The last few posts have been talking about the different product offerings in the IBM Rational portfolio. They help in automation of processes designed after years of extensive research based on interaction with customers and real world implementations. This helps in designing effective solutions for the real world problems faced by businesses today. All this information has been collated into two process frameworks catering specifically to agile software delivery teams. They are the Measured Capability Improvement Framework and Rational Practices.
Measured Capability Improvement Framework (MCIF)
The MCIF helps business owners and key stakeholders understand if the new approach adopted is delivering or not. This helps teams to continuously improve and innovate their software and systems delivery with the help of measurement and continuous improvement. MCIF also helps teams specialize and develop key competencies in agile development – practices which directly contribute towards business objectives.
Rational practices
The IBM Rational Method Composer helps agile teams with the right amount of leeway while dealing with processes, when they need it by providing Rational Practices. Irrespective of expertise level of the team, Rational Practices provides a customized approach to the various iterations of the Software Development Life Cycle and delivers more consistent results, quicker.
In our previous post, we spoke about the Jazz platform. There are other offerings from Rational which can positively impact the entire software development and delivery process. Various tools contribute towards different stages of the software development lifecycle. Capabilities like architecture management, change and release management, enterprise architecture management, requirements management, product, project and portfolio management, quality management and targeted solutions are all features of the various products in the Rational portfolio.
These capabilities can help you model and develop superior software and systems, enhance software delivery and lifecycle traceability throughout the entire SDLC and help you make the correct decisions to drive your business forward. Requirement management, alignment of business goals, adoption of best practices and assuring functionality, reliability, security and compliance are all possible with the Rational portfolio.
One of the key tenets of IBM is to enable business innovation and agility. To develop both systems and operations, a large investment of time, people and money is required. To enable sustained growth, differentiation and innovation, software should be treated as an investment and an asset. It should also be treated as such. The growth of software is extensive and interconnected with highly intelligent programs and instrumented products coexist and contribute to the same network. To deliver software effectively, innovation must be enabled, costs lowered and change should be managed.
This is not possible with an ad-hoc approach to software management. Software delivery should be approached with the same stringent expectations as those of other processes. As a business process, it should be tracked, reviewed and revised as required.
IBM Rational’s offerings help make software delivery a core strength for your business. With offerings like processes, capabilities and a cohesive, collaborative platform, the pathway to success is set on a solid foundation.
Innovation is often the key differentiation for organizations in the marketplace. To gain majority marketshare, fatter profits and industry leader status, organizations must innovate constantly. In fact, innovation is so important that 94% of C – Level executives surveyed place innovation as one of the top priorities for their organization.
Despite the importance placed on innovation, often the results leave the business owners dissatisfied – Over 45% of the owners are unsure or unhappy with the results of their organizations’ collaboration and innovation drives.
Approaching innovation as a chaotic, amorphous cloud cannot yield appropriate results. Complete usage of available opportunities is only possible if the entire process of innovation is structured and managed. Each step of the process – ideation, evaluation, selection, prioritization and implementation, should be made measurable to boost and improve the quality of the results of the innovation exercise at the enterprise level.
Social innovation is a viable channel to benefit from the wisdom of the masses. Involving customers in the product development process results in the most successful products and integrate them into the core processes. Furthermore, as a tried and tested method, these organizations are also innovating the methods and channels adopted to engage and connect with the customers.
Not every idea is a great one. That is par for the course, considering innovation. To manage innovation effectively, each idea as an investment. Apart from collating the ideas, a structured process to differentiate the ideas is essential. Adoption of systemic processes and tools can greatly enhance the tangible results of various innovation innovatives.
Some of the benefits of managing innovation are:
Enhanced, targeted decision making
Aligning product offerings and business objectives
Regardless of whether your clients are delivering software for IT, systems, enterprise modernization, or any combination of these, IBM Rational has the ALM solution your clients need.
In a recent report, ‘Decision Matrix: Selecting an Application Lifecycle Management Vendor,’ from industry analyst Ovum, states that “IBM has the broadest and arguably the deepest portfolio among all vendors profiled in this report.” With a Technology Score of 94.3% and a perfect market impact score of 10/10, all other vendors were ranked relative to IBM!
The report goes on to state that “the vendor has ensured that it stays ahead of the pack by having a good grasp of market demand and meeting it through tool support”.
In the 2010 Gartner Inc. report on “MarketScope for Application Lifecycle Management”, analysts – Duggan, Jim & Murphy, Thomas E., have each stated that “ALM is what enables sustainable agile practices. ALM creates a management framework providing consistent, auditable records of the decisions and activities of agile teams”
“Efficient coordination and automation of the delivery process requires new, collaborative approaches to the planning, measurement, execution, control and reporting of activities.”
“These new approaches are what differentiate current application life cycle management (ALM) tools, and what make ALM processes vital to leading-edge development activities.”
(Ref: Duggan, Jim & Murphy, Thomas E., “Market Scope for Application Lifecycle Management,” Gartner, Inc., 11 November 2010 ID Number: G00208572, pp. 2,6)
Fig. 2 IBM Rational earns “Strong Positive” with the highest possible rating from Gartner
Analysts Tony Baer, Chandranshu Singh, and Michael Azoff worked with Rational team to review numerous written submissions, briefings, and client references. The result? In terms of market impact and technology, they concluded that IBM Rational is the market leader! And they also determined that IBM Rational demonstrates clear leadership in market presence!
