The iRise Blog

Everything looks better on a Mac, right?  And iRise is no exception. 

While iRise is not ‘officially’ supporting iRise on the Mac yet, people are already using iRise Studio and iRise Reader on the Mac.  So don’t think that you can’t experience the power of visualization on iRise because you are a Mac user, because you can.

iRise’s QA department is also starting to do some preliminary testing with iRise on the latest versions of the 2 emulators to gain some hands-on experience.  This blog post discusses some of the Windows operating system or OS emulators that people have been using on the Mac and identifies a couple of key points to keep in mind.

The two emulators which let you run Windows software side-by-side in the Mac OS include:

• VMWare Fusion
• Parallels Desktop

iRise probably works with Apple’s Boot Camp (which lets you partition you hard drive to dual-boot Windows and the Mac OS), but the two emulator products are being looked at first.  Note that the Windows emulators or virtualization software mentioned above lets you run Windows side-by-side within the Mac OS.

Here are some key points to keep in mind:

• RAM - 4 gigabytes of RAM is recommended due to the overhead of running the Mac OS as well as the emulator
• Studio and Reader only - we are not currently looking into running Definition Center on the Mac and do not have any experience with this combination
• Browser - you will need to run the Internet Explorer browser as iRise is not compatible with Safari
• Issues - Parallels seems to have a couple of re-paint issues on newer Java applications that do not occur in Fusion

If you have comments, questions or real life experiences to share, please visit the iRise User Community on Catalyze.  We have also posted details of what we are currently testing in our QA department in the iRise General Forum and have started a discussion topic called iRise on the Mac.

For more information on the iRise User Community, check out this link.

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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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iRise has expanded its use into the area of packaged applications that include SAP, Oracle, Siebel, PeopleSoft and many other package applications.

I recently presented the value of simulating iRise for SAP along with Melanie Lucas, iRise Enterprise Solutions Manager at the 2007 Partner Summit, pre-cursor to the iRise Fusion 07 User Conference. Its important to recognize the value of simulation beyond custom applications and how similar benefits are achievable with packaged applications like SAP.

Validating requirements for SAP projects is never easy. Packaged software implementations suffer the same poor requirements challenges that custom applications do, the difference is much of the package is already defined. SAP tools exist to prototype SAP applications; however, the SAP tools are cumbersome to rapidly create and iterate with stakeholders and many implementations today are heavily customized and/or heavily integrated, making it very difficult to adapt the SAP tools to vizualize truly what the business has in mind.

Using iRise, Melanie showed how a business analyst can rapidly simulate the SAP screens, data and logic in order to validate requirements quickly and iterate often with stakeholders and IT in order to define the application and get alignment on the end-state. The iDoc is available on Catalyze to iRise customers & partners. Melanie gave examples of what SAP implementations benefit most from simulation:

• SAP CRM - typically involves heavy customization and multiple interfaces to other customer systems
• SAP SCM / Procurement - typically involves heavy customization, often a supplier portal, and integration to back office systems
• SAP HR Portal - HR systems benefit from heavy user validation and review
• Composite Applications using NetWeaver - SAP’s custom development platform, NetWeaver, is being used to create new, custom, “composite” applications that leverage existing SAP modules

Simulating the SAP system provides a way to rapidly assemble a working, functional prototype that can be reviewed and experienced (literally) by stakeholders and IT, with rapid, easy iterations on the prototype to quickly extract and validate the right requirements. Key stakeholders, end-users, analysts and SAP developers can all agree on the right model and requirements ahead of configuring, customizing, developing or integrating the live SAP system. During the presentation, I highlighted some of the benefits from simulating an SAP system:

• Requirements are validated before development/configuration starts
• Rework and mid-stream requirements changes are significantly reduced (by up to 70%)
• SAP simulations (masters, templates, models) can be re-used for greater efficiency in later projects
• Adoption of the system rollout is significantly higher, due to involving and confirming with more stakeholders and end-users upfront

A majority of simulations for SAP have been done by our alliance partners like Capgemini, Accenture and Deloitte - especially since they have the deep SAP expertise. Capgemini, for example, has gone much further and simulated many different SAP modules like CRM, Service Management, Call Center, HR, Supply Chain, etc. - creating an extensive asset library that they can offer to clients as a means to better validate client requirements and a jumpstart to getting started with the SAP blueprint phase. Its proven successful at many clients and demonstrates their deep expertise with SAP.

I am always interested to hear about more simulations involving packaged applications, including SAP.

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Johann Mendoza from iRise’s Application Definition Consulting group conducted a session for Advanced iRise Users at Fusion ‘07.  You can download the iDoc that he used from the iRise Users section of Catalyze.  Note, you will need to be registered as an iRise User to download the file.

The iDoc contains the completed versions of the exercises covered during the iRise Fusion Advanced Workshop.  You will need, at a minimum, iRise Studio v6.0.2 to import the iDoc into iRise Studio.  You can use feature of creating a project from an existing iDoc to view the project in iRise Studio.

The examples covered in the iDoc include:

• Home Views
• Accordion
• Tabbed Interface
• Dependent Select
• Predictive Text
• Multiple Branching
• Waiting Page
• Views and Repeating Rows

If you missed the workshop, you can still take advantage of the tips that Johann shared.  He is also planning on compiling a step-by-step overview of each feature in the very near future.

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