1. Rationale for
DMG New Platform
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2. Problem Development and maintenance
Huge demand for DMG services plus focus on short-term benefits led to shortcuts in code development
More time is now spent on maintenance and support activities than developing new features
Current technology stack and code base does not support agile development
Aging code base and technology stack is not adequate to meet current and future demands
Move Development and maintenance and code base (merge with tech debt) to slide 1
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3. Problem (cont.) DMG’s technical debt
New features take longer to develop
Testing takes longer
Software deployments take longer
System has become less stable
Extremely difficult to troubleshoot issues
Code base is “brittle”
New developers take longer to ramp up
Not an attractive job for developers
EAGL is 6 years old, ACORN is 7 years old, cineSHARE+ is 8 years old
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4. Creating the Agile Virtuous Cycle
Technical agility creates a virtuous cycle of ever higher quality code and automated tests
Provides tighter feedback loops
Improves schedules
Reduces costs
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5. Impact of Technical Debt
Cost of Change (CoC)
Customer
Responsiveness
Actual
CoC
Technical Debt
Optimal CoC
Years
Product
Release
Once on far right of curve, all choices are hard
If nothing is done, it just gets worse
In applications with high technical debt, estimating is nearly impossible
Only 3 strategies
Do nothing, it gets worse
Incremental refactoring or Strangler Vine (only works if system is stable)
Replace, high cost/risk
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6. Agility = no “stabilization” necessary6
Plan
Develop
Agile project with complete, integrated, automated “done”:
Plan
Develop
Stabilize
Agile project with incomplete or variable “done”:
Undone
Undone
Undone
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7. Total Quality enables Agility+
Value
Extrinsic Quality
Quality
Intrinsic Quality
Total Quality
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8. Intrinsic Quality
Leading edge enterprises employ technologies that can approach 99% cumulative defect removal rates.
The norm for US firms is a cumulative defect removal rate of 75%.
A cumulative defect removal rate of 95% on a project appears to be a nodal point where several other benefits accrue. For projects of similar size and type, these projects:
have the shortest schedules.
have the lowest quantity of effort in terms of person-months
have the highest levels of user satisfaction after release
—Capers Jones, Applied Software Measurement (1991)
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9. Reaching the Nodal Point of Intrinsic Quality
Companies that depend purely upon testing for defect removal almost never top 90% in cumulative defect removal, and often are below 75%.
The defect removal efficiency of TDD is higher than many forms of testing and can top 85%.
However, even with TDD a phenomenon called “bad-fix injection” needs to be factored in to the equation. About 7% of attempts to fix bugs accidentally include new bugs in the fixes themselves.
If TDD is combined with other approaches such as formal inspection of the test cases and static analysis of the code then defect removal efficiency can top 95%.
These observations are derived from quality benchmark studies carried out by the author and his colleagues between 1984 and in several hundred companies in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
- Capers Jones, “Software Engineering Best Practices”, 2009.
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10. Solution: New Platform
Needed to continue DMGs mission efficiently
Build a new digital media platform using modern web technologies, protocols and design practices
Target cloud deployment
Leverage open source/best of breed technologies
Ruby on Rails, ElasticSearch, Node.js, MongoDB
Benefits
Timely response to customer needs
Faster development
Less maintenance
Better API design
Continuous Delivery
Combine with Approach slide?
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11. Building Ruby on Rails Web Apps
Rapid development
Significant cost savings
Collaboration
Future demand and adoption
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12. ElasticSearch – Powerful Search
Fast - manages thousands of requests per second and while maintaining a response time one second
RESTful, highly available & fault tolerant
Distributed. Replicas are near real-time too, which is called "Push replication”
Supports multi-tenancy
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13. Node.js – Fast and friendly
JavaScript both server-side and client-side for single page apps
Support easy development of real time, streaming, and collaborative features
High performance is great for mobile APIs
Vibrant developer community
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14. Treemap of Programming Languages (Last Qtr 2011 vs Last Qtr 2010)
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15. Pragmatic REST is a design problem
You have to get the design right, because design communicates how something will be used. The question becomes -what is the design with optimal benefit for the app developer?
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16. Continuous Delivery
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17. Benefits of New Technology Stack
Faster development – less lines of code to achieve functionality
Easier to maintain – Ruby and JSON
Easier to ramp up new developers
Better support for open source tools
Better integration for external apps
Better design for future demands
Support for continuous integration and deployment
Enhances collaboration and innovation
Well-defined API strategy and design
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18. DMG-MCS Future?
Can we agree on a unified services model that supports our mutual interests?
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