The iRise Blog

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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We’ve just launched the first in a series of podcasts. After listening to feedback from customers, partners and even our own sales staff, we’ve been able to generate a slate of issues that have become the editorial calendar for the show’s programming. In each episode, we’ll dive deep into the topic with an iRise executive, customer or partner in our extended ecosystem. The show is hosted by David Spark, technology journalist and founder of Spark Media Solutions. In this first podcast entitled, “How iRise Works with SAP,” Spark talks with Sherrick Murdoff, iRise’s VP of Business Development and Global Alliances.

Read the Transcript Download the MP3

• The business process behind using iRise to simulate custom SAP and other packaged applications (also see posts Top 10 IT Predictions (#2) and iRise Simulates SAP)
• Why visualizing your packaged application (e.g SAP CRM) in iRise takes 1/3 the time of existing prototyping tools
• How global systems integrators (e.g. Capgemini) leverage iRise for custom installations in specific verticals (e.g. finance, health care)

We also have a brief position paper on the topic which can be found here.

Subscribe to the podcast now to receive future episodes directly to your iPod or MP3 player.

We’ll be announcing more of these podcasts in coming months and in the meantime, if there’s a topic you feel we could shed some light on, drop me a line at carlas (at) irise.com.

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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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I really enjoy seeing companies you work with almost every day
(in my case, alliance partners), take a leadership position to embrace
what you have been evangelizing to the market. Last month, Capgemini announced the launch of the Rapid Design & Visualization (RDV) Lab. Though the Lab is now available nationwide through all their Accelerated Solutions Environments (ASEs), the RDV Lab has been in place for several year and iRise has been actively working with and a primary solution in the practice with many joint customers. The announcement was made at SOA World, an appropriate place since visualization is critical to understanding what business stakeholders want that can be enabled in a SOA environment (but more on that in a later post…).

The RDV Lab continues to expand Capgemini’s work in the field of simulation by using a methodology that combines the latest simulation and communication tools with new research on how people create complex software. Capgemini estimates that 60 percent of such programs – including ERP (SAP, Oracle, etc.), Web 2.0 and SOA initiatives – encounter rework following misunderstandings between project managers who write the specifications, and the engineers who build the programs.  The announcement states, “The RDV is designed to help all parties get the software right the first time” - sound familiar? Absolutely, because Capgemini and iRise both believe that people, process and technology are required to really bring the full benefits of getting software right the first time.

Corey Glickman, the national leader for the Capgemini RDV Lab,
has been a champion for simulation and visualization for years
and an iRise user, speaking on different aspects at iRise User Conferences and interviews. Corey recently stated, “The RDV lets designers substitute images for nouns, animation for verbs, and a full–blown simulation for a phone book of instructions.” Is visualization really is the new language for designing software? I think Corey hit it right on the mark.

Capgemini has really taken the lead among global system integrators in piloting this effort years ago and now launching capabilities nationwide. For example, last year I presented Capgemini with the iRise Alliance Advantage Partner of the Year award for its substantial work (among other things) with one of our large manufacturing customers. Though the market for simulation is still young and in the evangelism stage, with the help of Capgemini, more companies will experience the benefits of visualization and share their success.

I look forward to sharing more examples of iRise alliance partners adopting the new language for designing software.

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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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