By Karen Lopez on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 6:12 PM

I'm scheduled to speak at a DAMA Chapter in the next few weeks. As a former DAMA chapter president, I'm always careful about booking the least expensive options for travel since DAMA chapters are not-for-profit organizations.

I start by looking at my preferred airline to see what it would cost to fly them, then make my way through their alliance partners, then do the bottom line Expedia.ca search. I pick the flights that are least expensive and don't require me to spend the night on a plane or at an airport. So for this trip, USAir came up as the least expensive (and I don't have to take a red eye or stay overnight in any airport). Bonus! The base fare was only $370, which is quite a deal these days to go anywhere. Of course, the taxes, security fees, agricultural inspection fees, immigration fees and fuel surcharges add another $110, but that's the way the airline business wants to play pricing these days. So I booked my flights through USAir.com and was presented with a confirmation page on the website that looked like this:

You can see that the base fare is $371.54 and the Total Fare is $481.05.  Both of these amounts are most likely in US Dollars since I purchased this from a US website.

A few minutes later I get an e-mail confirmation of my purchase with the same confirmation number/locator number.  However, this e-mail has different amounts:

Now the amounts have mysteriously changed to a base fare of $408.02 and a Total Fare of $517.53 .  US Air has also added a Canadian dollar amount of $451.75.

My first guess at the source of these new numbers was that I was seeing Canadian dollar amounts, but that doesn't fit, as the exchange rate today is about $1 USD = $1.018 .  That translates to close to par, or equal, give or take a little under 2 cents.  At any rate (pun intended), $517.53 is not the US Dollar equivalent of $451.75 CDN, nor are either of those figures an exchanged amount of $481.05.

So given my luck with travel issues of all kinds, I call USAir to ask what I was actually charged.  Of course, there's no website phone number for calling about random data being spewed by their automated systems, so I call reservations.  The woman I spoke with said that my credit card was charged only the first amount, $481.05 and that the odd number I was seeing on the e-mail were due to the fact that the Canadian dollar was so much weaker than US dollar (not these days, lady).  Besides, if that were true, why do I have three different numbers?  Are we trying to triangulate the Euro, too?

I worry that the reason she thinks I was charged this amount is that she is looking at the same data I was when I was reading the confirmation page after purchasing my tickets.  However, what data is the e-mail receipt system reading?  Perhaps the actual accounting system?  The payment authorization system?  Someone else's flight information? Some systems that mysteriously adds fees or  increases prices?

When I pushed for more information, she gave me a phone number for Accounting, so that they can help me.  I call this number, but as you probably already expected, this toll free number only leads to recordings about how to write a letter to USAir to dispute charges.

I call USAir again and am told that I have to contact website help, as they are the ones sending out the e-mails.  I doubt this, but I use the contact form on the website to note my information and my issue with their information quality.  The website contact form has a confirmation page that looks like this:

Notice that it says that someone will get back to me in 24-48 hours.  The website system also sends me a follow up confirmation that looks like this:

Notice that the response time period goes from 1-2 days to 5-6 days.  It seems to be perfectly fitting that a customer who is given three different, inconsistent pieces of information about how much I was charged to be given:

1. Incorrect information about how to get this resolved
2. An incorrect phone number
3. Inconsistent information as to when or who will respond.

Anyone want to guess how much my credit card is actually going to be charged?  My guess right now is for the lower amount, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that there were three charges making their way to my bank, or none...or even a fourth random number.

Come on USAir, let's get your act together.  Get your systems talking to each other.  Yes, I know I get what I paid for.  I could have paid about $500 more to book with another airline, but I didn't.  I chose you.  Perhaps I could get a reasonable response as to what I'm actually going to pay for these tickets.  And maybe, just maybe, it will be the price that you promised when I booked the tickets.

By Karen Lopez on Thursday, March 20, 2008 11:27 AM

Mirza Dharani and Dyuti Patankar presented a session on their case study of working as data architects in implementing SOA services.

