 |
|
IT organizations around the world have spent the last year focused on cutting costs, but an article in the current issue of CIO points to a new imperative for IT execs – enable the business to move faster. Rob Carter, Global CIO for FedEx, says, “That’s where we can create the most value.” One way Rob is helping FedEx move faster is to use enterprise visualization from iRise to simulate features on fedex.com before they are rolled out to customers. Simulating features can be especially powerful when working across global markets with different cultural requirements. FedEx first used iRise on a project to capture the unique needs of their customers in the Asia-Pacific region.
From the CIO article:
“The visualization tools helped the design team pinpoint the types of features that customers in the Asia-Pacific region wanted from fedex.com, which resulted in a successful launch. Three months after the online service was introduced it led to an increase in the number of international packages shipping through the online channel…”
On-time and on-budget delivery of business applications still matters, but as global complexity increases, leading businesses like FedEx are going to increasing rely on IT agility to accelerate the delivery of effective solutions that meet their needs.
If you can use visualization to achieve a more efficient and effective software development process, that’s great. But, if you can use visualization to help your company respond to the complexities of the global marketplace, that’s where the real money is.
What is your company doing to cut the delivery time for critical business applications – post a comment to let us know.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Visualization is getting a high level of buzz in the market and with good reason. With 300 customers and tens of thousands of business stakeholders, business analysts, user experience professionals and product managers all using iRise to visualize before coding, people are bound to notice.
Dan Woods from Evolved Media writes a regular column for Forbes.com called JargonSpy. In Dan’s May 19th column he talks about how simulation is the right prescription for agile teams: “This week the JargonSpy argues that so-called high-fidelity user-interface simulation techniques accelerate software development, reduce the cost of running an agile development cycle and improve the quality of feedback. This should be big news for anyone spending even a small amount of money-developing software for end-users.”
“Practitioners of agile development find that they avoid train wrecks by getting feedback early and often. First, the development team creates a working version of the software and solicits feedback from users. With this information in hand, the software designers get an idea of the features and functions that really work.”
To view the entire article from Forbes.com, click here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
iRise premier partner id8 recently wrote a very interesting blog post called “Simulate Anything“. In the post, Scott Nelson suggested we start thinking outside of the montior too feel the benefits of using visualization on non-web applications. He speaks about a visualization his team put together (see the video here) of a hand-held barcode scanner.
Given his desire to push the prototyping methodology way outside to web-based applications, he started simply walking around and finding non-web interfaces he could simulate with iRise. His thermostat and microwave both provided interesting opportunities to improve the user interface with visualization. Another iRise partner, OneSpring, has begun visualizing applications for the iPhone.
What types of interfaces could you see yourself visualizing? Me personally, I’d like to see my “all-in-one remote control” reworked 
|
|
|
|
|
|
Feb 04, 2009 PRESS RELEASE ::
NaviNet Healthcare Communications Solutions Incorporate iRise Visualization
iRise today announced that NaviMedix, a national leader in real-time healthcare communications, has chosen to incorporate iRise visualization solutions into the application definition and development processes for its NaviNet® solutions and services. By using iRise solutions, the NaviNet development team can view interactive and immersive models of proposed software applications, dramatically streamlining product delivery.
“More than 700,000 physicians and clinicians, as well as leading insurers across the country rely on NaviNet for online healthcare communications,” said Joe Terranova, senior software engineer at NaviMedix. “Using iRise to define NaviNet solutions during the development stage will enable our development team to be even more agile and responsive in delivering solutions that address the specific pain points of our rapidly growing customer base.”
With the adoption of iRise visualization solutions, the NaviNet product management team can quickly model requirements for new applications and rapidly change requirements based on payers’ and providers’ communications needs. The development and quality assurance teams can get a head start on building the application, minimizing the risk of re-work and cost overruns. As a result, NaviNet solutions can be brought to market much faster. The company will also use simulations to refine usability testing in order to improve customer experience and to visualize conceptual designs for new and existing products.
“NaviNet is one of a growing number of solutions that are developed using visualization as a standard way of defining applications,” said Mitch Bishop, CMO for iRise. “In the healthcare industry, customers’ needs shift based on trends, regulations and unique challenges. Visualization empowers companies like NaviMedix to innovate faster, with less cost and risk, which is imperative in today’s economy.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
Happy Holidays
|
|
|
|
|
|
An important bill designed to prevent endemic waste surrounding federal government IT projects has passed a Senate committee vote. The Information Technology Investment Oversight Enhancement and Waste Prevention Act (S. 3384) would require federal agencies to regularly report to Congress on significant shortfalls in the cost, schedule and performance of their IT programs. The legislation would also encourage better planning and ensure that officials are alerted soon after problems arise. This bill was passed by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on October 1st and now faces a full vote on the floor of the Senate. A separate version of the Bill is also being considered by the House of Representatives.
Among other provisions, the proposed Bill requires projects that are over 40% off schedule or cost estimates to be reported directly to Congressional oversight committees. At that point these distressed projects would have access to a small ’strike force’ of experienced private and public sector IT experts that would focus on areas like earned value management, defining requirements and project management.
The full text of the bill can be found here.
Here’s an interesting article on the subject by Meredith Levinson in CIO.com.
Is this new legislation a good thing? Norm Brown seems to think so. Norm is the executive director for the Center for Program Transformation and his testimony before the same Senate sub-committee seemed to support the view that federal IT projects need all the help they can get:
“Literally billions of taxpayer dollars go down the drain every year in both visible and invisible Information Technology (IT) acquisition waste. IT projects too often experience problems of cost explosions, schedule black-holes, performance disappearances, and large-scale train-wrecks-many caused by violating one or more fundamental laws of “IT” Physics.”
