mondo aziendale ha l’obiettivo di aumentare l’efficienza lavorativa, ma ha portato con se anche una maggiore complessità gestionale. Le risorse sparse, le difficoltà di comunicazione, le automazioni parziali, ecc. richiedono nuovi strumenti e metodologie. Il Business Process Modeling (BPM) nasce per rispondere alle necessità di gestione e controllo dei processi aziendali tramite una corretta modellazione, analisi e coordinazione delle risorse a disposizione, onde assicurare i livelli di qualità desiderati.
La crescente difficoltà nella gestione dei processi deriva anche da una crescente esigenza per una modellazione che garantisca successivamente un’esecuzione accurata ed efficiente dei processi, siano essi interni (tipici delle cosiddette applicazioni Enterprise Resource Planning – ERP) che esterni all’azienda (coinvolgendo la clientela aziendale, tramite strategie di Customer Relationship Management). I responsabili dei processi, spesso appartenenti al business principale dell’azienda, devono sempre più collaborare con il settore IT durante l’intero ciclo di vita del processo, in maniera tale da assicurare accuratezza rispetto al requisito business.
TIBCO Business Studio risponde alle richieste del mercato fornendo un ambiente completo di modellazione orientato al business. Piuttosto che avere un ambiente di modellazione dei processi (es. iGrafx, strumento Corel puramente visuale e privo di semantica del processo stesso), un ambiente separato per la loro simulazione ed un terzo per la loro documentazione, Business Studio integra il tutto in un unico prodotto, garantendo così un metodo più sicuro ed error-proof nel passaggio dalla modellazione di un processo alla sua esecuzione. Esploriamo quindi le due versioni già lanciate e disponibili gratuitamente sul sito della TIBCO [1].

La Modellazione in Business Studio 1.1
L’istallazione non lascia spazio all’immaginazione: l’intero processo è automatizzato, cosi come l’istallazione dell’ambiente Eclipse e dei numerosi plug-in (es. per il completo supporto UML 2.0). Business Studio presenta un ambiente semplice e familiare grazie ad un’interfaccia pulita e facilmente gestibile, interamente basata sul noto ambiente Eclipse ed evidentemente orientata alla modellazione grafica (Figura 1).



Sfruttando proprio le funzionalità di Eclipse, Business Studio organizza le fasi di modellazione e progettazione in differenti prospettive.
La finestra del Project Explorer raggruppa gli elementi di progetto nella consueta struttura ad albero: qui troviamo i package di processi, i Business Assets e gli exports (Figura 2).



I package contengo i processi definiti (salvati in formato .xpdl) facilitandone il raggruppamento semantico e la correlazione con altri elementi necessari alla modellazione, data field e partecipanti in primo luogo. Ai primi corrispondono i dati di input ed output delle attività componenti il processo, mentre ai secondi i ruoli e l’identificazione delle entità che eseguono l’attività (unità business, persone o sistemi).
I Business Assets contengono invece tutta la documentazione rilevante per il processo. In tal senso, Business Studio permette la creazione di documenti e template che rispettano lo standard metodologico per il project management Prince2. In ogni caso è sempre possibile aggiungere documenti Microsoft Office o immagini.
Mentre i Business Asset posso essere condivisi a livello di progetto, i Data Field ad i partecipanti possono essere creati sia a livello di pacchetto (condivisibili tra processi appartenenti a quel pacchetto), oppure a livello di singolo processo. I processi stessi possono poi essere condivisi fra pacchetti.
L’ambiente destinato alla modellazione dei processi permette l’utilizzo di elementi come attività, task, sottoprocessi, eventi, associazioni, gateway, lanes, ecc. ossia tutti gli elementi della notazione standard BPM. Business Studio permette una dettagliata modellazione dei processi con un risultato grafico intuitivo ed immediato. Una volta definito il processo, è molto facile cambiare prospettiva, passando ad esempio alla simulazione dello stesso o al debug, opzioni molto utili per la valutazione pre-deploment. Nella versione 1.1, per realizzare la simulazione, è necessario passare da Business Studio a iProcess Modeler – l’ambiente di simulazione SOA compliant associato.
Il passaggio tra i due tool è facilitato dall’utilizzo del formato XPDL (XML Process Definition Language), linguaggio derivato XML per la rappresentazione della struttura base dei processi business. Tale formato è d'altronde usato anche per l’allocazione dei processi e dei pacchetti nel repository di progetto.
Al momento della creazione di un processo si può opzionalmente scegliere l’ambiente di destinazione in modo tale da predisporne la validazione: se scegliamo TIBCO iProcess Modeler, il processo sarà validato per la futura importazione in esso e correttezza secondo le regole BPMN. E’ comunque possibile cambiare anche in seguito tale proprietà. Business Studio si avvale, infatti, di un avanzato sistema di verifica della conformità: in base all’ambiente di destinazione prescelto, indicando le incompatibilità, le incongruenze e gli eventuali errori del modello. La Figura 3 rappresenta l’interazione fra Business Studio 1.1 e iProcess Modeler nel ciclo di vita di un processo.



