The iRise Blog

What are Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and how can your organization use them?

Maurice Martin, iRise President, COO and Founder, wrote an article recently that answered these questions for Hotel Business Review Executive magazine.

I’ve summarized some key points below and you can get a copy of the article from the iRise Website.

“RIAs represent a real opportunity for companies to improve their online offerings because they are the tools that provide Web designers the greatest flexibility in meeting the needs of your brand. But added richness will not always equate to an improved (or even a good) experience. At every point, you must think about what the best possible experience is for your customers.”

The article also included a discussion of the five pitfalls of adopting RIA:

1. Not understanding customer needs
2. Implementing for technology’s sake
3. Creating a distracting experience
4. Reduced web site performance
5. Limited metrics tracking and reporting

If you are interested in learning if RIA is right for you and how to avoid the risks, be sure check out the article.

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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.

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We announced the immediate availability of the iRise simulation template for the iPhone at the Interop and Software 2008 conferences yesterday.

“iRise for iPhone”™ gives business analysts, user experience (UX) professionals and others a way to quickly prototype the look, feel and behavior of iPhone applications by making available pre-defined visualization widgets and templates that can be quickly assembled into a high definition mobile applications. 

The template can simulate all of the iPhone’s standard menu icons and user actions, such as using sliders and zooming in and out of screens by “pinching” and “unpinching.” Application designers can use it to create custom buttons, manipulate the menu icons and define the effects of actions such as double-tapping a button.

Our alliance partner, OneSpring, developed the capability and is also providing the “OneSpring iPhone SimDK for iRise”. 

Chuck Converse, a senior user experience architect at OneSpring noted, “Most applications, if you design them for mobile devices, are very text-heavy.  The iPhone’s display capabilities give designers more freedom and a whole new set of choices.”

The full story is available from these related links:

• iRise iPhone press release
• Article from CIO.com and INTEROP

And here is the YouTube video produced by OneSpring which demos the iRise iPhone capability:

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Emmet Keeffe, iRise CEO and Co-founder, had an opinion piece published this week in SandHill.com.  SandHill.com is the premier destination online destination for strategic information on the software business. The site and its newsletters are read by thousands of top software industry executives every week.

Emmet talks about “The Requirement Challenge” and why “Accurate Specs are Key”.  He finishes with “The Benefits of Visualization” which I am paraphrasing below:

• Business people can fully experience the product and make changes early in the process, saving significant time and downstream costs.
• Developers can catch design and functional errors before an application goes into production.
• The process can speed through multiple rounds of functional visual edits to quickly reach decisions on business needs and customer experience.
• Managers can increase final adoption of system with upfront agreements of the application’s process flow, experience and visual look and feel.
• User experience professionals can rapidly iterate proposed designs directly in front of customers, dramatically improving customer experience.
• Software sales teams can demo potential products to customers to get feedback before actually developing the application.
• The professional service teams can test a potential product for possible needed changes to speed implementation and integration.
• Sharing visualizations with global sourcing partners is not only easier but cheaper. Visualizations eliminate confusion with global development teams because everyone is speaking the same language.
• Resellers can sell a solution by showing a visualization of what a specific application could do when integrated into the customer’s environment

He wraps up by repeating his vision, “by 2020, all business software will be visualized before its built, just the same way that every car, airplane and semiconductor are visualized today.”

The entire piece is worth a read and can be found at SandHill.com.

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Is your software simple and usable?

There was an interesting opinion piece at Sandhill.com last week titled “Simplicity: What’s Next in Business Software” by Anthony Deighton of QlikTech. 

Anthony pointed out that the gap between what software users experience in their workplace and in the rest of their life is widening while the line between work and home continues to blur.  Business users are starting to expect that the applications they use at work be as clear, user-friendly, intuitive and simple as the other software they use.

The bottom line is that enterprise software vendors must “simplify or die” by embracing a philosophy of simplicity or risk getting left behind in the future by innovative and emerging vendors.

There are several characteristics of “simple” software that Anthony lists in his piece, including:

• Continue to offer robustness - “simple” is not the same as “lite”
• Focus on the user - enterprise software vendors need to focus on the user for a change
• Revamp the value chain - make sure you pick partner vendors and service providers who embrace the simplicity vision
• Deliver a fast sales and implementation process - the product must be easy for users, but also deliver quick value to the business
• Relentlessly pursue simplicity - you have to keep focusing on making your product usable and faster to deploy

Check out the full article and complete discussion thread from this link.

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Laurie Gray from OneSpring (an iRise Strategic Partner) shared her thoughts on Rich Internet Applications or RIA during the monthly Catalyze webcast yesterday.

