justin bacon

Thanks Google Android Team; I just got my @GoogleIO Droid today

Thank you Android Developer team at Google! I just got my @GoogleIO Droid today. With working 805 area code # to boot. Woot, woot! I'm a 10 year loyal @OfficialTMobile customer, though have to say that Verizon is testing me right now...

Justin Bacon

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Guillaume Laforge during GR8intheUS kickoff presentation - packed room

Justin Bacon

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

I'm at @akardell's iPhone app dev session at MobileMarchTwinCities; great job Aaron!

Justin Bacon

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

"It's a great time to be in mobile" Mark Mosiniak, BBuy (@ Mobile Twin Cities' Mobile March event)

Justin Bacon

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Interested in an SOA and EA certification program in Minneapolis / St. Paul in June?

I am partnering with ZapThink to bring their SOA Training program to the Minneapolis / St. Paul area in June for their increasingly popular Licensed ZapThink Architect Bootcamp.  It's a four day program and would run from June 14th to 17th, 2010.

In order for ZapThink to commit to coming to the Twin Cities to put on their course I need to get at least fifteen people pre-registered who want to participate.  There is considerable savings if we can not only bring this event to our area to avoid travel charges, but there's a $500 savings if we get registered by May 14th.  If this is something you would like to participate in, please contact me: jcpbacon@gmail.com.  I'd like to get a list of people who will commit to participating & registering if I can get 15 people together.  Please have a look at the summary and course outline, below.    

The details:

Early bird registration: $1995.00 (Ends on May 14th, 2010)

Regular registration: $2495.00

Expand your EA Skills and Opportunities

Become a Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA)

  • Are you an enterprise architect or an aspiring architect looking to get third-party backing for your SOA capabilities?
  • Are you not finding what you want in self-serving, vendor-specific “certifications” that don’t provide the credentials you need to advance your architecture skills, career, and future direction?
  • What does it even mean to have SOA on your list of qualifications?
  • Do you want to leverage ZapThink’s brand, reach, reputation, and network to advance your SOA efforts?

If so, then the Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA) program is for you. One of the biggest challenges facing the SOA marketplace is the lack of skilled architecture resources that are proficient on SOA methodologies, techniques, and approaches in ways that are not specific to the particular technology du-jour or an individual vendor implementation.

Increasingly, individuals like you are looking to get the backing of a qualified third-party organization to not only endorse their existing SOA skills, but also enable continuous improvement, enhanced networking with those looking for architecture resources, or enhance their current SOA-enabled careers. ZapThink is filling the unmet need for knowledge and credentials in this area, and we want you to be a part!

The LZA credential is an annual credential. Since SOA and enterprise architecture as a whole undergoes continuous change, our ability to back your capabilities lasts as long as the knowledge is still thought-leading. As such, we offer our LZA program on an annual basis. The process for becoming a Licensed ZapThink Architect is straigth-forward and simple if you already have some enterprise architecture skills.

 

Event Agenda

LZA Boot Camp – 4-Day SOA Intensive

Day 1
Registration: 8:00 to 8:30AM

Module 1: Fundamentals of SOA
  • Business Constant: Change
  • The Business Inflexibility Trap
  • Business Agility
  • Service Orientation:.A Business Approach
  • What is SOA?
  • Is SOA New?
  • One Difference is Web Services
  • SOA vs. Web Services
  • Confusing SOA & Web Services
  • If not Web Services, Then What?
  • The Distributed Computing Pendulum
  • Service orientation — the next big thing?
  • Business Drivers for SOA
  • When Not to Apply SOA
  • SOA: Paradigm Shift?
  • So, How to Implement SOA?
  • There’s No Such Thing as a SOA Wizard!
  • What’s a Service?
  • Levels of Service Abstraction
  • Consumers & Providers
  • The Rise of the Service Consumer
  • Interoperability vs. Portability
  • Service Interfaces Aren’t Good Enough!
  • The Difference is the Abstraction
  • Abstraction = Working Illusion
  • The Fundamental Technical Challenge of SOA
  • Building a Working Illusion
  • Multiple Interfaces per Implementation
  • Multiple Implementations per Interface
  • Multiple Interfaces per Business Service
  • Actualizing the Business Service Abstraction
  • The Secret Sauce: Metadata
  • Programmatic vs. Declarative
  • What are Metadata?
  • Metadata for SOA
  • What’s a Service Contract?
  • What’s in a Contract?
  • What’s NOT in the Contract
  • WSDL: Service Contract Starting Point
  • Contract Metadata Beyond WSDL
  • Sample Service Contract Template
  • How to Think Service-Oriented
  • Case Studies:.Mini-Studies on SOA Use
     
