Enterprise Development Needs

To maximize value, the three main stakeholders (Business, Application Development, and IT Operations) need to work together smoothly as shown in Figure 9.1^[2]. Solutions that do not address the needs of all three groups will fail.

Figure 9.1: The three main stakeholders of enterprise development needs.

Enhanced Web server-based e-commerce application development for the modern enterprise means much more than just writing code. Managing the e-business development process involves delivering results in three ways:

• Maximize business value by aligning IT implementations with business goals.

• Increase IT effectiveness by better integrating development and operations.

• Control complexity with end-to-end life cycle management^[2].

Meeting these needs requires good communication between the business and IT communities to be successful. With that foundation, it is possible to evaluate how technology can be applied to address the specialized needs of each stakeholder.

Maximizing Business Value

IT expenditures need to be justified and rejustified regularly. IT must ensure that the real and evolving business requirements are reflected in the resulting applications. They must also ensure that resources are focused on projects that have high impact on the business.

To ensure that the individual projects actually meet the needs of the business users, it is vital to drive business knowledge into IT through requirements and business process modeling. There is no value to the business for systems that don’t meet the user’s functional requirements. This process must also address the user’s service-level expectations. Response time and system availability metrics are just as important as features and functions in successful deployments.

Aligning IT’s resources with business priorities (IT Portfolio Management) is mandatory. For this to succeed, there must be communication between IT and the business. Key enabling technology includes solutions that help IT to assess the risk, cost, and benefits of all initiatives. A management portal is an essential tool for bringing together real-time project status and scheduling information.

People are hungry for current, reliable information about the enhanced Web server-based e-commerce application development process. Extensive “what-if” capabilities on resource and portfolio commitments are also necessary to quickly and effectively respond to new business opportunities and a changing competitive landscape. Project management solutions with the capability to manage enterprise-wide schedules make this possible.

With these capabilities in place, a CIO can have confidence that development projects are focused on delivering maximum value to the business, and that these efforts are supported by technology that enables a free flow of communications with the line of business management.

Increasing IT Effectiveness

Of course, IT must maximize the effectiveness of the development organization itself. In addition, many CIOs have a focus on removing any internal obstacles between application development and IT operations to ensure that successful, enhanced Web server-based e-commerce application development efforts flow into successful deployments.

A top priority is to accelerate time to market with proven best development practices. An ideal solution will support the delivery of prepackaged best practices libraries that make the experience of other professionals available out-of-the-box. Leveraging the expertise of organizations like the SEI can jump-start efforts to implement consistent, repeatable development processes and reduce the risk associated with development efforts.

The ultimate goal is to improve quality and effectiveness through a continuous process improvement cycle. This discipline is widely used in manufacturing and is equally applicable to enhanced Web server-based e-commerce application development. Any effective process management solution must be customizable to encompass the actual experiences of your own organization.

Modeling is a proven solution for improving the effectiveness of the development process. Modeling techniques apply in many areas of the development process, including data modeling, component modeling, and business process modeling, which was discussed earlier.

Data modeling makes Database Administrators (DBAs) and architects more productive and less error-prone by automating manual processes. Advanced tools in this area provide guidance and validation of logical and physical models, matched with support for the many different relational databases deployed in the enterprise. Sophisticated modeling tools support data cleanliness initiatives by reconciling data models between different applications and databases.

Component modeling helps architects and developers improve the quality of system design from the outset. The strongest solutions in this area provide full support for the Unified Modeling Language (UML) standard. UML ensures support for a broad array of modeling activities and the ability to import models into many popular development tools.

For enterprise projects, it is also important to support larger development teams with sophisticated solutions that enable collaborative modeling. Model integration between solutions works to ensure consistency and automate communication among all participants in the development process. Sharing and the exchange of models in this environment is critical to success. It is also important to apply solutions that more effectively tie the Development and IT Operations organizations together. Two key areas to address are software delivery and service desk.

Moving software into production requires a smooth integration between development’s change and configuration management solutions; in addition, modern software delivery solutions that ensure all the components of modern distributed applications are deployed synchronously. Postdeployment support requires that any problems reported to the service desk can be traced back to the developer’s efforts to fix them.

There is a long tradition of solutions that improve the productivity of developers. Improving the overall effectiveness of IT means having solutions that address the collaborative needs of developers, DBAs, and operations staff to help them manage the entire development process.

Controlling Complexity

The enterprise enhanced Web server-based e-commerce application development environment is growing exponentially more complex. New development projects frequently need both Web and wireless deployments and must integrate information from a wide array of systems and platforms.

Supporting these new applications requires a wide range of technical skills and the deployment of many sophisticated new technologies. This dynamic environment is driving the need for sophisticated enterprise-caliber change and configuration management (CCM) solutions.

An enterprise solution must deliver continuous control across processes, designs, and applications. In addition to managing on traditional mainframe, Unix, and Windows platforms, leading solutions must support the growing popularity of Linux servers. Given the multiplatform nature of new Web services and wireless technology, CCM solutions must have the capability to centrally manage change packages that span all these environments.

Deploying applications has also become more complicated than ever before. For example, deploying a single new wireless application may require the synchronized delivery of components to wireless devices, Web servers, application servers, and mainframes. If any individual component is not deployed, then the entire application will not work. Successful deployments depend on the ability of the CCM solution used by the development organization to effectively integrate with the software delivery capabilities used by IT operations.