 |
|
iRise partner OneSpring has updated their popular “SimDK for iPhones” and graciously allowed us to post the new iDoc as “iRise for iPhone” for download on the iRise site. This iDoc gives iPhone developers the ability to visualize iPhone applications early in the process. Functions simulated include the ability to quickly prototype the look, feel and behavior of iPhone applications, including screen transitions, typing and sliding.
To download the free iRise for iPhones iDoc, click here.
iRise for iPhones is a complete toolkit for the design of custom iPhone applications. It was built using visual elements and artifacts directly from Apple’s SDK, to which only approved Apple developers have access, thus allowing business analysts and interface designers who do not have access to Apple’s SDK to model app behavior early in the process.
iRise for iPhones offers a template guide that matches the form factor of the iPhone to help ensure designs can be accurately reproduced with the Apple SDK. iRise for iPhones includes:
o iPhone iDoc visualization template with guides;
o Menu icons w/ buttons;
o Custom button template;
o Slider and button action behaviors; and,
o Multi-touch actions.
|
|
|
|
|
|
We just posted a new iRise iDoc for free download that contains 1,000 16×16 icons for use in iRise visualizations. Since all of the icons are maintained in a datasheet, you can easily add your own. Searching and tagging make it easy and fast to find the icon you need. Import the iDoc to your Definition Center so everyone can use it. To get the free iDoc, click here.
NOTE: This iDoc contains icons and other images created by Mark James and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/. Your use of any of these icons and images is governed by that agreement. Additional information is available here: http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/. This iDoc and any of its content is provided AS-IS. By downloading this iDoc you acknowledge and agree that neither iRise nor any iRise licensor makes any warranty whatsoever regarding this iDoc or any of its content, and iRise and its licensors hereby disclaim all implied warranties, including without limitation any implied warranty of non-infringement.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Today, iRise announced the release of iRise Professional Edition, a single user version of its popular team-based software visualization authoring tool. For the first time, individual business analysts, interface designers and project managers can now leverage the same powerful visualization techniques in use by over hundreds of corporate customers to get business critical software projects to market faster, with less cost and risk. Read more about iRise Professional Edition here.
iRise Professional Edition is available now for purchase and also can also be downloaded for 30 day free trials directly from the iRise Web site.
In addition, you can download useful iRise iDocs from the iDoc Library page or view iRise ”Product QuickTake” videos from the Media Center.
Enjoy!
|
|
|
|
|
|
SDTimes posted an article about the ever-increasing importance of the business analyst (BA) in software development. In this piece, author Jennifer deJong describes the new style analyst, a role that demands more IT expertise and a deeper business understanding than ever before. No longer the generic bridge between business and IT, the new business analyst must tap into everything from strategic issues (e.g. a company’s exit strategy) to technical implementation specifics.
This “new analyst” idea underscores what iRise has been evangelizing. The BA’s role is to bridge the communication gap between business and IT. iRise’s visualization software elegantly solves that problem by bringing both parties together to easily review and iterate a proposed application, then use the approved simulation as a blueprint to which both teams refer back. Visualization is what allows a BA to cut through the miscommunication issues that often plague application projects. The status quo for doing visual mock-ups has traditionally been static wire frames and PowerPoint screen shots – a process that can be painful, costly and time-intensive. As the BA function has evolved, the technology has now finally caught up so business analysts can fly through simulations in high fidelity with a group of stakeholders, leaving the days of missed requirements and rework behind.
To learn more about the shifting role of the business analyst, listen to Carey Schwaber’s Webinar and the report she co-authored with Rob Karel.
|
|
|
|
|
|
iRise recently conducted a national survey of IT professionals around application definition. The survey revealed that 72% of IT professionals are suffering from increased development cost due to rework and scope creep . According to the survey, poor communication is a fundamental problem. Respondents cited “business stakeholders not being fully invested in the definition process’ or ‘having unrealistic expectations of the end result,” as the key problem in application definition communication.