  • Shared Services: US PTO
  • Reducing Integration Costs: Aeroplan
  • Compliance & Volume: .Wells Fargo Bank
  • Meeting Client Needs: MITRE
Exercise: Service Contract

Module 2: SOA as Architecture
  • What is Architecture?
  • Architecture is not About the Technology
  • SOA Views: Many Perspectives on SOA
  • SOA: A Technology View
  • SOA: Infrastructure Service View
  • SOA: A Business Service View
  • SOA as Enterprise Architecture
  • The Zachman Framework
  • Pros & Cons of Zachman
  • SOA & Zachman
  • Iterative:.More than Step-by-Step
  • Iterating SOA Initiatives
  • Iterate your Architecture?
  • The SOA Metamodel
  • Building the Service Model
  • SOA Foundation: Model-Driven Architecture
  • The Service Model: Building Business Services
  • The IBM.Component Business Model
  • SOA Models
  • SOA Foundation: The 4+1 View Model
  • Beyond Use Cases
  • The 4+1 View Model & .The SOA Metamodel
  • How does SOA help Build Agility?
  • Achieving Business Agility
  • SOA Implementation as Complex System
  • The Agility Model
  • You Can’t Afford Not to Innovate
  • Defining Services
  • Validating Service Assumptions
  • Key Service Abstraction Enabler: Proper Granularity
  • Granularity Example
  • Achieving Proper Granularity
  • Zeroing in on Proper Granularity
  • Example: Too Fine Grained vs..Too Coarse Grained
  • Service Identification:.Top Down vs. Bottom Up
  • Service Identification:.Process Decomposition
  • Services & the Process Model
  • Loose Coupling: Separation of Concerns
  • The Web: Loose Coupling in Action
  • Service Contracts: The Key to Loose Coupling
  • Levels of Coupling
  • RPC vs. Document Style
  • Loose Coupling and Context
Exercise: Service Model
Homework: Business Case
Class Ends at 5PM

Day Two
Class Begins at 8:30AM

Module 3: SOA Intermediaries & Integration
  • SOA Infrastructure Starting Point: The Intermediary
  • Some Intermediary Roles
  • Intermediary Processing Challenges
  • Intermediaries & Messaging
  • Buying an Intermediary?
  • Don’t we just mean an Enterprise Service Bus?
  • The Great ESB/.SOA Middleware Boondoggle
  • Buy More Middleware for SOA?
  • ESB Federation?
  • Compounding the Problem: No Clear ESB Definition
  • Do You need an ESB for Service Mediation?
  • Intermediary-Based Service Abstraction
  • Building Intermediary-Based SOA Infrastructure
  • SOA Message Exchange Patterns
  • SOA Tenet: Asynchrony
  • Messages vs. Events
  • Complex Event Processing & SOA
  • Business Driver: Visibility
  • Visibility & Heterogeneity
  • SOA, Integration & Legacy
  • Exposing Existing Capabilities
  • The Continued Value of Legacy
  • SOA and Legacy
  • Legacy Migration
  • Legacy Enablement
  • Legacy Rejuvenation
  • Business Driver: Cost Savings
  • Reducing Integration Cost
  • SOA & Data
  • SOA & “Legacy” Heterogeneous Data & Data Stores
  • The Data Services Layer
  • Designing Data Services
  • Data Integration & the Data Services Layer
  • Supporting Data Services with Data Integration
  • Leveraging Existing Data
  • SOA & MDM
  • Leveraging Data Services Layer
  • The Data Services Layer Abstraction
  • Semantic Level Understanding
  • Role of Application Semantics
  • Semantics Challenges
  • Semantics: The Greatest Integration Challenge of SOA
  • Resolving Semantic Issues
  • Case Study: SOA at The Hartford

Module 4: XML Infrastructure & Security
  • Purchasing SOA Technology
  • Technology Selection: Choices
  • Technology Selection: Challenges
  • Levels of SOA Infrastructure
  • Challenges at the Content Level
  • Is XML Required for SOA?
  • What about REST?
  • XML: Foundation for Web Services
  • The XML Processing Problem
  • The XML Performance Crisis
  • Solution: XML Appliances
  • Hardware vs. Software Approaches to Improve XML Performance
  • Distributed XML Processing
  • Critical XML Processing Challenge: Security
  • The Context of IT Security
  • XML Threat Prevention
  • Web Services Security
  • The SOA Security Challenge
  • The Security Context Challenge
  • Security Context Kludges
  • Solving the Security Context Challenge
  • The Role of Entitlement Management
  • 21st Century Network Security
  • Federated Security
  • Case Study: SOA Security in the Real World — BP