Gli standard
TIBCO Business Studio 1.1 supporta ambedue gli standard BPMN e XPDL specifici per la modellazione dei processi ma con qualche limitazione, superata con la versione 2.0. Il BPMN è una notazione grafica sviluppata dalla Business Process Management Iniziative (BPMI) per rappresentare i passi ed il flusso di procedure business. L’intero set di notazione è supportato da TIBCO Business Studio Process Editor nella versione 2.0.
XPDL è utilizzato per rappresentare la struttura basilare dei processi business in TIBCO Business Studio ed i pacchetti stessi sono definiti in questo formato: ogniqualvolta creiamo un pacchetto o definiamo nuovi elementi nel Process Editor, Business Studio definirà il formato. Ciascun componente del processo così definito rappresenterà un’unità riutilizzabile in vari contesti, accessibile dalla libreria a disposizione sul pannello di esplorazione a sinistra.
TIBCO Business Studio è accompagnato anche da una guida alla modellazione, favorendo l’esecuzione di modelli di processi che aderiscono alle metodologie aziendali, siano esse custom o standard, come Prince2 o Six Sigma.

Simulazione ed analisi
La simulazione ha assunto sempre più un ruolo determinante nelle aziende, permettendo di testare i processi business prima ancora di rilasciarli nel ciclo produttivo; in tal modo è possibile condurre analisi di tipo previsionale ed analitico sui risultati ottenuti. Tramite la simulazione si possono, infatti, dimostrare i benefici potenziali delle variazioni e dei cambiamenti apportati sui processi con l’obiettivo di ottimizzarli. L’analisi includerà lo studio dei fattori tempo, costi ed utilizzo.
Le capacità simulative di Tibco Business Studio 1.1 includono la possibilità di condurre la simulazione come event-driven o data-driven, e di comparare esecuzioni simultanee di simulazioni, in modo tale da dare agli analisti gli strumenti necessari per uno studio approfondito dei processi e dei possibili scenari. Queste funzionalità risultano estremamente utili nell’ambito di un raffinamento iterativo tipico di un ciclo di vita BPM.
Nella versione 1.1 di Business Studio, per realizzare la simulazione era ancora necessario esportare il processo ed importarlo in iProcess Modeler (nel Riquadro 1 si trova parte di un documento di simulazione definito in XPDL).
Tramite la simulazione è possibile identificare i colli di bottiglia, gli errori, la comparazione tra approcci diversi, i costi e la necessità di risorse per i vari passi del processo.
Gli utenti possono modellare e simulare l’esecuzione di processi con l’utilizzo di dati reali configurando opportunamente i driver: è così possibile avere una rappresentazione realistica dell’impatto del nuovo processo sul business prima di rilasciarlo in produzione.
Business Studio permette anche di produrre vari report da associare ai risultati di una simulazione: la velocità di realizzazione del processo, il tempo necessario per ciascun passo e il peso lavorativo per unità sono solo alcuni esempi in questo senso.
Esistono anche altre funzionalità utili negli ambienti aziendali complessi che non vogliono rinunciare alla qualità. Una di esse si riferisce agli indicatori per le SLA (Service Level Agreement): gli utenti hanno la possibilità di associare dei limiti ad attività o passi decisionali ed all’utilizzo delle risorse per garantire la conformità dei processi a standard predefiniti. Durante la verifica del processo mediante simulazione, è possibile valutare anche i parametri definiti per un eventuale web service, offrendo dunque maggiori garanzie di qualità in fase implementativa.
Altra funzionalità interessante in ambito analitico è quella dell’Activity-Based Costing, che fornisce il calcolo di tutti i costi di processo (o delle singole transazioni), come composizione dei costi di ciascuna attività coinvolta: tale funzionalità si può rivelare utile anche nei casi di outsourcing dei processi, laddove il rifornitore è valutato (e pagato) in base a delle SLA, o per transazioni.
Nel caso si incontri difficoltà nell’uso di Business Studio, l’help dinamico del sistema risulta molto utile. Insieme al tutorial, molto intuitivo e ricco di illustrazioni, riesce ad introdurre alla modellazione dei processi anche i non esperti del settore. Se non dovesse bastare, Business Studio offre una serie di esempi da vari domini aziendali pronti all’uso. Oltre alla possibilità di scaricare il prodotto gratuitamente, TIBCO ha messo a disposizione una completa documentazione online e fornisce tutto il supporto necessario: webinars, whitepapers, una comunità aperta a qualsiasi tipo di utente e sviluppatore è disponibile sul sito per collaborare alla soluzione di problemi o nuove idee di sviluppo.