Their first tasks were to consolidate their logical and physical data models.  As with many of these data model rationalization projects, the choosing of a common name for a variety of elements was difficult.  This effort also involved creating common names for XML tags.

Also part of their "commonizing" of various data sources was examining and making consistent values of attributes.  For instance, Gender Codes may be alpha in one system and numeric in others.

Their efforts also included establishing common derivations.  The found that as time goes on, the complexity of their derived data increased.  They observed that users have differing derivations for derived data with the same name.  Part of the training they needed to provide included educating end users that these terms that had differing derivations would now be standardized -- so everyone who asked for a Contract Number would get only a contract number.

They also created common services for hierarchies by giving common codes to each level of the hierarchy, then providing services for retrieving those specific levels.

Again, another session that could have been a double session with all the questions everyone had!

________________________________________________________

Impact of Service Oriented Architecture on Data Modeling: A Case Study

Mirza Dharani
Data/Integration Architect
Allstate Financial

Dyuti Patankar
Data Analyst
Allstate Financial

Thursday, March 20, 2008
08:30 AM - 09:30 AM

Level: 
Intermediate

In an enterprise with multiple data sources resulting in an environment where multiple interpretations of similar meaning data exist, data modeling is a challenge. Supporting services adds to this challenge. We will discuss how data modeling was affected by service oriented architecture using a case study of building an operational data store and an operational data mart.

Attendees will learn:

• How to support service oriented architecture initiatives to provide common derivations and common hierarchies to multiple consumers such as integration, application development, and end-users
• How to enable common services through rationalization, common name space, and common codes in data modeling
• How to leverage and extend solutions into larger problem spaces

---

Mirza has over twenty years of experience in Information Technology. At Allstate Financial, he is the Data/Integration Architect on a wide variety of strategic projects. He has lead enterprise efforts to support service oriented architecture in modeling data sourced from multiple legacy systems.

Dyuti has over ten years of experience in Information Technology including data modeling and business intelligence. At Allstate Financial, she is actively involved in various strategic projects that focus on enhancing the business intelligence initiatives of the company. She is working on starting a Dimensional Modeling Community of Practice within the organization, which will serve as a forum to establish and share enterprise-wide best practices. Before starting at Allstate, she worked as a consultant on various BI projects involving data modeling, OLAP, scorecards, dashboards, and corporate performance management.

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 4:13 PM

The session I am attending just after lunch is by Dr. Tom Johnston of Mindful Data.  He is focusing on the 5 different types of keys and making assertions about selecting primary keys:

• all primary keys should be surrogate keys
• all surrogate keys should be globally unique (unique across all rows of all tables)
• all surrogate keys should be system generated

He also talked about other types of keys: business keys, foreign keys, and intelligent keys.

He did point out some holes in the Relational Model and Codd's Information Principle, one being that the relational model calls for the mixing of business keys and primary keys in order to support the semantics of the data.  As Dr. Johnston points out, this leads to problems when these business keys change (meaning that the semantics are impacted).  He believes that Codd's Information Principle will become more obsolete as more formalizations are developed.

He was able to lightly touch on FOPL, a type of formalized predicate logic.  I'd like to see a whole day or two on this.

All in all this was a very thought-provoking presentation.  I wish there were more time for this topic.

 

__________________________________________________________

Primary, Surrogate and Business Keys: the Semantics and Syntax of Codd’s Information Principle

Thomas Johnston
Principal Consultant
Mindful Data

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
01:15 PM - 02:15 PM

Level: 
Advanced

Business data describe the objects of interest to us; that is their semantics. Primary keys distinguish, and foreign keys refer; that is their semantics. Therefore, to use business data in primary and foreign keys forces that data to play dual semantic roles.

When those roles conflict, we may be forced to change specific values of primary keys and their related foreign keys, or even change their data types and lengths. Often such changes cannot be completed as an atomic transaction. The result is semantic dis-integrity (broken joins), or else a very high cost to avoid it. These costs will be illustrated and explained in this presentation.