 She started out with the RIA “elevator pitch” from Tony MacDonell who writes the InsideRIA blog:

“Rich Internet Applications are software programs that are designed to run above the level of the operating system, and are universally available to you, where ever you may be when you need to use them. You can run them on any computer, in any context. Run them in the web browser, on the desktop, or even on mobile devices as well. Rich Internet Applications offer powerful user interfaces, that allow you to work or play in ways that are familiar, intuitive, and exciting. They leverage the best of the web, without sacrificing the power of the desktop.”

She also shared the origins of the term Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) which first appeared in an essay by Jesse James Garrett from adaptive path in February 2005.

According to Laurie, the five myths of RIA are:

1. RIAs provide the perfect vehicle for splashy sites
   • they are also amazing tools for complex, transactional, data-driven sites too
2. RIAs bring people-centered design to information workspaces
   • most users will not care how the app was built, but if they have a bad experience, they won’t come back
3. If you’ve designed websites, you can design RIAs
   • that’s not necessarily true
4. It’s just like our software, of course our users will understand it
   • think again — there are lots of ways to do things
5. RIAs provide a better user experience than traditional HTML
   • it depends — and sometimes it can be a worse experience

Laurie wrapped up with a demo of her favorite RIA websites and a list of valuable resources before answering a spirited round of questions.

The presentation slides embedded below and webcast recording are available from the Catalyze Community.  Some of the questions from the webcast are also answered in Laurie’s Catalyze blog.

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Project risk is keeping federal computer analysts (aka “business analysts” in the private sector) up at night. InformationWeek recently reported on some statistics by the U.S. Office of Management & Budget (OMB) where CIO Karen Evans was quoted as saying “there are 585 projects valued at $27B on the ‘management watch list,’ although some of those have also been deemed high risk. Projects can be deemed high risk for a variety of reasons, including being high-cost, highly complex, or high profile.” Typically project failure results in rework which we define as being a result of any, or all, of these factors:

• IT built a different project than the agency envisioned
• the application has missing features
• citizens or government employees won’t adopt it because it’s too hard to use

Mastering the customer experience is probably one of the single biggest playbook pages the government is now borrowing from private industry. It’s moving towards making agency sites as easy-to-use as highly trafficked consumer information and e-commerce sites such as Amazon, Travelocity and eBay. Adopting a customer-centric practice in application development means that crucial stakeholder buy-in happens up front, in the design phase of the project. It also means that usability testing happens before the application is built and with real end users.

Federal industry expert Steve Meltzer, president of Meltzer & Associates and former director of the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Computer Acquisition Center captured the government’s new priorities in IT purchasing and development:

“The public sector does not buy IT for IT’s sake, but rather is driven by advancing the President’s priorities and providing citizens with easy accessibility to information.”

Today, we announced our entry into the federal market, led by Dean Terry with Spectrum Systems as our reseller. iRise helps to increase the success rates for federal IT projects because stakeholders – including the employees in the trenches – have the opportunity to test drive the application before it’s built. The release on our third round of funding, also issued today, referenced expansion into new markets and our entrance into the public sector signals the first example of that.

Learn more about iRise’s solution for the federal market by visiting this industry-specific page.

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Joseph Juran, the management guru who coined the 80-20 rule or Pareto Principle, passed away last week at the age of 103.

I’ve referred to the 80-20 rule countless times in my career and I imagine I’m in the same boat with the majority of you who do not know the origins or author of the rule.

Juran named his principle after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who wrote about unequal distribution of wealth.  Juran took these theories and extended them to describe “the phenomenom that in any population which contributes to a common effect, a relative few of the contributors account for the bulk of the effect.”  In simpler terms, he also referred to this as the “vital few” versus the “trivial many” or that 80% of the consequences stem from 20% of the causes.

Juran originally applied the Pareto Principle to quality management issues in manufacturing.  His work ultimately contributed to the development of Six Sigma, TQM and lean manufacturing.  In 1954, Juran was invited to Japan to introduce quality control concepts to their fledgling manufacturing industry - which led to many Japanese companies to become global leaders in their industries.

Peter Drucker, the late author and management consultant, said this about Joe Juran, “whatever advances American manufacturing has made in the last 30 to 40 years, we owe to Joe Juran and to his untiring, steady, patient, self-effacing work.”

Juran wrote his autobiography, “Architect of Quality“, in 2003.  His full obituary is available from the Minneapolis Star Tribune or the New York Times.