Requirements is clearly one of the root causes for all the waste and we think visualization could go a long way towards solving the problem.
From our perspective, this proposed legislation is a good thing. Although the results of oversight may not be known from some time, one thing is clear: IT projects everywhere are in distress and anything we can do to stop wasting public money can’t be all bad. Especially in this economic climate, it’s time that government started aggressively adopting best practices for project success from the private sector. And visualization is one of those practices.
What’s your point of view?
|
|
|
|
|
|
I hear from a lot of customers that find visualization a bit overwhelming at first. It’s a new way to explore business needs and hear directly from your stakeholders and customers before costly development begins. iRise is the market leader in visualization. Over 200 customers have improved their processes by visualizing their needs.
So to help you begin your first journey, I’ve decided to put together a getting starting guide for you.
- (5min) Browse the iRise Product Overview Video. Take a quick look at visualization and how it can benefit you. There are plenty of customer testimonials and product videos in the Media center if you are interested.
- (15min) Take the iRise Product Tour. Explore how iRise can help you based on your role in the company.
- (15min) Download iRise. iRise offers a free fully-functioning 30 day trial of the iRise Professional Edition product. Individual business analysts, interface designers and project managers can leverage powerful visualization techniques already in use by hundreds of corporate customers to get business critical software projects to market faster, with less cost and risk.
- (4+hrs) Take the iRise eLearning courses. iRise helps get you started with 2 free eLearning courses. iRise Overview, a self-paced, eLearning course designed to introduce iRise to anyone responsible for selecting and/or using iRise on a project and iRise Explained, a self-paced, eLearning course that covers an introduction to the basic capabilities of iRise and how to use such capabilities to elicit and validate requirements and designs for page flow, page layout, navigation, data, business logic, high fidelity user interfaces and dynamic user interaction using actions, events, alternate views, styles, templates and masters..
- (5min) Download the Common Samples iDoc. This iDoc can be opened in your trial version of iRise and gives you a number of useful visualization examples. Copy and paste what you need into your new project. Want to see how high definition, data driven visualizations are done? Use the Common Samples iDoc as a guide. Speed up learning and get your next project kicked off fast.
That’s it, you’ve developed a high level understanding of iRise and visualization. Now you have 29 days left on your trial, get visualizing!
|
|
|
|
|
|
The September iRise Web Seminar September 18th discusses iRise for SAP is the world’s only solution for visualizing and fully experiencing extensions to SAP before coding:
iRise September Web Seminar – Thursday September 18th at 10am PDT/1pm EDT
iRise for SAP
Keynote Speaker: Emmet B. Keeffe III, iRise CEO & co-founder
Using actual customer case studies this free Web seminar will cover:
- Extending SAP: the challenges
- What is visualization?
- How does visualization work on SAP projects?
- Customer case studies
- iRise for SAP demonstration
More companies bet their business on SAP than any other application solution. At the beginning of many SAP projects, the initial goal is to implement SAP “out of the box” in order to avoid costly extensions. Inevitably, gaps emerge during the blueprint phase of these projects and SAP must be extended in order to meet the needs of the business. Documenting business needs with text, use cases and static screen shots often leads to delay and cost overruns.
iRise for SAP is the world’s only solution for visualizing and fully experiencing extensions to SAP before coding, which cuts project cost, accelerates delivery and takes the risk out of global sourcing for getting mission-critical SAP applications delivered.
Don’t miss this valuable online web seminar sponsored by iRise.
And here is some background information on our speaker:
Emmet B. Keeffe III is the Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of iRise. Over the last 15 years, Emmet has applied his philosophy of “the network is the business” to become one of the most well-connected CEOs in the software industry. As CEO of iRise, Emmet has leveraged his network to close over $50M in investment funding and is also intimately involved with sales, marketing and business development at iRise.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The August iRise Web Seminar August 19th discusses how to solve common software requirements challenges:
iRise August Web Seminar – Tuesday August 19th at 10am PDT/1pm EDT
A Roadmap for Building the Right Solution!
This web seminar discusses how to solve common software requirements challenges. You will discover the issues associated with problem identification and analysis and explore how to better connect to traditional requirements approaches. Learn how to attain a real understanding of the needs of stakeholder and examine the desired outcomes for defining software requirements.
Don’t miss this valuable online web seminar sponsored by iRise and featuring one of the industry’s leading experts improving the software development process: Ivar Jacobson International. Ivar Jacobson International provides first class services that include training and mentoring, providing practical help to organizations that wish to improve their software development process. Leading the team is Dr. Ivar Jacobson, who is a father of components and component architecture, use cases, modern business engineering, the Unified Modeling Language and the Unified Process.
And here is some background information on our speaker:
Kurt Bittner is chief technology officer for Ivar Jacobson International, Americas and has worked in the software industry for over 25 years in a variety of roles including developer, team leader, architect, project manager, and business leader. He has led agile projects, run a large division of a software development company, survived and thrived in several start-ups, run an acquisition, and worked with clients in a variety of industries including aerospace, finance, energy, and electronics. He was a key contributor to the early development of the Rational Unified Process as well as, more recently, IBM’s Jazz project (see www.jazz.net). His experience includes significant work in Banking and Finance, relational database system design and architecting, and consulting and mentoring a wide variety of clients on software development improvement strategies and approaches. He is the co-author of “Use Case Modeling” and “Managing Iterative Software Development Projects”.
|
|
|
|