Some professionals object to surrogate keys because they believe such keys violate Codd’s Information Principle. Recent comments of Chris Date’s indicate that this is his position. But the Information Principle can be taken as either a semantic or a syntactic principle.
• As a principle about semantics, the Information Principle forbids surrogate keys, and is wrong
• As a principle about syntax, it permits surrogate keys, and is right

Additionally, over the years, data modelers have developed their own practice-based objections to surrogate keys. These objections, too, will be illustrated and discussed in this presentation.

---

Dr. Tom Johnston received his doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Georgia in 1979. His studies focused on epistemology, ontology, and the philosophy of language. The logician W. V. Quine was a central figure in his doctoral dissertation.

Tom has been working in business IT for over three decades and has worked as a data modeling and data architecture consultant for the latter half of that time.

In the last decade, Tom's publications have focused on improving system and database flexibility by late binding semantics to both data schemas and to code. Tom is currently co-authoring a series of some thirty articles, in DM Review and DM Direct, on how to manage historical data about persistent objects, using today's DBMSs and today's SQL.

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 3:54 PM

One of the more exciting announcements at the DAMA Conference is that John Zachman has a new version of the Zachman Framework, appropriately named Zachman Framework 2

Rob Drysdale blogs about this announcement.

John Zachman introduced a new version of the Zachman Frame.work with new names and one more row in the earlier session.

Stan took the new framework and broke it down into various parts and showed how it really is an enterprise model and put it all into business terms.

He began by breaking it into into four quadrants that can be used by business leaders to help manage an enterprise.

The four quadrants are:

Resource ideas (top left)

Behavior ideas (top right)

Resource reality (bottom left)

Behavior reality (bottom right)

Stan then went on to show how each row and column can be broken down and put into basic English to describe what each row and column means and give more meaning to it than the simple row and column headings.

Each row can be represented by what is in it:

Row 1 is lists

Row 2 is semantic models

Row 3 is schematic models

Row 4 is blueprint models

Row 5 is listings

Row 6 is instances

Then the actions and perspectives and outcomes of each row can be analyzed

If you put each of these together you end up with a sentence describing the row. For example the architects' semantic models define business.

The underlying idea here is to stop referring to these concepts by the row or column position, but by the name or what is in each box. This is how it can be the most help to everyone especially business users and leaders.

Note from Karen:  I think that last point is a really good one.  I've seen many eyes glaze over so fast when a team of data architects starting talking about "row 2 and row 3 column 1 models". 

I do like these new names and approaches to the Zachman Framework.

_________________________________________________________

Zachman Framework² for Management Control

Stan Locke
Managing Director
Zachman Framework Assoc

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Level: 
Intermediate

Until the Enterprise Architecture artifacts are employed by senior management in the day-to-day operations of the business, Enterprise Architecture is going to be perceived as overhead and will always be vulnerable to short term, cost saving, budget cuts. This presentation explores using the Framework as a senior management tool in control of the business of the Enterprise.

---

Stan lectures on the implementation of the framework concepts, bringing a practical business perspective to the framework logic. Since graduate school, his special interest is in the management methodologies required to define an enterprise and the ways in which this can be represented in repository technology. Stan has been the architect of the Zachman standards under John’s direction, model builder of the hexagon implementation constructs and directs the applied research through ZFA.

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 1:49 PM

Hudson's Bay Company is Canada's oldest retailer -- more than 307 years old.  Binaifer and Irina's session is a case study of their meta data program.

They use CA ERwin for preparing data models.  Teradata SQL is used to do downstream views impacted.  They use Informatica MetaManager for administering their meta data program.

Some of the prepackaged reports they offer:

• Re-usability analysis of objects
• Data Integration operation and administration
• Metamodel exploration (class inheritance, class attributes)
• Mapping of dependencies from source to target

They also map their meta data to an industry standard XML schema, the ARTS XML (IX Retail) schemas in MetaManager.

