Todd Biske wrote: >I think we need to separate out the solution from the need. I think >all of us will agree with Keith's first comment on the article: > > >>On 3/29/06, Keith Harrison-Broninski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> >>>O'Toole is right about "challenges highly distributed development >>>imposes on human-to-human communication during design-time" >>> >>> >My advice: >1) Figure out what needs to be communicated. >2) Determine who needs to receive and provide information >3) Determine the best ways to communicate with them >4) Lather, rinse, repeat (collect feedback and go back to 1 and adjust!) > >If RSS and Wiki can help in the communication, great! Do I think >those technologies should cover 80% of your communication plan? >Absolutely not. > > What we do as software developers is what systems engineers (e.g., aerospace designers) call "concurrent engineering". And since they've been doing it a lot longer than us, we should look at their field for lessons, I feel.
And what one learns by doing so is that steps 1-4 above conceal a very large and complex problem - one that you certainly can't solve in a simple way, and for which current management techniques and software tools are unhelpful. Companies such as Rolls-Royce and BAE are throwing huge amounts of money at systems aimed at remediating just this problem, and engaging the help of academics in all sorts of fields such as knowledge management, safety engineering, and risk management. However, not much success is evident. In the meantime, large engineering projects are regularly losing money hand over fist as a result of the mess that they get into - just like large IT projects! IMO, neither the systems engineering industry or the IT industry will improve the way they handle large-scale architecture until they recognize that, in the analyst McKinsey's words, this is "new territory" that requires "new technology" for a solution. -- All the best Keith http://keith.harrison-broninski.info Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/service-orientated-architecture/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