Da Business Studio 1.1 a 2.0
Pur essendo un prodotto di buon livello, Business studio 1.1 presentava ancora qualche limitazione, come un supporto ristretto allo standard BPMN, la necessità di passare all’iProcess Modeler per la simulazione e l’impossibilità di definire parametri e caratteristiche dei web services. TIBCO aveva promesso di rimediare a queste deficienze con una nuova versione, ed ha rispettato gli impegni lanciando recentemente la versione 2.0, sempre disponibile gratuitamente.
Un’importante novità di questa versione è la prospettiva duale sui processi; è infatti possibile, adesso, approcciare un processo secondo un’ottica da analista business o da sviluppatore (prima assente). La nuova funzionalità si basa sulle analisi portate avanti da TIBCO in ambienti aziendali che indicano la necessità di differenziare fra i due ruoli di analista business e sviluppatore IT. Il primo desidera poter utilizzare il tool per una modellazione visuale semplice, basata su drag and drop, senza dover scrivere codice; il secondo deve implementare effettivamente il processo, operarlo ed eseguirlo facendo uso di strumenti più tecnici.
Questo ha inevitabilmente introdotto anche la necessità di migliorare la collaborazione fra queste due figure. Basandosi sulle best practices del settore, Business Studio presenta adesso un ambiente per il controllo delle versioni condiviso tra i vari attori. È adesso possibile seguire l’evoluzione delle versioni di un file connettendosi in modalità web (mediante il Business Studio Teamspace) oppure accedendo dalla propria installazione locale di Business Studio. È inoltre possibile lavorare in parallelo su versioni dello stesso progetto oppure lavorare in maniera esclusiva: il controllo delle versioni può essere realizzato sia in CVS sia in SVN.
Sempre per rispondere alle esigenze di un’utenza IT, sono state introdotte funzionalità per i web service registries, la consultazione dei web services disponibili, il loro editing visuale, così come la possibilità di importarli per poterli utilizzare offline oltre alla definizione di parametri di input ed output, già presente nella versione 1.1. Anche il supporto per web services nativi come database, e-mail e Java POJO (per plug-in e archivi .jar) è adesso garantito.
L’utente può anche definire report custom sul risultato delle simulazioni; i dati possono essere caricati da diverse sorgenti, come file piatti (es. gli spreadsheet di Excell), xml, connessioni jdbc o scripted data source. Tramite la nuova iReports Process Utility è possibile poi testare i risultati, anche se parliamo sempre di simulazioni, utili ai fini di un’analisi dei risultati pre-deployment.
Dal punto di vista dell’interfaccia grafica non esistono importanti cambiamenti, visto che la nuova release ha focalizzato l’attenzione sulle funzionalità.
Tra le cose da notare, è importante comunque la modifica del concetto di Asset, che nella 2.0 copre vari aspetti del processo: dalla simulazione al currency exchange, tutto è organizzato in una struttura ad albero i cui elementi sono sempre e solo Asset. Anche i data model, infatti, sono adesso considerati Asset.
Allo stesso tempo sono stati introdotti i Concept Models, modelli di alto livello per la modellazione dei dati e dei data models, utilizzando la notazione standard UML (facilitando l’importazione di strutture gia esistenti, come l’organigramma aziendale).
Dal lato della modellazione, l’editing dei processi è stato migliorato grazie all’aggiunta di nuove caratteristiche, come i Diagram Fragments ed il Sub-Process refactoring.
Ma uno dei maggiori miglioramenti introdotti con la versione 2.0 riguarda la simulazione, che adesso è completamente incorporata in Business Studio, senza più bisogno di esportare ed importare il processo in iProcess Modeler. L’utente accede semplicemente alla simulazione e, dopo aver introdotto tutti i dati ed i parametri necessari, può osservare il funzionamento del proprio processo individuandone punti critici, eventuali carenze di risorse ed i costi. Grazie a statistiche e grafici su ciascun passo del processo (oltre ai report generali già esistenti), l’utente può ad esempio decidere se l’automazione di alcuni task potrebbe portare giovamento.
Anche dal punto di vista degli standard sono stati fatti passi avanti, grazie ad un supporto del BPMN 1.0 e XPDL nella versione 2.0. L’import da ARIS è stata esteso per ricoprire anche i Functional Allocation Diagrams (FADs) e gli Extended Process Chain (EPC) diagrams. In più, è possibile importare anche da Visio.
In breve, la versione 2.0 di Business Studio riesce a coprire tante richieste sollevate dalla 1.1 e portare l’applicazione ad un livello più alto in termini sia di effettiva utilità che di qualità.