Module 5: SOA Governance & Management
  • Corporate Governance
  • Governance & Regulatory Compliance
  • The Business Motivation for Governance
  • How to Tackle Governance?
  • Governance Relationships
  • The Cornerstone of IT Governance is Architecture
  • Elements of IT Governance Strategy
  • Architectural Governance Processes
  • SOA Governance.”in the Narrow”
  • SOA Governance Activities
  • What is a Policy?
  • Policy: Business vs. Technical Examples
  • Governance/Security Model
  • The Challenge of Policy Automation
  • “Automatable” Policy Examples
  • Steps for Automating Policies
  • Supporting Policy Changes
  • Creating the Governance Framework
  • Business Driver: Reuse
  • Reuse over Time
  • Challenge: Reuse = Sharing
  • SOA Reuse Governance
  • Reuse Challenges
  • Is Reuse a Real SOA Benefit?
  • Governance Pitfall: Versioning
  • Handling Service Versioning
  • Business Driver:.Business Empowerment
  • Business Empowerment vs. IT Control
  • SOA Governance Infrastructure
  • Management & Loose Coupling
  • SOA Management: .Many Facets
  • Complexities of SOA Governance Marketplace
  • What is a Registry?
  • SOA Registry: The Original SOA Intermediary
  • What is a Repository?
  • The Registry/Repository
  • The Problem with SOA Management
  • The First Rule of SOA Management
  • The SOA Management Conundrum
  • Exception Management & SOA
  • SOA & ITIL
  • Case Study: SOA Project Management & Governance at T-Mobile
Exercise: Governance Framework
Homework: SOA Infrastructure Plan
Class Ends at 5PM

Day Three
Class Begins at 8:30AM

Module 6: Planning & Running the.SOA Initiative
  • SOA Project Approach
  • Initial Assessments
  • Building Support for SOA
  • Defining SOA Roadmap
  • Building the SOA Business Case
  • Challenges in Calculating ROI
  • Architecture Planning
  • Milestone / KPI Plan
  • The SOA Roadmap
  • The ZapThink SOA Roadmap
  • Define Initial Iteration
  • SOA Pilots
  • Implementation Planning
  • Sequence of Steps (Iterative!)
  • Implementation Notes
  • Project Management for a.SOA Project
  • The Relationship with Program Management
  • Methodologies for ongoing change
  • The Dual Lifecycle
  • The Service Lifecycle
  • Building Applications the New Way
  • Where’s the code?
  • Implementing Services
  • The Agile SOA Lifecycle
  • The SOA Quality Star
  • Best Effort SOA
  • SOA & Change Management
  • Key Change Management Tool: Measuring SOA Maturity
  • SOA Maturity Model: Wipro
  • SOA Maturity Model: HP
  • Service Integration Maturity Model: IBM
  • “SOA” Maturity Model: Sonic/Systinet
  • SOA Maturity Model: Oracle
  • SOA Maturity Model:.Software AG
  • Change Management: .Multiple Levels
  • Dealing with Service Implementation Change
  • Service Contract Change
  • Policy and Service .Metadata Change
  • Supporting Policy Changes
  • Data Layer Change
  • Service Infrastructure Change
  • Semantic Change
  • Business Process Change
  • Case Study: Retail Bank ROI
Exercise: SOA Roadmap

Module 7: Addressing SOA.Organizational Challenges
  • Common SOA Pitfalls
  • SOA Growing Pains
  • The Wrong Question!
  • The Problems with Vendor-Driven Architecture
  • Organizational Issues
  • Challenge: The Right Amount of Governance
  • SOA by Any Name
  • SOA = Best Practices
  • Thinking Outside the SOA Box
  • Dealing with SOA Hype — .and Anti-Hype
  • Is there an Architect in the House?
  • Hiring Architects
  • EA Challenges:.The Role of the EA
  • Enterprise Architecture Challenges
  • EA Challenges:.The Risk of SOA
  • Questions to Ask Your EA
  • Good Money after Bad
  • IT Governance Feedback Loop
  • Interaction Challenges
  • The “Ivory Tower” Problem
  • Are “SOA” Consultants Qualified?
  • The Power of the SOA Center of Excellence
  • Convincing Technical Specialists
  • Working with IT Middle Management
  • Enabling Service Domains
  • Service Domain Roles
  • Funding & Budgeting
  • Traditional IT Funding:.Project Based
  • Initial SOA Funding
  • Funding SOA Rollouts
  • SOA during Economic Downturn
  • SOA on the Roadmap?
  • SOA in Progress?
  • Budgeting SOA Projects
  • Calculating your SOA Project Budget
  • The Real Challenge: .People, Change and Fear
  • Building the right SOA team
  • SOA Project Staffing
  • Project Leader
  • Data Specialists
  • Security Specialists
  • Legacy Systems Specialists
  • Service Development Specialists
  • BPM/Composition Specialists
  • Governance Specialists
  • Testing & Deployment Specialists
  • Project Archivists
  • External Services Specialists
  • Case Study: SOA Organizational Change & Funding at Novartis
Exercise: SOA ROI