Last week’s blog post by Forrester Research’s Carey Schwaber, “Which Vendors Have Made A Difference In App Dev?” 
acknowledged iRise for “waking up the market to the limitations of textual requirements.” This survey shows that many IT professionals are still in need of “awakening.”
Additional survey findings include:
- Over 60% of companies experienced delays, cost overruns and missing features in an application development project in the past two years;
- IT professionals that are prototyping applications are using MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint and MS Visio to document requirements, and over 60% of these respondents are not fully satisfied with their current method of defining applications;
- 30% of participants said that they are not testing applications before development at all; and,
- Almost 80% of respondents are interested in eliciting customer feedback using a fully functional prototype before coding.
To download the free executive report of this survey visit:
|
|
|
|
|
|
At iRise, we have been preaching for many years that words by themselves do a poor job of defining the requirements for software applications. So, it’s refreshing to see someone else – especially a Forrester analyst – pile on to the discussion.
Tom Grant, a senior analyst in the Technology Marketing group at Forrester, published a research document this week titled “Improving Your Product Management Tools”. While the note is targeted at product marketing and management professionals, the roles and tasks performed by these workers have significant if not total overlap with business analyst and usability professions.
The problem is actually double-edged. According to Tom, “most product managers rely on tools – predominantly Microsoft Office – that do not adequately support them.” And while there are tools specifically designed to handle product requirements, the majority of technology companies do not embrace them.
Tom further identifies 6 functions needed to address the requirements challenges for product managers and describes the shortcomings of trying to use Microsoft Office, Web 2.0 tools and CRM systems:
- Collection
- Analysis
- Prediction
- Connection
- Communication
- Updates
By the way, iRise was mentioned as one of the tools for the Communication function which Tom defines as modeling or simulating use cases to communicate to stakeholders.
Tom’s research also pointed out that innovators are more than twice as likely to adopt requirements tools. He examined companies based on their size, company age and product delivery and found that requirements tools were adopted at a much higher rate in companies that were 1-5 years old, smaller than 500 employees and who used software as a service (SaaS) delivery.
The full 16-page report is available from Forrester for $279 and is worth a read for anyone involved in defining and managing requirements. You can also read Tom Grant’s blog at this link and he welcomes feedback.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Carey Schwaber, Senior Analyst from Forrester Research presented at the iRise-sponsored June Catalyze community webcast last week.
In addition to presenting her top 10 list of ways to improve project outcomes for business analysts and others involved in software definition, Carey answered nearly 20 questions from the audience. If you missed the live broadcast, you will definitely want to listen to the webcast recording so you can hear Carey’s unique perspective on the role of business analysts, software definition and requirements.
For a sneak preview, here is a peak at Carey’s top 10 list:
- Define the business-IT division of labor
- Be part of the team
- Understand and communicate impact
- Define future as well as present business needs
- Remember non-functional requirements
- Make requirements painless for the business
- Measure project progress in terms of requirements
- Don’t rely solely on text
- Maximize feedback on requirements
- Invest in future project outcomes too
The webcast was recorded and can be viewed in the iRise Media Center, and the slides from the presentation have been embedded below.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Even if you’re a not a writer or lover of words, it is still important to note that today is the 80th birthday of the First Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary or OED as it more commonly known. The OED bills itself as the “definitive record of the English language” and is one of the most famous dictionaries in history.
The OED was a major collaborative efforts and a precursor of today’s Wikipedia. During the 70 years from it’s approval date to it publish date on June 6, 1928, the OED went through many editors. Sir James Murray shepherded it from 1879 to 1915, and probably had the biggest influence on the work.