Conclusioni
Tibco Business Studio è una versione più leggera dei tipici tool BPAM, che dà la possibilità di sviluppare in prima istanza modelli concettuali ed in seguito modelli di alto livello dei processi business che verranno in seguito tradotti in processi eseguibili; il tutto nello stesso ambiente BPM.
Se siete il responsabile aziendale di una serie di processi oppure dovete offrire supporto come professionista IT per la definizione dei processi tenete presente l’aiuto che potete trovare in Business Studio. Non solo semplifica l’interazione e la collaborazione fra persone con background diverso (limite ormai noto in molti progetti IT) ma è interamente gratuito! In questo modo, anche le aziende che fino ad oggi non potevano giustificare i costi per l’acquisto di licenze di un prodotto per il management dei processi potranno supportare l’intero ciclo di vita dei propri processi. Business Studio, una volta raccolta la definizione dei processi dai diretti responsabili, può sicuramente favorirne la comunicazione tra le diverse parti coinvolte, grazie ad un repository distribuito e facilmente accessibile da tutti.
Anche se TIBCO non è l’unico produttore di software ad aver presentato sul mercato una proposta “free-of-charge”, Business Studio si distingue per le funzionalità che abbiamo presentato e l’utilizzo e il supporto degli standard. Business Studio porta un contributo innovativo in comparazione alle altre soluzioni disponibili sul mercato perché unisce in un unico ambiente la modellazione, la gestione e la simulazione dei processi.
Gli utenti non tecnici possono concentrarsi sui processi in termini business, mentre diventa più facile valutarne gli impatti mediante simulazioni. In più, ogni processo può essere arricchito con informazioni supplementari: da documenti a statistiche o qualsiasi altro elemento utile.
La possibilità di definire processi aziendali con partecipanti di tipo umano o sistemi, permette la realizzazione della connessione dei servizi interni di un’architettura SOA al processo aziendale. In questo modo, l’integrazione fra automazione e attività realizzate da persone è più facilmente analizzabile e gestibile.
Se consideriamo anche la possibilità di valutazione in termini di SLA e di costi, possiamo dire che Business Studio offre un supporto gestionale efficiente per i processi aziendali.
È comunque d’obbligo sottolineare come, sebbene la conformità agli standard, in speciale XPDL, dovrebbe assicurare l’interoperabilità con altri tool, le cose non stanno esattamente in questi termini. È il solito problema del formato XML: in pratica i vari tool scrivono la propria versione XPDL, compatibile con il proprio simulatore, mentre addirittura certi tool non sono assolutamente compatibili con lo standard.
C’è da dire però che in Business Studio i modelli possono essere importati sia da ARIS che da Visio (mediante il add-on Zynium) garantendo così un’ampia compatibilità. In più, è possibile pubblicare come plug-in trasformazioni XSLT per l’import da tool aziendali esistenti per la Business Process Analyisis.
Da un punto di vista della sicurezza e gestione degli accessi, in futuro sarebbe auspicabile un’integrazione degli stessi con sistemi aziendali come LDAP o ADSI.
Concludiamo aggiungendo che Business Studio può rappresentare anche una risposta per quelle aziende che, nel tentativo di implementare le pratiche ITIL, non hanno ancora trovato un adeguato supporto in termini di strumenti. Business Studio permette, infatti, la condivisione e collaborazione tra differenti attori dell’azienda, mettendo a disposizione un unico repository (con il controllo di versione) ed un comune “linguaggio” (Business Studio stesso).

