Methodology Overview: Planning and Modeling

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Methodology Overview: Planning and Modeling
February 8, 1999

Summary, Case Study, Problems and Exercises, and Additional Information

3.6 Summary

An application engineering/reengineering methodology pattern is presented that will be customized for a wide range of application engineering/reengineering situations. The pattern consists of successive iterations, refinements, and expansions of four broad activities: analysis, solution architectures, implementations, and deployment/support activities.

Overall planning should always be the first iteration of the process and should concentrate on business opportunity analysis and risk analysis to determine the best strategy.

The object model can be used as a foundation for almost all application engineering/reengineering issues. We have shown how an object model can be used as a starting point for decision support applications, operational support applications, data warehouses, legacy data access, and application migration.

The IT infrastructure issues need to be considered in a systematic manner with iterative analysis, architectures, implementation, and deployment/support.The infrastructure evaluation should be considered throughout the system life cycle.

3.7 Case Study: XYZCorp Embarks on Application (Re)Engineering

In the next few years, several new applications will be developed and many of the existing applications will be reengineered at XYZCorp. At present each application engineering/reengineering is considered as a unique case. It is felt that an overall methodology is needed for engineering of new applications and reengineering of existing (mostly legacy) applications. In other words, how should the corporation approach the issues involved in building new Web-based applications and establish suitable strategies for dealing with its embedded base of mainframe-based legacy applications.

XYZCorp has embarked on a major initiative to extend and integrate the applications that support the business processes (payroll, accounts receivable/accounts payable, order processing, marketing information systems, and computerized checkout systems), engineering processes (computer-aided design, computer-aided engineering, computer-aided process planning), and manufacturing processes (material requirement planning, production scheduling, and flexible manufacturing systems). The company is primarily interested in integrating and automating the order processing, inventory control, CAD/CAM (computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing) and the "manufacturing" processes of the company products (IBM PC desktops, laptops, network computers, personal digital assistants). This system, referred to as the XYZAICS (Advanced Integrated Control System), will receive a customer order and assemble and pack a product for shipping within half an hour of order reception.

An Expert System For Generating Methodologies

Methodologies depend on the type of architectures being used. For example, methodologies for developing client/server systems differ from the conventional mainframe development methodologies. In particular, project planning steps are dependent on the underlying application architecture being deployed. Is it possible to use expert systems in developing project plans based on a few questions?

C/S10,000 from Client/Server Connection is an expert system tool for generating customizable methodologies that are driven by technical architectures. This tool guides the user through a series of questions aimed at identifying a few (one or two) application architectures from an inventory of 125 application architectures. After the user selects an architecture (this may require some iterations), the expert system prompts the user through additional questions for selecting a suitable network architecture from an inventory of 85 network architectures. After this, the tool generates a work breakdown structure (WBS), project estimate and supporting materials for a project plan. The tool also includes an inventory of products that can be used to implement selected architectures.

Source:

Hunter, R., and Conway, B., "C/S 10,000: Methodology Gain Without Pain?" Gartner Group Research Note, August 29, 1996.

The company is in a time crunch and has authorized a two week initial planning project. The management has been talking to a consultant (a good guy who writes very good books!) and has agreed to design XYZAICS by using the methodology template discussed in this chapter.

Hints about the Case Study

The first two iterations of the methodology described in Sections 3.3 through 3.5 should be completed as much as possible within the two-week time constraint. In the planning iteration, an understanding of IMCS is developed and very initial choices are made about what portion of XYZAICS should be built, what should be purchased, and what should be based on a reuse of existing systems. A high level object model is built in the second iteration to gain further insight and to scope out the work in more detail.

Figure 3.18 shows a very high-level view of XYZAICS–a result of the planning process. The first stage in this system is an order processing system that processes orders for a product. If the specified product is in stock and the customer credit is acceptable, the product is shipped to the customer from the finished product inventory that is adjusted to show products shipped. For an out of stock product, a CAD/CAE system produces the design based on the customer’s specifications. The design is then downloaded to a Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP) system where the manufacturing program is automatically created that shows how the product will be assembled. The CAPP system uses the information about available assembly equipment to generate the process plans. An MRP (Material Requirement Planning) system determines the materials needed for the product. MRP systems use sophisticated algorithms to take into account quantity discounts, vendor preferences, various capacity constraints, and factory status. The manufacturing program is downloaded to a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) which consists of an area controller, two cells, and several manufacturing devices. FMS also receives a production schedule (how many products to manufacture) and needed raw materials. Because FMS is a real-time system, it must conform to the constraints of real-time control on factory floors.

As can be seen, this system has a combination of application types such as operational support (e.g., inventory manager, order processing), decision support (MRP), and real-time (FMS). At present, the MRP and order-processing systems with associated databases exist (shaded areas in Figure 3.18). Other components either need to be built and/or purchased. This observation is enough for the time being. We will consider the details later as different parts of XYZAICS in the case studies in later chapters.

In the second iteration, a very high-level object model is developed due to the time constraints. The object model developed in Section 3.4 and shown in Figure 3.13 is a good starting point. Other object classes in the XYZAICS system (order, robots, invoice, et cetera) can be added to this object class diagram. This object model is at a business object level (i.e., represent business entities). The overall IT infrastructure of the XYZCorp should also be reviewed very briefly in this iteration. The review of the XYZCorp IT infrastructure at the end of Chapter 2 should do the job.

Figure 3.18 Advanced Integrated Control System (AICS)

3.8 Problems and Exercises

1. There is a common saying that "It seems there is never enough time to do a job right the first time, but there is always time to do it over." Does the methodology presented in this chapter address this tendency? How?

2. Show how this methodology can be used to develop applications such as electronic commerce, expert systems, and videoconferencing.

3. Compare and contrast this methodology with the OO methodologies [Booch 1994], and [Rumbaugh 1994] and the RMM methodology for hypermedia applications [Isakowitz 1995].

3.9 Additional Information

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