The BigLever Gears Software Product Line (SPL) Lifecycle Framework provides a common set of industry-standard SPL concepts and constructs to enable the integration of existing or new tools, assets and processes across the full system and software development lifecycle – from business case and analysis, to requirements, design, implementation, testing, delivery, maintenance and evolution.
“BigLever provides enhanced off-the-shelf integration solutions that support seamless product line engineering across the systems and software development lifecycle. BigLever’s product offering includes a broad range of solutions for IBM Rational, Serena, Microsoft, Perforce and Open Source development tools.
BigLever’s integration solutions utilize Gears concepts and constructs to extend third party tools and ensure consistent SPL capabilities directly from the framework.
BigLever’s Bridge solutions make third party tools “product line aware” by incorporating standardized variation point mechanisms and enabling the execution of SPL operations – such as product configuration, variation point editing and variation impact analysis – directly from within third party tools.”
By integrating IBM’s Jazz-based Rational Quality Manager into BigLever Software’s SPL Lifecycle Framework, the new RQM/Gears Bridge enables development organizations to define test case diversity based on product line features and to manage test plans as first-class product line assets in the SPL development lifecycle.
“The Department of Defense (DoD) Architecture Framework (DoDAF) defines a common approach for DoD architecture description development, presentation, and integration for both warfighting operations and business operations and processes. The Framework is intended to ensure that architecture descriptions can be compared and related across organizational boundaries, including Joint and multinational boundaries.” (DoD Architectural Framework, Version 1.0, 15 August 2003)
The architecture of complex systems and operational enterprises require explicit relationship management and understanding capacities. It is imperative to understand the enterprise’s architecture to deliver effective design, implementation, deployment, and maintenance of evolving systems.
The IBM Rational approach to DoDAF is comprehensive. Our total solution incorporates an integrated toolset, a proven systems engineering process, and a robust enablement capability designed to facilitate discovery, description, implementation, and evolution of the complex enterprise architecture associated with DoD’s operational missions.
The tooling builds upon capabilities supported by the optional, downloadable DoDAF feature for the the IBM Rational Eclipse-based modeling solution family of tools (IBM Rational Software Architect, IBM Rational Software Modeler and IBM Rational Systems Developer).
IBM Rational’s approach to DoDAF incorporates a proven process for systems engineering with a powerful, integrated tool suite. It leverages the content of DoDAF products as enterprise architecture is incrementally elaborated from abstract capabilities to concrete logical and physical representations.
A robust, scalable process, coupled with automation, drives development of consistent architectural content in a centralized model repository. This provides necessary enablement for the larger development organization and key decision-makers of the operational enterprise.
Reference: An IBM Rational Approach to the Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) Whitepaper
As we get into an environment where software systems have to co-exist with widely disparate systems to achieve favorable business outcomes, there needs to be a slightly different approach to be successful:
An Incremental Approach to ensure all external/internal dependencies are being addressed effectively
Measured Capability Improvement around parameters that are essential for a successful outcome and if they are not on target measure & steer to achieve success
An Integrated Delivery Platform that can support an heterogeneous environment and provide real-time data for effective collaboration across multiple disciplines
Waters is a manufacturer of instrumentation used for chemical analysis that’s used in the food, pharmaceutical and a number of other industries. Waters was looking for better integration and connectivity with all of its systems- a common platform for all its systems.
“About 5 years ago Waters made a number of additional acquisitions overseas and essentially wound up with a situation where we had 4 separate software development groups. Basically, we wanted to have a common platform for all of our tools in our systems that we were developing. So, we needed to have a solution that allowed us to have collaboration across all sites, but added in a manner that [would work even if] everybody can’t be available at the same time” says Don Cunningham, a business analyst at Waters.
Rational provided them with tools which are inexpensive and enabled them to quickly and easily answer all financial questions. The solution that IBM offered to Waters is really a system of systems.
To understand and learn more about the IBM Rational toolset, visit our page.
Web site security and compliance is a top priority for organisations. It protects sensitive company, customer and employee data, helps meet regulatory and corporate compliance requirements and defends against the high cost of a data breach. Web sites and online applications are prime targets for hackers as they provide straight access to corporate and personal data.
IBM’s Rational AppScan and Rational Policy Tester are Web site security and compliance solutions which automate application and content analysis. Organisations can identify weaknesses, assess compliance requirements, and improve online systems’ accuracy and reliability. The software helps IT and security professionals protect against the threat of attacks and data breaches.
If Web applications collect or exchange sensitive or personal data, an organization’s security professional’s job is harder now than ever before. Implementing Quality Assurance and development policies in the security testing process produces secure applications of higher-quality applications at a reasonable cost.
Rational’s Web application security solutions – the IBM Rational AppScan product family is ideal for all stages of development and for all types of testers.
The products provide:
Automated Scanning and Testing for common vulnerabilities – such as SQL-Injection, Cross-Site Scripting, and Buffer Overflow
Broad application coverage
Advanced remediation capabilities
Over 40 standard security compliance reports
Web site compliance solutions automate content scanning and analysis to help ensure compliance with privacy, accessibility, and key industry regulations. Other solutions help organizations reduce their risk by identifying issues impacting compliance and site usability.