Interview to Matt DiMaria (Serena) published on Computer Programming

Computer Programming published tha Italian version of the interview we had with Matt DiMaria, Global Marketing VP of Serena.
Matt DiMaria is an extraordinary brilliant professional, very personable to the others. There are some news around Matt that we won't uncover for the moment, but we didn't expect nothing different form this dynamic man.
Stay tuned: we will try having another exclusive interview with Matt in the next weeks, this time out of any strict context, and so maybe we will succeed to cover all the subjects we couldn't talk in Las Vegas last year!

News from Serena

After meeting Serena in Las Vegas and writing an article about the xChange event, Simonetta Radice from Citigate Italia contacted us in March for a follow-up on current Serena developments. Matt DiMaria (in the picture together with Manuel and Carl Theobald, SVP Products), the global Marketing responsible, informed us about Serena's news during a phone interview. Here are some of the points touched that might be of interest for the change, project and portfolio management domain.

1. Since the last interview, important changes have happened for Serena, could you please describe for our readers what has been going on?

Last week (the 26^th of February a.n.) we announced a new CEO, his name is Jeremy Burton. Serena had a temporary, interim chief executive for a period of about two months - Michael Capellas. From the last time we talked, at the xChange Conference - Las Vegas launch, we have completed an acquisition of a PPM (Project and Portfolio Management) technology solution. We acquired a company named Pacific Edge Software, the featured product there is called Mariner, a highly regarded product even though it was a relatively small company, so now a much bigger company is behind a very strong product.

2. What drove the acquisition?

It was a combination of things; one is that, of course, the majority of our customers used the products in support to their software projects. Typically the tools we offer are used by the development teams and their management for delivery of custom applications. PPM provides strong project management capabilities like managing the time, resources and the delivery of functionality in the context of a project, but on the portfolio side it also includes cost information, demand management information, to capture requests coming in from the business, to facilitate IT making more informed decisions about applications' development and activities within the development process, so it is a very complementary and very important acquisition for us.

3. Could you please introduce the Mariner PPM solution to our Italian readers? In your opinion what are the key features and why are they important for the Italian and European market?

In the Italian market, like software markets all around the world, companies are increasingly making decisions to offshore or outsource portions of the development process, whether it is maintenance activity or documentation or more strategic new capabilities being added in the software development process. It is very difficult for large companies to make informed business decisions and gain visibility to very distributed development activities. Historically development was done where the entire team, lets say, would be in one building or one area so that they can communicate very easily with one another. If the manager wanted to know what was going on he could easily call a meeting and bring everybody together and discuss it. Now you have distributed teams all over the world but they still need to assure schedules and delivery on time and on budget. But without having some automation it is extremely difficult and very costly to do it, moreover, it is difficult to evaluate development teams. With the portfolio management capability the organization has the capability to assess quality goals, assess performance against budget, and so forth and compare what a group would say and how they are performing relative to another, so they can make better decision for allocation new work that comes in. Then within the projects themselves there is a need for collaboration among the developing teams. We at Serena answer this need with Dimensions that provides for end to end life cycle management capabilities in a single tool. In conclusion, portfolio management mainly is about making more informed decisions, while application life-cycle management is about making implementation and or execution of these decisions.

4. Dimension 10 was supposed to be an integrated solution centred on Change management, how does the PPM solution impact on this orientation? Is the focus of Serena still on Change Governance?