In the future they hope to build a more business friendly view of their meta data tools, as they feel that currently their tools are not usable to a wider business audience.

__________________________________________________

 

Role of Metadata Management within the Integration Framework at Hudson's Bay Company

Binaifer R Karanjia
Data Architect
HBC

Irina Kleiner
Senior Data Analyst
HBC

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
11:15 AM - 12:15 PM

Level: 
Intermediate

HBC is currently setting up an Integration Center of Excellence using the SOA Framework and Metadata Management is at the core around which all the other services are planned to be structured. The presentation will show the work we have already done in implementing an Integration Metadata Management Framework within the Organization and how we plan to use this Metadata. The key areas for which HBC envisages to use Metadata Management are: 1. Interface Inventory 2. Understand the Lineage 3. Impact Analysis and Change Management Process 4. Linking the Business and Technical Metadata. The presentation will seek to enable the audience to appreciate the point of arrival for HBC in this journey, where we are and the process we have followed to reach this stage in our journey and the road ahead of us.

---

Binaifer is working as a Metadata Architect with Hudson's Bay Company(HBC) with the Integration Center of Excellence (ICE) Group. She is responsible for setting up the Metadata Center of Excellence within HBC. Prior to this Binaifer has worked extensively in the field of Data Warehousing with organizations such as IBM Business Consulting Services and NCR Teradata specifically in the area of Data Modeling. She has done her Bachelors in Engineering followed by a Masters in Management.

Irina is working as a Senior Data Analyst in Hudson's Bay Company(HBC) with the Integration Center of Excellence (ICE) Group.

She is a part of the team for setting up the Metadata Center of Excellence within HBC. Prior to this Irina has worked extensively in the field of Data Management with organizations such as Sun Life Trust & Securities, Ministry of Public Health (USSR) specifically in BI. She has done her Bachelor in Information Technology & Masters in Science.

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 1:23 PM

Loretta Mahon Smith is a frequent DAMA speaker.  in today's session she is covering how to assess the non-technical skills when hiring data architects and modelers.

Her first topic is facilitation skills. One of the good tips that Loretta mentioned what dealing with a meeting attendee that is overtaking the conversation.  She has found that moving in and standing very close to the talker can get them to quiet down.  I'd never thought of that, but I think it will give it a try. ....Especially because I'm usually that "talks too much in meetings" person :).

She offered a technique for coming to a resolution by voting with sticky notes on a whiteboard, similar to the technique I use in the Data Modeling Contentious Issues presentation.

Her final topic explored presentation and collaboration skills.

______________________________________________________________

The Softer Side of Data

Loretta Mahon Smith
Lead Information Architect
T. Rowe Price Group

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Level: 
Introductory

This presentation will provide an outline of the high-level skills that a data management professional should acquire in order to sell, as well as point individuals to resources available to help them learn and grow. Assuming that the audience already understands the skills necessary for a Data Modeling, this presentation addresses tools, techniques, and best practice in other technical and non-technical areas:

• Facilitation
• Prioritization & time management
• Audience assessment
• Presentation
• Written communication

---

Loretta Mahon Smith has led Special Interest Group sessions on Stewardship and has presented Stewardship materials at both DAMA and previous IQ Conferences. She has worked at T. Rowe Price Group, an international financial services firm, since 1983. She has been closely involved in the development of Information Architecture functions, specializing in Data Stewardship and Infrastructure Development. She is currently the VP of Programs with DAMA-NCR.

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 12:29 PM

 

Eric Miller of Zepheira, who is working on a new open source semantic data integration tool presented in the SOA track.  Rob Drysdale has provided this blog entry.

Eric covered the synergy between web community and how they have been dealing with data, searching, combining and how it should be done in the enterprise.  He also touched on the lessons of the we are applicable to managing enterprise information.

Most of the web is pages and links, designed for direct human consumption, limited linking (pointed at through URLs), data is hidden and siloed (similar to the enterprise).