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I’ve spent some time over the last few months pondering the idea of design thinking.  Part of it was driven by the webcast that Linda Yaven gave on “Making Thinking Visible” for the Catalyze Community and part of it was driven by what I see are the key competitive pressures in marketplace.  It seems that more companies and organizations are starting to talk about increasing their innovation and improving time-to-market instead of cutting costs and reducing errors in their software development process.  But there seems to be a gap in the discussion about how they’re going to get there - which brings up design thinking.

What is Design Thinking?  Design thinking is a creative process of ‘building up’ ideas (vs. critical thinking which is generally associated with ‘breaking down’ ideas).  Design thinking is inherently collaborative as groups of people from different disciplines get together to brainstorm, communicate and develop new and creative solutions to problems.  Since there are no judgements or fear of failure in the design thinking process, design thinking encourages maximum input and participation. 

In Linda’s webcast, she noted that design thinking is not a genetic trait, but that all of us are capable of learning how to be design thinkers.  She also pointed out that design thinking is a method and a mind-set, and involves learning by doing or what she referred to as immersive thinking.  While design is subject to personal tastes and whims, design thinkers share a common set of values that drive innovation.  These traits include creativity, curiosity, ability to visualize, neutrality, environmentally centered, optimism and teamwork.

Why is Design Thinking Important?  Design thinking improves collaboration and will drive innovation.  Companies that apply design thinking will become the market leaders that develop new and innovative products and services.  Since they will be able to test and experiment with many ideas, they will have a built-in evolutionary advantage over companies stuck in a purely analytical mindset.  As noted in an article on Design Thinking by Tim Hyler (referenced below), “Design as an innovative problem-solving methodology is fast becoming an imperative business strategy.”

How Does Design Thinking Relate to iRise?  Design thinking includes the following processes or stages (courtesy of Wikipedia):

1. Define
2. Research
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Choose
6. Implement
7. Learn

iRise fits squarely in the middle of the design thinking process as we enable companies to rapidly prototype or simulate different ideas and alternatives.  In fact, it could be argued iRise is the tool that makes design thinking practical and possible for most companies. 

Where Can I Learn More About Design Thinking?  Design thinking is just starting to gain mainstream visibility in the business world and there are many sources with additional information.  Here are a few to get you started:

From the Catalyze Community:

• Making Thinking Visible webcast and presentation
• Design Education Applications for Business article by Linda Yaven
• Intro to Design Thinking article from Red Hat Magazine

iRise Blog Entry - Are You A Design Thinker?

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It’s that time of year again; time to reflect on yet another year gone by.  It’s also time to make a set of prognostications for the coming year.  Maybe a “Top 10″ list of predictions for IT organizations in 2008 might be in order.

Number 10:  In financial services, the focus will shift back to cost savings.  Innovation is all well and good, but when large firms are posting multi-billion dollar losses due to the mortgage meltdown, is this one really that hard to predict?

Number 9:  Consolidation will continue in the software world.   Enough said.

Number 8:  New consumer gadgets and Web sites will drive design as a key competency.  It doesn’t matter where or how you build something anymore, it matters WHAT to build in the first place.  Have you looked at how the Boeing 787 is being built?

Number 7: Could this be the year that business analysts get the recognition they deserve?  All the CIOs I talk with consider the hiring of BAs as now mission-critical.  They’re also investing in certification, training and community programs.

Number 6: The CIO becomes a full fledged business executive.  There are no such things as IT projects anymore, just business projects.  The CIO needs to be technology savvy and have an in-depth knowledge of the business.

Number 5:  Global sourcing reaches a new level of complexity.  Off-shoring, on-shoring, near-shoring, blended models and the movement towards outsourced development (versus just support & maintenance) make global sourcing trickier than ever.  Where’s the secret sauce to guaranteeing results?    

Number 4:  Application definition moves out from underneath the shadow of requirements management.   See number 8. 

Number 3:  Security investments will continue to distract from competitive advantage (innovation).  With bad news coming in almost daily about lost laptops, stolen data and cyber attacks, security projects will take precedence over innovation.  Makes you wonder what we could do if there weren’t so many threats out there.  Is 2008 the year companies finally get the upper hand?

Number 2: The pendulum swings back to packaged applications.  With SOA support in full swing, more companies will try to get by with customized packaged applications.  Will competitive advantage suffer?   BTW: you still need to visualize business requirements when customizing packaged solutions…iRise can help.

Number 1:  “Transformation” replaces “innovation” as the buzzword of 2008.  Software is still the lifeblood of a competitive economy.  Yet the process of defining and producing software on time and on budget is still largely broken.  Just the same way that 3D modeling tools transformed whole industries such as automotive and aerospace, application simulation will begin to transform the people, processes and technology in the $500 billion global software market.

What are your thoughts?  Did I miss any big ones?   We can touch base at the end of 2008 to see how well I did…

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