Learning Zone: Analysis and Design - Contents

"We chose Select Business Solutions primarily on the strength of its products and position in the market," - Neil Wood, Design Group Manager, Target

“Select's tools and process have enabled us to successfully rebuild our business applications for the future” - John Whillans, Manager ISD

A 30 minute presentation on modeling business strategy using the implementation of the Business Motivation Model in Select Architect.

Principal Consultant, Phil Webb, presents an overview of the main elements of the BMM and builds a model of a pizza delivery company as an example of how business ends, means and influences may be modeled in Select Architect or Select Business Modeler.

A short 5 minute presentation covering software development challenges, MDA concepts and principles, the process of using MDA as well as the key benefits.

In this presentation, we talk about OMG's MDA, Select Perspective, Select Solution Factory and how all three fit together.

A 9 minute presentation allowing you see how Select Solution Factory can help you to deliver, deploy and manage your Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® solutions.

This whitepaper is intended for IT Managers, Architects and Developers who wish to fully leverage the Enterprise capabilities of .NET by using a proven CBD process and supporting toolset, such as Select Perspective and Select Solution Factory. This paper explains the architectural emphasis of Select Perspective, in particular the Technical Architecture, showing how architectural principles are applied to developing distributed systems for Microsoft .NET.

Many IT projects fail.  An insufficient understanding of the requirements that are driving the project causes most of these failures.  Lack of understanding can have many causes – lack of communication with the user community is a common fault.  Select Perspective, the incremental, iterative software development process from Select Business Solutions, has always emphasized the importance of gaining and maintaining a very clear view of the project requirement – of achieving alignment with the business need.  Business Alignment is one of the core consume-side workflows that must be executed in a Perspective-based project.

This document describes how BPR and BPI projects can provide the needed scope definition for software development projects, how a basic set of business process modeling (BPM) concepts and diagramming techniques that are usable in rapid analysis of software requirements with as little translation or rework as possible, and also work to describe BPM techniques which give a basis for assembling, not coding, business solutions.

This document contrasts traditional structured development to Service & Component Based Development (S&CBD), describing how the principles of S&CBD make it inherently more capable of addressing today’s complex IT challenges. It will show how these principles and characteristics impact the approach taken to testing, resulting in systems of high quality.

Component-Based Development (CBD) is founded upon a solid background of experience within the software industry, however it is a relatively immature engineering science. It is our experience within Select, that successful processes need to be shared and evolved into best practices if more organizations are to succeed with CBD.

In today's increasingly competitive environment, organizations are focusing on their core business activities - putting their resources into processes that contribute directly to the "bottom-line". Activities and processes which do not contribute directly to the profitability are delegated to third parties - business process outsourcing.

Much has been made of the concept of patterns in the software industry. A pattern is defined as “a generic solution to a problem which must be customized with contextual information to provide a real solution”. In contrast, anti-patterns are gremlins in the machine - causing problems whenever they arise. This paper discusses templates for standardizing the description of anti-patterns. It then discusses the relationship between risk and anti-patterns in the arena of project planning and management.

The purpose of this white paper is to assist information technology (IT) managers, developers and architects assess the integration and synergy of the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) and Select Perspective for automated solution developments within their organization.

This paper addresses the key question – “SOA and MDA, hand-in-glove or square peg, round hole?” – and discusses the key characteristics of the two modeling architectures, focusing on the classification of models that is embodied by each. The flow of modeling activity is discussed in the two architectures together with a discussion of the support for the modeling flows provided by Select Solution for MDA. Finally, a framework – a unified modeling architecture – is introduced which illustrates how the two architectures can be brought together into a synergistic whole, each reinforcing the benefits of the other.

Encapsulating business process intelligence is crucial to the development of component-based systems that are flexible yet robust to change. However, a number of semantic issues arise that inhibit the satisfactory representation of business process intelligence via components when using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) as a modeling vehicle. This White Paper explores these semantic issues and suggests practical adaptations of the UML and modeling practices to overcome the semantic issues where possible.

by CBDi Forum

Integrated Component Modeling and Management The Select product family, now owned and marketed by Select Business Solutions, has now been packaged into the Select Component Factory. In the latest version four tools are integrated into a seamless product, allowing component designers convenient access to the component modeling and management tools supporting the supply, manage, consume lifecycle.

by Philip Howard, Bloor Research - August 2006

Snippet from the Summary:

"One might argue that Select is a company whose time has come. If we consider that it has been focusing on the development and management of components for the best part of a decade, then it is in a better position to capitalise on the growth in web services than almost anyone else in the market. At the same time, it has had a long-term emphasis on process management so it is equally well-placed to capitalise on the growth in interest in continuous process improvement. Now add its bi-directional support for synchronization throughout an MDA environment (not to mention its separation of the platform specific model from code) and you have a product set that has significant capabilities in all of the most fashionable areas of application development. Such a combination should have a winning one."

This document discusses a modeling architecture used to support the development of business solutions in a service-oriented environment. The fit of the model architecture with both the Select Perspective development method and Select Solution Factory is discussed. The audience for this document is Project Managers and Practitioners who are interested in modeling and delivering business solutions in a service oriented architecture. It will also be of value to process managers who wish to gain a better understanding of the model-based products that provide effective support for delivering business solutions.

Select Architect has been designed from the ground up, to provide real productivity and quality  business benefits. Widely accepted, by analysts and customers alike, as the leading technology in its field, Select Architect has been proven to deliver real business benefit where it counts. Select Business Solutions’ approach is one of pragmatism, providing features to help get the job done and provide business driven solutions. This document provides additional detail on Select Architect than the introductory marketing literature, allowing you to take a closer look.

In keeping pace with today's high-speed business demands, IT organizations need a flexible and scalable way to design and build Java solutions, that meet the needs of the business. Select JSync is invaluable for productive and quality Java code generation, as well as ongoing model and code synchronization.

Reviewer for Select Architect is the world's first automated UML design review tool. It reviews standards, accuracy, completeness, style, based upon designs within Select Architect. This document provides a detailed look at key issues such as delivering solution quality, and leveraging design review throughout the Enterprise.