The web is becoming one of the most pervasive data management and integration platforms ever imagined...(Think of Google and mashups).

The Semantic Web is a technological way to support data reuse and knowledge sharing. It enables you to combine data and use it to make intelligent decisions. In order to do this you need a common model for representing the data, expressing constraints and using common query mechanisms to come up with a means to expose traditional data.

We need to take the lessons from the web and use architecture that is consistent. The focus needs to be on information and workflow and not on the implementation. These building blocks will allow us to take things and combine them in a way that we want that is specific to what we need or want. Eric used an analogy about Lego to illustrate this point that Legos are consistent building blocks that can be put together in any way based on the person.

Overall this will allow us to continually change how we look at the data and not have to continually version software to make all these changes. This will reduce cost and allow the data to serve the business and not just be part of the vendor solution.

Currently we all have many systems that track our data but it isn't integrated and can make it difficult to do real information exchange. Trying to put the data all in one big system (Enterprise Data Systems and Models) can be troublesome and cumbersome. This restricts agility.

If you look at the web it does not use any supermodel or consistent architecture, but it all works really well together. So you need to look at it as if you have a web of data in your enterprise. So don't look at it as a supermodel, but as a need for a consistent way to link it find it and represent it.

Re-use, Re-purpose, Remix

They have used open source tools to integrate data and be able to get data integrated in organizations.

Exhibit allows you to map out information and present it (think Google maps) in a way that people can interpret easier. Once the data is all in Exhibit you can actually start to put it together by pointing at multiple data sets. It doesn't organize it specifically, but allows the user to quickly do it and try different things.

Simultaneous Editing (tool) allows you to edit data quickly.

Eric showed an example of two Excel spreadsheets being combined using something like Exhibit and combining it to allow the user to manipulate it and look for patterns and overlaps. You can use a Excel spreadsheet to drive a web page type of view.

Overall you don't change the data, but you stitch it together using these tools so you can use it to analyze it and make decisions about it. Many of the tools that Eric talked about are open source, but used in a different way. Basically you're mining the data and putting it together to do other things with it. Once you connect it you still may want other tools to do some of the final layer of consistent reporting and management of the data, but the tools allow you to get the data together.

Eric gave suggestions on how we can take this back to our own organizations and try this. Basically we need to analyze our problems and see how we could do it and start with something small and try it and see if we can build up momentum and support.

_________________________________________________________

The Enterprise Web of Data

Eric Miller
President
Zepheira

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
08:30 AM - 09:30 AM

Level: 
Intermediate

What if you suddenly had the ability to integrate large data sets…

- while your business sponsor is standing over your shoulder?

- at one tenth the cost of traditional mapping methods?

- without requiring widespread agreement on naming conventions and data definitions?

- and you suddenly had new insights into data relationships and patterns that nobody had been able to see before?

Yes, it all sounds too much like Silver Bullets falling from the sky, but in fact there is a new class of tools and technologies that changes the old rules forever. It’s based on semantic web technologies, and it allows you to do all of this. The paradigm shift at work here is that we need to starting thinking about Enterprise Data in the same way that we think about the world wide web. This session is a glimpse into the future - right now!

---

Eric Miller is the President of Zepheira. Prior to founding Zepheira, Eric led the Semantic Web Initiative for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT where he led the architectural and technical leadership in the design and evolution of the Semantic Web. Eric is a frequent and sought after international speaker in areas of International Web standards, knowledge management, collaboration, development and deployment.

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 11:29 AM

Well, I can't really blog about my own session -- at least not in the same way I've done for other sessions.

After reading from some of my favourite quirky books, I asked for feedback from the attendees as to what they would recommended. I will be posting on those soon.