The official policy of the OED was to:
- “present in alphabetical series the words that have formed the English vocabulary from the time of the earliest records [ca. AD740] down to the present day, with all the relevant facts concerning their form, sense-history, pronunciation, and etymology. It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectal usage and slang”
Here are some quick facts about the First Edition of the OED:
- Actual size – 10 volumes, 15,490 pages
- Time to complete – 70 years
- Number of entries – 252,200
- Number of contributors – 2,000
- Number of quotations submitted – 5 million
And here are some quick links to check out when you have more time:
- OED website
- OED Facts
- OED Word of the Day
- The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester - “this is a scintillating account of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language” and well worth the read if you want to become an expert on the OED
While iRise is trying to do away with textual word-based requirements documents, we still love words and the English language! Take a moment today and reflect on the efforts of so many to bring sense and order to our English language.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Catalyze Webcast – “10 Tips for Driving Better Project Outcomes”
Featuring Carey Schwaber of Forrester Research
Thursday, June 12 @ 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern
Register for the webcast here.
It’s no secret that in the battle to bring effective business software to market on time and on budget, business analysts are on the front line.
- What can business analysts do to improve requirements definition practices and make a difference in project outcomes?
- What skills do business analysts need?
- What roles can they play?
- What tools should they use, and what role should those tools play?
Don’t miss this valuable online seminar sponsored by iRise and featuring one of the industry’s leading experts on the subject of requirements definition, Carey Schwaber, a senior analyst from Forrester Research. Carey has talked with hundreds of organizations that use a variety of requirements definition tools and methods. From this experience and accumulated knowledge, she has developed a set of 10 practical tips that you can immediately put into action in your own organization.
If you cannot make the live webcast, the recording will be uploaded to the iRise and Catalyze websites by June 16.
|
|
|
|
|
|
SOA or service-oriented architecture is a chronically hot topic – and there are as many opinions about it as there are IT vendors. According to Wikipedia, SOA is “is a computer system’s architectural style for creating and using business processes, packaged as services, throughout their lifecycle. SOA also defines and provisions the IT infrastructure to allow different applications to exchange data and participate in business processes.” And for a more humorous definition of SOA overload, check out Greg the Architect in the ”SOA This, SOA That” video from YouTube.
We recently had an interesting internal email discussion on how iRise deals with SOA and I have excerpted the highlights below:
From Sherrick Murdoff, VP of Alliances and Business Development:
- “SOA is most often interpreted as back-end plumbing only, but this is not the case. SOA includes the back-end plumbing, but you don’t start with the back-end plumbing and you don’t start with building web services
- What many CIOs and industry leaders have learned and are promoting is to start with the customer experience – this should drive your SOA implementation more than anything. iRise lets you visualize the customer experience and iterate with both end-users and IT to gain alignment on what needs to be built that drives the “how”
- Visualizing SOA is important to let the customer experience drive the requirements for what infrastructure you need to put in place
- iRise aligns well in any SOA discussion and brings the customer back to what is important – visualizing “what” you need before you begin to think about the “how” you want to implement.”
From Matt Smith, Senior Enterprise Solutions Manager
- “Most people over-think the relationship between SOA and simulating applications. SOA basically means there is a provider (machine) and a consumer (machine or human) of a service.
- The processing of the service is all the back-end wizardry that goes on within the SOA, which iRise doesn’t diagram in the traditional sense of architecture modeling tools, but it does simulate the action.
- The line of business manager and end-user don’t care how the SOA actually processes the service request. iRise simulates the important bit from their perspective of application usability.”
From James McWethy, Enterprise Solutions Director
- “SOA…three loaded letters. I’ve seen companies spend years talking about defining and implementing an SOA strategy.
- Why not simulate the end-user experience that will result from the tiresome SOA planning process to: (1) Verify that the information being delivered via the service (informational or transactional) will be of value to the end user, and (2) simulate a set of components (portlets, widgets, gadgets, web parts, etc.) that will show the end result of a system comprised of multiple services.
iRise Customer Success Story - At Fusion ‘07, the Customer Experience team from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan gave a presentation on how they used iRise to simulate a technical proof of concept for their new member portal. The presentation is available here and can be viewed here.
So, why risk building your SOA infrastructure without using iRise to engaging your end-users? By simulating the end-user experience with iRise first, both business stakeholders and IT will win.
|
|
|
|