It is very much in the same spirit. The PPM solution provides support at CEO and decision maker level that relates to a project or the needs of the business. By this it is complementary to our change government vision and to our general strategy within applications development. It probably increases our available market in the sense that process management capabilities, portfolio management can be done outside, strictly speaking, the software development process, could be virtually for any type of project, but we are not really focused on that, we see the benefits in the core market development arena.

5. Are you planning a full integration of Mariner with Serena Dimensions 10, maybe in order to provide an all round decision support framework for the IT departments and professionals?

We are working very hard on that. But, at the moment, being an acquired technology, it functions and competes successfully standalone. We will continue to sell it as a stand alone; of course we see great opportunities to incorporate some of its functionality in the Serena products and making it very seriously part of our product family.

6. Is this integration a step towards creating a decision-support framework for IT departments?

No, not really. We will stay focused on the portfolio and project area.

7. What impact does the acquisition have on final customers?

In the end it is providing the customer with one vendor to work with across a whole range of application development requirements. Our customers have more strategic support for making decisions about portfolio management or requirements management or change management, so they can work with one vendor that is Serena.

8. Does the acquisition of Pacific Edge and the integration of its PPM solutions mean that Serena is no longer available for other collaborations in this direction, for example with Microsoft?

No, not at all, we continue to work very closely with Microsoft. Even the Mariner offering has full bidirectional interoperability with Microsoft Project so if the customer has adopted Project they can still capture all project information and pass it into Mariner were we can help do the resource assessment, the financial impact assessment, and so on, so it is very complimentary and we will continue the integration.

9. In this period, not only Serena has grown in terms of solutions offered, but also you have a new CEO; what does this mean for Serena's market strategy and product offer? What are the new goals of Serena?

We are very fortunate to have Jeremy Burton coming from Symantec, he was running a very significant part of Symantec business, and has also experience with Veritas and Oracle. We are very fortunate to have him leading the team and you will see in time the focus continuing in the application development world and commitment to being the leading vendor in this particular area.

10. For an external observer, it seems that Serena is changing CEOs quite often, is this a strategy for testing you change solutions, or a strategy for overcoming market turbulence or there is no strategy at all?

Serena has only had three CEOs. The most recent change was determined by the decision of Woodward to leave Serena. Silver Lake Partners, the company that owns Serena, as they were looking for a new CEO, asked Michael Capellas, a world famous CEO, to serve in a temporary capacity, and he was announced in exactly that fashion, as an interim CEO as we were searching for a fulltime CEO. This process was completed in a short amount of time, so no disruption in our planning activities or our go to market activities. We just finished our financial year, although I am unable to share with you the results of our financial year, what I can tell you is that Serena is a very strong company, a very profitable company we believe very well positioned to continue as a leader in the application development market place.

"A far step beyond"

With these words Keith Andrews (www.rhmc.ca), the father of the Siebel ePlan methodology, has commented the work represented by my Ph.D. thesis "UML in CRM, a new pragmatic rule". On last 19th April I have in fact discussed my work for the final presentation that concludes these 3 years of parallel research activity and continued professional consultancy.
Keith, on my right in the picture, has come to Italy from Canada to attend my presentation and to discuss about methodologies in Packaged Applications and, more generally, in the Enterprise Architectures scenario. Actually I have also flought to Italy but from Copenhagen, where I am currently covering the role of Release Manager for a European wide Siebel CRM implementation.
As a former Director of Methodology and Quality Assurance for major software firms such as Scopus Technology, Siebel Systems and Oracle Corporation, Mr. Keith Andrews has ten years experience in the implementation of Customer Relationship Management systems, with a client list that spans the globe.
Keith is a very elegant and nice person and he's far from the "lights", but I would like to underline how he was the first actor introducing a methodology in the COTS implementation context. Siebel ePlan has represented in fact the first real professional attempt to put order in the chaos and anarchy of Siebel CRM implementations, just missing the final step: a proper support by proper Tools.
A warm greeting to my tutor, Prof. Alessandro Fantechi (www.dsi.unifi.it/~fantechi), on the left end side of the picture, who has supported me in these three years.

WE ARE UNDER COMPLETE REDESIGN

Thank you for your patience!