________________________________________________

I Learned Everything I Need to Know about Data Management from Amazon.com

Karen Lopez
Sr. Project Manager
InfoAdvisors

Tuesday, March 18, 2008
03:15 PM - 04:15 PM

Level: 
Business

In this presentation, Karen shares her passion for reading by giving an overview of really useful and irreverent books for data architects who want to be:

• Great team members
• Well positioned in the workplace
• Great communicators
• Better data analysts
• Happily employed

Attendees will also get the opportunity to nominate their favorite non-data management books.

---

Karen Lopez is Principal Consultant at InfoAdvisors, Inc., a Toronto-based consulting firm, and has spoken at several DAMA conferences and DAMA Chapters. She has 20+ years of experience in project and data management on large, multi-project programs. Karen specializes in the practical application of data management principles. Karen is also moderator of the InfoAdvisors Discussion Groups at www.infoadvisors.com.

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 11:16 AM

My morning starts with attending Greg Keeling and Wayne Harrison speaking on the challenges facing BMO Financial Group with their large meta data integration program.

What makes this presentation interesting for me is that this program is last year's Wilshire Meta Data Award winner.  So being able to hear about some of the more real-life aspects of building an internationally recognized meta data program is something one doesn't always get to do.

The other interesting part is that Wayne isn't on the IT side of the project.  His background is on the regulatory and government side of the organization.  Wayne has a background that includes work for the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario.  When introducing him, I asked him what I could say about him that isn't on his standard bio.  He told me that he normally doesn't spend a lot of time with meta data analysts and data analysts -- most of his time is spend working with lawyers, risk analysts, and governance manager.

Greg, on the other hand, is up to his eyeballs in modelling tools, repositories, and models.

At BMO Financial Group they started with IBM's taxonomies for financials, then mapped those terms to their data models.  They are in the process of moving from CA ERwin to IBM's Rational Data Architect so that they can better support the mappings from the IBM framework to their models.

Wayne and Greg showed a live demo of their meta data systems, which I really appreciated.  One of the interesting things they have is a home grown portal system on top of their repository.  This allows them to have better graphics and usability features.  This also allows them to isolate end users from the repository technologies.  They can change their repo tools without impact their users.  They are moving soon to a product called InfoLibrarian, a small repository tool company.

BMO Financial Group uses DataFlux for data profiling.  They expose the results of profiling within this portal as well.  These data quality issues go onto the executive dashboard, so that business users can see at any time the level of data quality.

 

________________________________________________________________

Challenges in Metadata Integration: BMO Financial Group Case Study

Wayne Harrison
Senior Information Consultant
BMO Financial Group

Gregory Keeling
Consulting Manager
BMO Financial Group

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
08:30 AM - 09:30 AM

Level: 
Advanced

BMO Financial Group's metadata journey is now heading toward a new challenge. It is necessary to create an integration metadata strategy and standard to ensure different types of sources are brought together to provide holistic business and technical value to the enterprise where the total is expected to be greater than the sum of the parts.

• What is metadata integration?
• How does BMO strategize the integration?
• Where are we having success and where do the challenges persist?
• Who is getting benefits from this?
• Why does this strategy sound good?

---

Wayne Harrison is the team leader of Data Governance and Quality at BMO Financial Group. He provides internal consulting on best practices for data accountabilities, and decisioning processes. Over his 25 year career, Wayne has worked in financial services, telecom and transportation. Wayne has held the role of chief data architect, delivered enterprise data architectures, designed data warehouses and operational systems. He has delivered developed and delivered training for IT professionals in data and process modeling.

Since he started at BMO, he has focussed on metadata and information management, stewardship and governance. He worked with BMO business stewards in the creation of data standards and standardization processes. Wayne has presented at DAMA on several occasions.

Greg has been with the Information Management (IM) department of BMO Financial Group since 2005. Prior to joining IM, Greg worked on a number of initiatives for BMO's Senior Vice-President in charge of Enterprise Systems (Information Management, IT Strategy, and Enterprise Architecture).

Greg's work focuses on governance, standards, change management, and communications as part of a team overseeing BMO's enterprise-wide Information Management Policy. He has spoken on data governance to audiences in Canada and the United States.

Before joining BMO in 2003, Greg spent five years with the Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario (IPC) where he held various roles including Executive Assistant to the Commissioner, Head of Communications and Technology Services, and Director of Corporate Services. Prior to joining the IPC, Greg worked for six years for the Government of Ontario delivering services to promote public access to government information.

Greg has a BA (History and Political Studies) and an MA (Political Studies) from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He was the first recipient of the University of Toronto's Certificate in Media and New Technology Management. Greg received a Certificate of Excellence from the National Quality Institute and Public Sector Quality Council in Ontario for his work integrating federal, municipal, and provincial government telephone listings into a unified "Blue Pages." He is a Fellow of the 21st Century Trust and was the inaugural George Bell Fellow in Strategic Studies at the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies. Greg is currently enrolled in the Master of Business Administration program through the Institute of Canadian Bankers and Dalhousie University.

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 10:52 AM

Rob Drysdale blogs about a session he attended:

Mike Gorman gave an interesting presentation about some of the problems that can happen on a project when it is not properly managed or the methodology understood and followed.

First of all, Mike reviewed the various SDLC's that can be followed, namely Waterfall, Spiral, CMMI and Agile. CMMI is not really a methodology by itself, but an audit process to make sure you are following the steps you say you are supposed to. Mike gave a real life example of a project he was involved in where the process was supposed to be Agile. However, the project really followed a Waterfall methodology, but called it Agile simply to avoid the documentation associated with the Waterfall process. The presentation really showed some of the problems that can happen with projects and how they can fail based on the people involved and how they are managed.

On a personal note, Mike did say it is his 67th birthday this coming Saturday. Happy Birthday, Mike.

________________________________________________________________

Waterfall Meets CMMI Meets Agile: A Report from the Battlefield

Michael Gorman
President
Whitemarsh Info Systems

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
01:15 PM - 02:15 PM

Level: 
Intermediate

This presentation identifies, describes, and indicates the interrelationships among the key competing forces that have impacted this large main-frame database project. That is, Waterfall, CMMI, and Agile. This presentation shows the conflicts, the progress, and the setbacks as these three methodology forces have competed to dominate the very fabric and progress, and products, of this key enterprise project. Finally, this presentation identifies the two components that were missing but had to be done "underground," and how these two "off the record" efforts affected the project's outcome.

During 2007, there has been a very high profile project that affects the very fabric of this multi-billion dollar business. Key segments of the entire executive and technical organizations have been keenly focused on the new project. This presentation identifies and describes the key successes, failures, and conflicts. It identifies the key personalities that helped and hurt the effort.

• Can a project successfully meld key methodology components from Waterfall, CMMI, and Agile? Each is examined, compared, and the effects of each on the project are listed.
• Are these components able to be brought together with both new and old technology?
• What were the problems and conflicts? Who were the players?
• How has constant project planning and replanning affected the outcomes?
• What was missing? What helped? Was this effort successful? What were the lessons learned?

---

Michael M. Gorman has been involved in data processing for over 40 years. Mike has been Secretary of the ANSI Database Committee for 30 years. He co-authored all theSQL standards. Mike has worked for System Development Corporation which, with MITRE and Lincoln Labs, invented data management. Mike worked for MITRE during the early 1990s. He was a Federal Systems Manager and brought Database Management Systems into Federal Agencies including the Army, Navy, Air Force, EPA, HUD, Commerce, and Agriculture.

Mike owns Whitemarsh Information Systems Corporation, which provides consulting, methodologies, books, courses, workshops, and CASE/Repository software, and during the past 25 years, Mike has delivered data management consulting and training to a number of Fortune 100 companies, as well as State and local governments.

Mike has authored numerous books and publishes regularly on The Data Administration Newsletter. Mike has taught at a number of Universities, at Data Management Association Chapters, and at their International Conferences 2000 through 2007.