Module 8: SOA Quality
  • The GQM Loop
  • Service Lifecycle Governance and Quality
  • SOA Quality = Testing Web Services?
  • SOA Quality = Testing Architecture?
  • SOA Testing Key Points
  • SOA Implementation Testing
  • Service Testing Principles: Testing Use Cases
  • Service Testing Principles: Granularity
  • Test for Reusability
  • Test for Heterogeneity
  • Test for Abstraction
  • Testing Compositions
  • Testing Compositions as Integrations
  • Integration Testing Questions
  • Security Level Testing
  • Governance Level Testing
  • The Long-Term Challenge of SOA Testing
  • Testing in Production??
Homework: SOA Test Plan

Day Four
Class Begins at 8:30AM

Module 9: Service Composition, Business Process, & SOBAs
  • What is a Business Process?
  • The Role of Business Process Reengineering
  • The Automation Paradox
  • Problems with Traditional BPM Tooling
  • Business Process the Old Way
  • Business Process the Service-Oriented Way
  • Service-Oriented Process
  • Service Composition: Supporting Business Process with Services
  • Process Definitions
  • Example: Orchestration vs. Choreography
  • WS-* Standards for Orchestration & Choreography
  • Limitations of BPEL
  • Composition & No-ESB SOA
  • Maintaining Process Instance State
  • Process Analysis
  • Discovering Existing Processes
  • Shared vs. Private Processes
  • Defining New SOBAs
  • New Process.Configuration & Design
  • Process Optimization
  • Varieties of Business Processes
  • Business Logic at the Composition Level
  • Enterprise Applications and Process
  • Example: SAP NetWeaver
  • Transactions and SOA
  • Transactions the.Loosely-Coupled Way
  • Compensating Transactions
  • What about Workflow?
  • BPEL4People Scenarios
  • Portals as Gateway to Workflow
  • Case Study: SOA Journey at BP
Exercise: Service-Oriented Business Applications

Module 10: SOA Futures
  • Outside the SOA Box
  • What can we expect as SOA becomes ubiquitous?
  • SOA vs. not SOA?
  • Software-as-a-Service & SOA
  • Virtualization & SOA
  • Cloud Computing & SOA
  • Web-Oriented Architecture (WOA) & SOA
  • WOA extends the Web to SOA?
  • Web 2.0 & SOA
  • Empower Business Users?
  • What’s New about Mashups?
  • Data Mashups as.Situational Applications
  • Process Mashup in Action
  • Process vs. Data?
  • Visualization: the overlap between process & data
  • The Long Tail: Applications
  • The Enterprise 2.0 Long Tail
Final Exam: SOA Jeopardy!
Class Ends at 3:00PM

 

Change - generational pull, not technology push

Just a quick comment on Seth Godin's post today "Welcome to the frustration decade (and the decade of change)": http://bit.ly/DecadeOfChange
I wholeheartedly agree with Seth's assertion that the maturation of the first internet generation has incredible significance as a dominant force in shaping the coming decade. I like to think that this will accelerate the pace of innovation and adoption of new technologies in HCI. For example, why has it taken so long for the touch-screen to make it to consumer products (not just in ATMs and kiosks) - to me that's the unspoken achievement behind the wild success of the iPhone: it brought touch-based interfaces mainstream. How will that, along with other HCI innovations, change not only our interactions with systems but also the design of the systems themselves? (And in asking this, I mean a cybernetic view of a system in that includes the functions and processes both technical and social - I touch on this ever so slightly in my earlier post, here.) Granted this success is as much about the technology that made the UI so popular. The tech savviness of the internet generation together with the advances of technology promises to be a powerful force of change, innovation and growth.