Systems Engineering Event, Bristol July 13th

This is an interesting and useful event in Bristol on Wednesday -

"INCOSE UK

The Bristol Local Group Presents
The Final Step - Getting Systems Into Service

Why does the final part of getting a system into service often follow a more protracted path than expected?

This event will look at this important part of the lifecycle from both a systems and a project management perspective to examine some of the pitfalls and issues that can occur, and some of the approaches that are used to mitigate against them. This interactive workshop based event will examine the following questions:

How should systems be engineered to achieve a controlled entry into Service?
How are systems engineered for entry into Service?
What needs to be done to bridge the gap?
Date: Wednesday 13th July – 6.30pm for 7pm till 9pm

Location: Room 1N05, University of the West of England (UWE), Frenchay Campus, Bristol

NON-MEMBERS WELCOME.

This event is free, and refreshments will be provided, however to ensure appropriate catering arrangements can be made please register online at: .
http://www.incoseonline.org.uk/EventBooking/AutoBooking/MainPage.aspx?CatID=Events&EventID=165."

Government IT use must change: Institute for Government

This BBC article summarises the important point that for IT projects it is crucial to roll them out in increments and test each with the users and for the purpose they are designed for. This is essential for IT project success in the public and private sector also.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12616777.

The article begins -

"The government's handling of IT is locked in a 'vicious circle of costs and failures' and moves at a 'glacial' pace, according to a report.

The Institute for Government recommends sweeping changes to the way ministers order new computer systems.

One recommendation is that new IT systems should be built piece by piece and tested by those who use them."

This article is based on a report by The Institute for Government - http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publications/23/system-error

System Error
Fixing the flaws in government IT
Author: Justine Stephen, James Page, Jerrett Myers, Adrian Brown, David Watson, Ian Magee
Date: 01 March 2011

Dagstuhl Seminar End-User Software Engineering - Part 4 - Final Part

End-User Software Engineering - Dagstuhl Seminar - Summary - http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=2007081 - PDF Abstracts and links to papers - http://eusesconsortium.org/docs/dagstuhl_2007.pdf - Margaret M. Burnett, Gregor Engels, Brad A. Myers and Gregg Rothermel - From 18.01.07 to 23.02.07

In 'Meta-User Interfaces for Ambient Spaces: Can Model-Driven-Engineering Help?' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1082 Joëlle Coutaz explains how Model Driven Engineering and Service Oriented Architecture can be combined -

"Our approach to UI plasticity brings together MDE (Model Driven Engineering) and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) within a unified framework that covers both the development stage and the runtime phase of interactive systems."

Coutaz also explains that -

"An interactive system is a graph of models related by mappings and transformations."

This would fit in well with the structure of RDF (Resource Description Framework) a Semantic Web standard which is also a graph structure.

In 'Model-Driven Development for End-Users, too!?' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1085 Gregor Engels of University of Paderborn explains that UML (Unified Modeling Language) should be extended to allow development of user interfaces in order to assist end-users to program -

"The UML is strong in modelling the internal functionality of a software system, but weak in modelling user interface aspects of a system. Thus, with respect to the well-known MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern, the UML supports the Model aspect, while neglecting the View and Controller aspect."

In 'Position Paper for Dagstuhl 2007 EUSE Workshop' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1094 Mary Beth Rosson of Pennsylvania State University explains their development of a drag and drop interface for web based visual programming.

In 'Rethinking the Software Life Cycle: About the Interlace of Different Design and Development Activities' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1084 Yvonne Dittrich of University of Copenhagen argues that more research is needed into the software lifecycle and methods and tools needed for end-user developers, especially when they are collaborating. These end-users often need to adjust old software for new purposes.

In 'Software environments for supporting End-User Development' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1081 Maria Francesca Costabile, Antonio Piccinno also explain that new methodologies and environments are required for supporting end-user collaborative development.

In 'What is an End-User Software Engineer?' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1080 Steven Clarke of Microsoft examines the characteristics of end-user developers in order to assist with meeting their needs.

My home page is http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/.

I have a page on End-User Programming at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm.