This year’s Spring meeting of the IAP will be based at the Museum in Docklands, close to Canary Wharf. Since its regeneration Docklands has become a hub for high-tech business. It contributes a major slice of Britain’s wealth, and provides employment for a lot of IAP members.

Traditionally the main gateway for overseas trade, Docklands is now the hub of a vast global trading operation. But this traditional business has been augmented by international media and financial sectors that have removed from the City.

The Museum celebrates Docklands’ historic roots. Occupying a converted warehouse, its mix of galleries and function rooms will provide a comfortable and interesting venue for the IAP. But our speakers will talk about modern developments that have transformed the area and made it into a world-class centre for the media, banking, and trade.

Docklands is a short ride from the City of London. For those who have not travelled the Docklands Light Railway before it is an awesome experience. The grand scale of the buildings and the space-age layout are totally unexpected in London.

Cost (including VAT)

Peter Green FIAP The Newspaper Business – Where to now?

Peter is a Fellow of the Institution and currently Technical Director of the Telegraph Newspaper Group. He has 25 years’ experience in the publishing industry; past assignments included positions as Operations Director of The International Herald Tribune and The European, and IT Manager for the Press Association. Innovations which Peter has pioneered during his time at the Telegraph have since been copied by newspapers all over the world.

The Telegraph was one of the first major titles to move to Docklands. Since then both the technology and the business environment have been transformed by the rise of electronic publishing. Peter will review what has already happened, and how he sees the industry developing in the future. 

Dominic Palmer-Brown UEL – Designing Britain’s future in IT

Dominic is Associate Dean of Computing and Technology and Professor of Neural Computing at the University of East London. He studied Electrical and Electronic Engineering and has since completed an MSc in Intelligent Systems and a PhD in Neural Networks. He has worked extensively in industry. His research work includes virtual learning environments, intelligent systems and neural networks. He is widely published

 The School of Computing, Information Technology and Engineering at the University of East London was relocated to its award-winning Docklands campus in 2007 (see photo). Dominic will describe the campus and its new facilities, addressing the effect this has had on teaching, and the University’s interaction with industry. 

Jim Goulding FIAP TV news – from manual to automatic.

Once a producer/director on News at Ten, Jim now runs his own production company specializing in documentaries. He has worked for all the major TV companies, including the BBC, Thames TV and Channel 4, on a wide range of programming. Jim has shot pop videos in Los Angeles, corporate and training films throughout Europe, and was in at the very beginning of Channel 4 TV. He and his partner have shown their work in 28 countries

Jim will survey the last thirty years in TV newsrooms. Early cameras were so heavy that it took two people to lift them. Studios were run by crews of a dozen people. Nowadays whole feature films can be cut on desk top computers bought off the shelf, and News studios are run by crews of two or three. Computers can now control the whole of a station’s news output. 24 hour TV news can be truly breaking news. 

Ed Gibson The Computing ‘Environment’: It’s more than Binary Code – It’s About Criminals!!

Ed Gibson’s primary role as Microsoft’s Chief Security Adviser is to advise customers in the UK how best to respond to the current security environment, and how to improve their security while using Microsoft’s products. Twenty years as a Special Agent with the FBI have uniquely qualified Ed for this role. From 2000 – 2005 he was assigned to the American Embassy in London. During that period he was responsible for all the FBI’s hi-tech programmes to combat Internet extortion, blackmail, cyber terrorism and intellectual property theft.

Despite the mutating threats of cyber attacks, online extortion and spam, a well-structured security strategy can safeguard your business and ensure that such risks are controlled. It can also reassure customers. Criminals will attempt to steal everything you hold dear in the online world, by extortion, threats or intimidation. Yet, because the internet is not territorially or jurisdictionally bound, the normal responses are often ineffective. But there are solutions . . . and sometimes they are free!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Notice Board

Government UK IT Summit is at Victoria Park Plaza, London on 14 and 15 May. See www.euro-techforum.com for details.

Technology Transactions for Financial Institutions is organised by the Society for Computers and the Law in London on 16 May. More information is at www.scl.org.

The Wireless Event is at Olympia Exhibition Centre, London on 23 and 24 May. There’s more at www.thewirelessevent.com.

[Got an activity or event coming up? Email eo@iap.org.uk with the details.]

———————————————————————————————————————–

Sounding Board

Robin Jones wonders about our sometimes-contradictory attitudes to prices and sources.

The natives are restless again. The jungle drums of the technical press are rumbling darkly about the exorbitant cost of Vista upgrades, especially when compared to the equivalent charges in the US.

But there’s another prevalent view, which can be stated as, “If you’re not paying through the nose for it, it can’t be any good.” During the recent contaminated supermarket petrol debacle, the press wheeled out numerous motor vehicle engineers to tell us, with straight faces, that we’d be safer buying our fuel from the ‘Majors’ because they charge us more. Unfortunately, we weren’t told where they live. I wanted to sell them £300 televisions at £900 a throw, because, obviously, they’ll then be 3 times better.

There seems to be something irrationally comforting about paying out a lot of money. Skinflints like me have never understood this. As Sir John Harvey Jones used to say, you can’t control what your customers pay you, only what you pay your suppliers. So the way to a healthy margin is to control your costs. On which basis, the capital cost of employing Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird et al is, essentially, zero. There are, of course, arguments about the TCO – retraining, management and so on. But if you’re changing operating system anyway, there’s some retraining cost, so now would be a good time to consider all the options. And Linux is getting easier to manage all the time – witness the imminent extension of Linspire’s “Click ’n Run” technology to a range of common Linux distributions.

“Ah yes”, I hear you ask, “but what about all my .NET applications, to say nothing of my VBA macros?” That’s a fair question. I’ve got another one. What other industry would willingly commit to a single supplier for its primary raw material, however reliable and cost-effective that supplier might be?

[Something you’d like to get off your chest? Email me (Robin Jones) at eo@iap.org.uk.]

———————————————————————————————————————–

Members’ News:

Siddique Khan, MIAP is standing for re-election to Council this spring. Here, he writes about himself and his aspirations for the Institution.

I joined the IAP in January 2002 and a little over two years later was co-opted on to the IAP Council. At 31, I am privileged to have been the youngest ever member selected for the IAP Council. I am currently working as a development lead / software architect for an IT solution company specialising in information management, knowledge management and automation for the Oil and Gas sector. I have very broad experience including business process automation, information management, enterprise content management, knowledge management, workflow automation, EDMS and full text and retrieval search engines.

In the past, I’ve been engaged in various technical roles, as analyst/programmer, senior systems analyst, technical consultant and development team leader to name a few. I strongly believe that the IAP is capable of offering services to the wider world, reaching as far as India and perhaps China. And in fact, I’m investigating the possibility of arranging such affiliations or partnerships with the local professional bodies in these aggressively developing countries to fulfil the real potential of the IAP mission.

[Don’t forget to email eo@iap.org.uk with items of news about you or your company.]

———————————————————————————————————————–
Work in Progress

As part of her MSc in E-Business at the University of Westminster, Angelina Jones, AMIAP has been researching the technical aspects of Canada’s Government-Online (GOL) initiative. Here she describes her work and its outcomes.

Canada is a sparsely populated country of 30 million people, with two official languages – English and French – and 13 states across six different time zones. E-government was seen as the way to address these physical barriers. It could revolutionise government because the Internet could ‘bridge the challenges of time and distance, and enable the Canadian society to forge a stronger sense of connection both between and among its members and with its government’ (D’Auray, 2003). The Government of Canada (GoC) thus formulated a GOL Strategy in 2000 to manage the transition from traditional government and ease the process of change. According to this document, the aim of GOL is to provide:

‘…citizens with the ability to interact with the government, to receive information, to access programs and services and to do business electronically with the GoC.’

The key initiative of the strategy was to develop a front-end Web platform to cluster the Government’s services from a citizen’s perspective, rather than basing it on the Government’s hierarchical structure. The GoC believed this would guarantee the accessibility of its Web content and enable citizens to use it easily. As a result, the Government developed the Cluster Blueprint (Fig. 1) to represent the organisation of the intended online services and to provide the Government with an initial idea of how the Web platform could be designed.

Fig 1: The Cluster Blueprint

Within each cluster, the information is organised around specific audiences, subjects, and life events, managed individually by a Government department. The first release of the Canada Site was based on this blueprint in 2001 and has since been enhanced to suit the needs of the Canadian citizens based on user feedback.

Aim of the Study and Research Undertaken

Recognising the effort Canada had put into its E-Government, it was decided that my study would aim to assess the Web sites created for the GOL initiative, and evaluate the front end interfaces to decide whether Canada had successfully managed to transform their traditional government to a digital one. The following research objectives were formulated to meet this project aim:

·      To identify and evaluate how the GoC Web sites satisfy technical standards;

·      To assess the overall usability of the GOL Web sites and their content;

·      To obtain further insight into the Canadian Government and explore how successful the digital transformation has been.

In order to optimise the outcomes for the research, both usability testing through the form of a questionnaire adhering to Nielson’s Usability Best Practices (2001) and an impartial evaluation using global Web Accessibility standards were conducted. In total, 14 high-level users (frequent users of the Internet) participated in the testing. They conducted examinations of the site using their own PC environments (see Table 1 for environments).

Table 1: Hardware and software set-up used for testing

The main purpose of the usability questionnaire was to assess the appropriateness of the front-end interfaces used within the GoC Web sites and to measure their overall ability to serve first-time users, regardless of prior Internet usage and experience. Each question was categorised as relating to Concept; Layout & Design; Download Speeds; Navigation & Structure; and Usability. Participants were directed to view specific Web pages and rate the design of each, as well as to determine how efficiently the Web pages could be downloaded.

The impartial evaluation was mainly centred on the GoC’s fourteen Common Look and Feel Standards (2005) which tested each GOL Web site for their conformity relating to universal accessibility regardless of input device and the PC environments used. The Web pages were also scrutinised according to the World Wide Web, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (W3CWCAG, 1999) to understand the source codes used and how the Web pages behaved under different browser versions and settings. This aimed to determine any dependencies on Dynamic Scripting, Active Content and Cascading Style Sheets. Lastly, in respect of the navigational mechanisms incorporated within the page design, the semantics of each Web site were tested for compliance with the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (1997). 

Key Findings and Outcomes

Based on the impartial evaluation, all the GoC Web sites contained device-independent applets and scripts, allowing the choice of either a mouse or keyboard input device to access the dynamic features. Users were given the option to view the content using a screen reader but in some cases the Web pages were complex and contained different types of elements such as audio, visual and text. This can make it hard for screen readers to interpret, in comparison to plain HTML tags.

One aim of the CLF standards is to provide a ‘consistent system of navigation’ that ensures that Canadian citizens can find and access the information they require effectively. According to Guideline 13 of the W3CWCAG, only clear and consistent navigational mechanisms can increase the ability of users to find what they are looking for. The GoC has worked towards this by designing a corporate style navigational horizontal banner and menu containing portal links that are featured in each Web page. There is also a consistent vertical menu visible on the left-hand side containing relevant links for the viewed Web site. Combined, we found that the GOL websites complied with the W3CWCAG 1.0 Priority 1 and 2 checklists.

In the usability-testing questionnaire, the participants were asked to summarise the effectiveness of the GoC Web sites stating their level of agreement to the statement:

The GoC website has been carefully designed to allow its users to conduct their business efficiently and effectively online.

All participants either agreed (33%) or tended to agree (67%) with the statement. Another part of the questionnaire aimed to assess the usability of the GOL and showed a 50% agreement in that the Web sites were suitable for first-time users and 64% of participants claimed it was easy to navigate around the Web site.

Overall, the outcomes of the Usability testing suggest the GoC Web sites are usable, with meaningful content that was easy to download. Taking this further, the CLF standards also demonstrated the measures taken by the GoC to achieve universal accessibility, which, taken with the W3CWAG’s priorities, have enabled them to unify the Web presence of the GOL, for consistency and easy recognition for new users.

The creation of the CLF standards supports the conclusion that the GoC understands the impact Internet technologies have for them and their citizens. Based on this we believe that trust is vital for the endurance of Canada’s GOL and to build their citizens’ confidence to form (blind) relationships over the Internet. By investing time and money to meet technical standards, Canada will continue to secure a good relationship with its GOL users and this should work towards achieving the long-term success of Canada’s E-Government model.

References:

D’Auray, M 2003, “The Dual Challenge of Integration and Inclusion: Canada’s experience with Government Online”, Journal of Political Marketing, Vol. 2, No. 3 / 4, pp. 31 – 49.

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, 1997, “Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1: Reference Description”.

Government of Canada, 2000, “Government On-Line Strategy”.

Nielson, J 2000, “Designing Web Usability: The Simplicity of Practice.” New Riders Publishing, Indianapolis.

The Common Look and Feel Working Group (CLFWG), 2005, “Common Look and Feel Standards for the Internet”, Treasury Board Secretariat Internet Advisory Committee. Government of Canada.

W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, 1999, “Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 & 13”.

[Interesting project or development? Let us know at eo@iap.org.uk!]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Notice Board

Advance notice: IAP Spring meeting, Friday 20th April - put this date in your diary.

In a radical departure from tradition we shall be holding our 2007 Spring Meeting on the famous WW2 cruiser HMS Belfast. Members with nervous stomachs need have no fear, though; nowadays the Belfast (pictured) is a floating exhibition, safely moored in the River Thames just by Tower Bridge. We are planning an extended lunchtime meeting, with the emphasis on hospitality and networking. But there will also be some technical input and, of course, the opportunity to roam freely around the nine decks and exhibition areas of this fascinating vessel. The event will fit easily into a single working day, or, being on a Friday, it also offers members and their partners the opportunity to stop over in London till Saturday for some shopping. We can advise on nearby hotels. Full details are available on the IAP Web site. This event could well be oversubscribed so it’s not too early to get your name down. Email admin@iap.org.uk or call 0208 567 2118. The cost to members will be £40.00 including VAT. The cost to guests and other non-members is £70.00 including VAT. An excellent three-course lunch and drinks are included in the price.

[Got an activity or event coming up? Email eo@iap.org.uk with the details.]

———————————————————————————————————————–

Sounding Board

As a rule, we treat IAP News as a vehicle for members and partners. Now and then, though, something comes our way that we feel deserves an audience just because it’s likely to be helpful to a significant proportion of the membership. And anyway, rules were made to be broken. So here’s Patricia Passarelli, Editor and Evangeliser at JavaBlackBelt, talking about, well, JavaBlackBelt.

Even after a becoming a Sun Certified Java Programmer, it’s tricky for programmers to market their skills. Plus, they need a self-paced way to keep up with the changing needs in technology. JavaBlackBelt provides a meaningful alternative to Sun and other industry-led certifications. It’s a community based, mass-authoring approach for creating certification and study/learn exams on a variety of Java and related technologies. Most certifications can be passed after a course on syntax and gotchas. And they don’t necessarily prove the potential and aptitude of a developer. The self-study/learn exams on JavaBlackBelt are a true self-diagnostic for developers. With them, developers can prove they really know Java, understand the topics and sub-topics and identify knowledge gaps. JavaBlackBelt isn’t geared toward passing particular certification exams. It promotes valuable learning for skills building – skills that can be put into practice immediately.

This is how it works: users sign up – for FREE – and take exams, from basic J2SE to exams on frameworks like Spring and tools like ANT. They can also progress up the belt track – a skill-level recognition system borrowed from the martial arts. The colour of the belts earned endorses users’ technical knowledge. Every time users “level-up” their belts it’s posted on the home page with their photos and links to their profiles. After taking an exam, users can review the answers to the questions they got right – and those they got wrong. Instantly they can identify knowledge “weak spots.” During an exam, they can vote on question quality and appropriate targeting to the exam objectives. Users can also give feedback to improve or correct question content and syntax. These unique, mass-authoring features, as part of the exam process, are how JavaBlackBelt.com exams continually evolve to ensure that they remain useful to developers – as they evolve. JavaBlackBelt exams have real-world value making them a meaningful metric for learning and skills building.

JavaBlackBelt is not a “fast food” approach. Rather it emphasises an ongoing commitment to learning that continues long after a developer gets a certification. It’s a meaningful alternative because it’s a community-managed track for many certifications. And it’s a place for developers to get their skills recognised – which motivates learning. This encourages a longer view toward self-improvement.

See www.javablackbelt.com for more details.

[Something you'd like to get off your chest? Email me (Robin Jones) at eo@iap.org.uk.]

———————————————————————————————————————–

Members’ News:

Nominations for the Council of the IAP

The Institution is a democratic body governed by a Council elected by and from its members. Five members of the 15-strong Council retire in rotation each year. Nominations for the 2007 election, accompanied by the nominee’s manifesto (in electronic form and not exceeding 150 words, please) must be received at the Institution Office by 19 February. Contact the Office (020 8 5672118 or admin@iap.org.uk) for further details or an informal discussion if you are interested in playing your part in the governance of the Institution.

New Fellow

We welcome Simon C. Stobart, BA (Hons) PhD who has been elected a Fellow of the Institution. Dr. Stobart began working as a programmer with Commercial Union while studying part time for his first degree. This was followed by a brief period as a part time lecturer in computing at New College, Durham. The remainder of his distinguished academic career to date has been spent on the staff of the University of Sunderland (an IAP Education Partner). Working initially part time as Research Assistant and Lecturer while studying for his PhD, Dr. Stobart has taken on increasing departmental responsibilities – he is currently Principal Lecturer in Computing with co-ordinating responsibility for the postgraduate programmes. He is widely published and engages in a considerable amount of consultancy work, both with local businesses and internationally.

[Don't forget to email eo@iap.org.uk with items of news about you or your company.]

———————————————————————————————————————–
Work in Progress

Here, Sarah Bird, of Browne Jacobson, discusses the implications of the new legislation from an employer’s perspective. If you’re an employee, though, the information is equally useful. You just view it differently.

The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 came into force on 1 October 2006. The Regulations protect workers of all ages from age discrimination and impact on almost every aspect of the employment relationship – from recruitment and promotion to dismissal. They will potentially affect many commonly established practices, from the wording of job advertisements to the sending of office birthday cards. Increasing awareness of age diversity throughout your business is crucial. The message is clear focus on skill and ability and not age.

The Regulations

In summary the Regulations:

• prohibit unjustified age discrimination in employment;
• require employers who set their retirement age below the default age of 65 to justify or change it;
• introduce a new duty on employers to consider an employee’s request to continue working beyond retirement;
• require employers to inform employees in writing, at least 6 months but not more than 12 months in advance, of their intended retirement date and their right to request continued working;
• remove the upper limit for unfair dismissal and redundancy rights;
• permit service-related benefits up to five years’ service;
• leave occupational pensions largely unchanged – most age-related rules found in occupational pension schemes are effectively exempted; and
• remove the age limits for Statutory Sick Pay, Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Adoption Pay and Statutory Paternity Pay.

Retirement Notification

Businesses should be preparing for the new rules on retirement. Identify retirements that are coming up in the next 12 months or so and prepare standard letters to be sent to employees notifying them of their retirement date and of their right to request to continue working.

The important things to remember are:

• That notification of retirement must be sent out within the time limits laid down;
• employees must be notified of their right to request continued employment beyond retirement; and
• businesses must consider requests for continued working beyond retirement in the way laid down in the Regulations.

When you have to send the notification of retirement depends on whether the retirement is before or after 1 April 2007. In almost all cases where the proposed retirement date is before 1 April 2007, it is best to send out the notification of retirement as soon as possible. For retirements on or after 1 April 2007, the notification of retirement should be sent between 6 and 12 months before the retirement date.

If you receive a request from an employee to continue working beyond retirement you should follow the steps set out in the table below:

As a business you should consider the factors you plan to consider when dealing with requests to continue working. It is a good idea to prepare a list of criteria to decide whether to agree to requests to continue working beyond retirement. For example the approach could be:

1. To never grant such request unless there is a staff shortage, difficulties in recruitment or succession or a short term project that needs completing.
2. To always grant the first request for one year but not subsequent ones unless the factors in (a) apply.
3. To grant all requests up to a maximum age but not thereafter.
4. It could be dangerous to grant or refuse requests on the basis of performance. If for any reason the retirement defence to an unfair dismissal claim, the reason for dismissal will probably be capability. The dismissal will then be unfair unless a proper capability procedure is in place.
5. Requests could be subject to an occupational health check so long as that can be justified – which it probably would be if there is any physical element to the job.

So long as the new rules on retirement are complied with, there should be no risk of unfair dismissal claims arising from compulsory retirements of employees over the normal retirement age or (if there is no normal retirement age for that employment) over the age of 65. A normal retirement age below age 65 is only permissible if it can be justified as a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”.

Browne Jacobson LLP provides legal services to the IAP and its members. Members are entitled to a free 30-minute telephone consultation with them on any topic related to their professional activities. See www.brownejacobson.co.uk for more details.

Further information on age discrimination can be found at www.agepositive.gov.uk.

[Interesting project or development? Let us know at eo@iap.org.uk!]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Notice Board

The 3rd annual Government UK IT Summit brings together senior public sector decision-makers to discuss IT and communication procurement issues related to e-government. It’s at Victoria Park Plaza, London SW1 on 8 and 9 May. Contact Tim Graham on 0207 903 6027 or email tim@euro-techforum.com for details.

Internet World is at Earls Court 2, London from 9 to 11 May. See www.internetworld.co.uk for more.

The Wireless Event is at Olympia, London on 17 and 18 May. See www.wlanevent.com for further details.

[Got an activity or event coming up? Email eo@iap.org.uk with the details.]

———————————————————————————————————————–Employment Exchange

Darren Brook, MIAP is an experienced software developer. He has experience in systems analysis, database design and software development. Latest technical skills include .Net, VB, SQL Server, Crystal Reports, ADO, HTML, XML and COM. He is currently available for work and can e-mailed at darrenbrook@btconnect.com

[Want your entry printed here? Email eo@iap.org.uk with the details.]

———————————————————————————————————————–

Members’ News:

We welcome two new Fellows

Richard C. Acland

Richard obtained his grounding in business systems while working as a computer operator in the mid-eighties. Experience on a Honeywell DPS7 Mainframe and on-the-job training enabled him to move up into a job as a developer and in 1988 he helped to found the software house Chase Business Solutions, where he was Technical Director until 1997. Chase had a £1-million turnover; its clients including Cambridge University Press, Bridge Oil and Armstrong Pumps. In 1998 Richard became MD of Hi Tech (South) and more recently its subsidiary Software Process and Design, one of the IAP’s Partner companies. Hi Tech has produced award-winning software for Pension Funds; other clients have included the NHS, Kingfisher and Mercedes Benz.

Vijay S. Rathore MSc

Graduating with a MSc from Sunderland in 1989, Vijay Rathore has had a distinguished career in the financial industry, working in many parts of the world. An early assignment with Hill Samuel involved preparations for the “Big Bang”. This was followed by a five-year assignment in Brussels designing and installing software for Europe‘s leading online bookmaker. In 1997 he moved to Citibank in London where his responsibilities included managing their Y2K compliance programme and the installation of a comprehensive new dealing room floor system. In 1998 Vijay became Technology Director and later Managing Director of the NASDAQ stock market. During this period he has carried technical and commercial responsibilities on a vast and awesome scale.

[Don’t forget to email eo@iap.org.uk with items of news about you or your company.]

———————————————————————————————————————–
Work in Progress

Two years ago, Brian Swan of Exoftware made a very well received presentation to the IAP Symposium on the principles of Agile software development. Here, his colleague Sean Hanley develops these ideas for a wider audience.

The last 40 years of the 20^th century saw lean manufacturing and concepts such as ‘Just-in-Time’ revolutionise the manufacturing industry. Indeed, they have become de facto standards. Many such principles readily apply to the software industry. These concepts are captured within Agile software development methods.

History: Software development has a long legacy featuring of a number of processes and methods. Most common of these is the waterfall method where requirements gathering, design, development, testing and deployment are distinct steps – one step cannot be started until the previous one is completed. The waterfall method is not “bad” per se, but really only suits projects where the requirements are fixed – where the end result is definite and exact. However, in most modern projects, change is inevitable given that markets and needs constantly shift. Many teams have found that by using waterfall methods, they are, in fact, failing; failing to deliver value, quality, on time and on budget. This is at a huge financial and human cost.

So lightweight processes that address the need for this level of flexibility and that encourage a craftsmanship approach to software development have emerged.

What is Agile software development? Agile is an umbrella term for a group of methodologies (Extreme Programming, DSDM, Crystal, Lean, Scrum etc.) that share similar values and principles, such as delivering high value, high quality software early and often. They are lightweight approaches that encourage continuous learning and are marked by their ability to create increased business and IT collaboration.

While each of the methods that form the family of Agile processes has a similar goal, they achieve it through different practices. We have taken the best practices that we have seen work from all the Agile processes and put them together for clarity.

Values, Principles, Practices: Agile begins with a set of values that drives down into principles and then into core practices. This means that teams get a value-based process and system that is a translated into actual practice. The values of Agile centre on what makes any team tick – people. By focusing on people-based values, Agile immediately realises that you can have any process in place but if you don’t address people issues, you’ll never succeed. The principles then take the values to the next level, detailing some basic ideas the process is based on. Then come the practices. These are not new by any means. In fact, they represent some of the best practice in software development today. What makes Agile different is how these practices are put together.

The figure shows a basic representation of Agile best practices that we have distilled. The central circle shows practices that a pair of programmers works on daily. Moving outwards, the next ring shows practices that are performed by a team of developers. The outer layer gives us practices done together as one team – customers, developers, testers, business analysts etc.

Each practice relates directly to the core Agile values shown at the four corners: Communication, Feedback, Courage and Simplicity. That is, each practice gives us a concrete way to action Agile values and make them part of the process.

Developer Practices: In the inner circle we have developer practices that are carried out every day. Take for example, Test Driven Development (TDD). Nobody argues against the importance of automated unit testing to create robust maintainable software, yet almost nobody does it. Very often it is because developers have never been taught how. TDD teaches them how to drive their development through tests. This means quality is in-built and code is delivered already tested. Importantly, this also acts as an enabler to Refactoring, which ensures that we keep our code as clean as possible and provides valuable design benefits.

Why is TDD important? Well, where in the process of software development would you least like to find defects? At the end, before you deploy. And yet testing is scheduled at the end of the software process, where changes are the most costly.

Other practices in this circle include Pair Programming and Simple Design. Simple design really refers to simple, evolving design. So rather then designing up front for what we think we need, we design for what we know we need, keeping it simple and allowing it to evolve. Pair programming involves two programmers working on production code as a team. While many people have bemoaned productivity loss, studies have shown an overall improvement in productivity and quality.

Team Practices: Working outwards, we have team practices. For example, countless studies have shown that a key indicator of project success is the ability to deliver working software early and often. So we need to practise things like Continuous Integration, which involves knowing how to create a development environment that allows us to continuously build our software, integrate it and test it in an automated fashion. Other practices such as Coding Standards and Metaphor focus on creating a shared language amongst the team (both developers and the business). This is a vital ingredient in ensuring that communication is clear and productive. Practices such as Open Workspace and Collective Ownership look at creating a shared team vision. One of the goals of Agile is to create a sense of shared ownership and vision of the project for the whole team. Sustainable Pace fits into this team idea in that it discourages “hero” type working hours and recognises that teams are made up of people who cannot and should not work excessively – especially to the detriment of the project.

Project Management and Planning Practices: Finally, we come to the outer ring and project management and planning. Here we look at Release Planning, Small Releases and Iterative Development. Agile looks at developing release plans that are relatively small (usually three months) and comprise iterations (two week work ‘packets’). User Stories or requirements are written, estimated by developers and then prioritised by business people. The top priorities get into iteration one, which is broken down further into tasks, which pairs of developers sign up for. Acceptance Tests are defined by the business and ensure that developers know exactly what a given story is supposed to accomplish. In this way there is an overall plan that drives down into weekly and even daily plans. At the end of the iteration, the business re-prioritises and the process begins again.

Studies have shown that because of this high level of feedback, incremental development cycles are better because they produce software that matches customers’ needs and is more predictable than the traditional waterfall approach.

The other practices such as On-Site Customer and One Team are about close IT and business collaboration.

Software Craftsman: Software development should take a craftsmanship approach – a thinking, knowledge-based trade, part science, part engineering and part art, with people at the centre.

If we can agree this we need a process that supports craftsmen to do the best possible work. That means getting rid of obstacles in their way and valuing their craft.

Take, for example, the 1977 the Gossamer Condor, the first man-powered aircraft. When the Smithsonian museum in Washington DC asked for blueprints for the plane, the team responded: “We’re paid for flying figure eights, not drawing blueprints.” An excellent point: we are paid as software engineers to build software – not write documents. Yet, in most companies, software developers spend a lot of their time doing just that. Some documentation may of course be required but it should be thought of as “only what is needed.”

Agile processes like eXtreme Programming also provide the basis for teaching good software development practices like unit testing, test driven development and refactoring. They provide the structure for mentoring and cross learning and encourage continuous learning. Importantly, they are structured yet flexible enough for small teams to deliver really great software – and teach them something in return.

Agile methods are the most lightweight, flexible and people-based approaches that teams can use. As we have seen in our own work, more and more teams – both large and small – are learning how to extract the most value from them.

You can contact Sean at shanly@exoftware.com

[Interesting project or development? Let us know at eo@iap.org.uk!]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Notice Board

The IAP Annual Symposium is at Trinity House, Tower Hill, London on Thursday, 16 March. Tickets are £70 per delegate (members) and £100 (non-members). Contact the Office on 020 8 5672118 for reservations. See Work in Progress for detailed information about the presentations.

LegalIT 2006 is at the Business Design Centre, Upper Street, Islington, London, N1 0QH on 8 and 9 February. See www.legalitshow.com for details.

[Got an activity or event coming up? Email eo@iap.org.uk with the details.]

———————————————————————————————————————–Employment Exchange

Darren Brook, MIAP is an experienced software developer. He has experience in systems analysis, database design and software development. Latest technical skills include .Net, VB, SQL Server, Crystal Reports, ADO, HTML, XML and COM. He is currently available for work and can e-mailed at darrenbrook@btconnect.com
[Want your entry printed here? Email eo@iap.org.uk with the details.]

———————————————————————————————————————–

Sounding Board

As Council member John Weller has revealed before, he has a longstanding interest in the history of computing. Here, he reviews James Essinger’s ‘Jacquard’s Web’.

Arguably the first programmable machine was a loom built by the son of a French silk worker in Lyons. Lyons was the capital of the silk industry in France and produced much fine fabric; amongst their products were fine tapestries showing detailed pictures of landscapes and portraits. These were very laborious and hence expensive to produce. Jacquard determined to design and manufacture a better loom that would produce as good a quality product but with much less effort. The result of his efforts was a loom controlled by punched cards; cards that could be re-used and transferred from one loom to another – in other words, the first program.

Jacquard’s work was greatly appreciated by an English mathematician, Charles Babbage, who was working on a project of his own to automate repetitive tasks. This was the production of mathematical tables, a far cry from woven portraits but with the underlying similarity of predictable, repetitive actions. Babbage was sufficiently impressed by Jacquard that he visited Lyons and bought a woven portrait of Jacquard produced on a Jacquard loom at a cost, in today’s money, of £2500.

This book explores the chain of links that led from Jacquard, through Babbage, to the first programmer – Lord Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace. It goes on to Herman Hollerith who produced the punch card machine for data analysis. Hollerith found that the US census was taking so long to analyse that the next census was being made before the data from the previous one was available so he developed the machine initially to analyse census data. It was later further developed to extraordinary levels and was a mainstay of business until it was superseded by the next link in the chain, the digital computer. The final links in the chain are Howard Aiken who was largely responsible for the Harvard Mk 1 and subsequently Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.

The main focus of the book is the early days with Jacquard having 70 pages out of a total of 280; Babbage gets 45 pages and Berners-Lee a short paragraph. This is probably quite reasonable, as there are many books currently in print about the birth of the Web but very few about Jacquard and how his loom works.

Overall the book is a fascinating run through the very early history of IT with much background detail of the individuals who had such an impact on our lives today. It is obviously well researched leading to a very readable book without too much technical detail in the main body. There is an appendix with the technical detail of how a Jacquard loom works. I can highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the origins of computing.

Jacquard’s Web by James Essinger, published by Oxford University Press, ISBN 0192805770

[Something you'd like to get off your chest? Email me (Robin Jones) at eo@iap.org.uk.]

———————————————————————————————————————–

Members’ News:

Nominations for the Council of the IAP

The Institution is a democratic body governed by a Council elected by and from its members. Five members of the 15-strong Council retire in rotation each year. Nominations for the 2006 election, accompanied by the nominee’s manifesto (in electronic form and not exceeding 150 words, please) must be received at the Institution Office by 21 February. Contact the Office (020 8 5672118 or admin@iap.org.uk) for further details or an informal discussion if you are interested in playing your part in the governance of the Institution.

Craig Golby, MIAP, managing director of Dignitas Ltd, tells us that his company has recently formed a new alliance with iOpus Software GmbH to supply its Web Testing Software, iOpus Internet Macros, to the UK market. Find out more at www.dignitas.ltd.uk and www.iopus.com.

[Don't forget to email eo@iap.org.uk with items of news about you or your company.]

———————————————————————————————————————–
Work in Progress

This month, we’re previewing the Annual Symposium (see Notice Board). As usual, the speakers are experts in their fields and their chosen topics fascinating and current, as you’ll see from the résumés below. Trinity House is a beautiful venue, as the photograph suggests, but it isn’t huge. So make your reservations fast!

Designing and Building Business Driven IS Architectures: Allen Woods

Increasingly, in a standards driven information world, organisations have to report progress towards business objectives using performance indicators. Organisations are also expected to prove compliance with an increasing number of management best practice standards like ISO 9000 and the European Foundation for Quality Model (EFQM). It is often the case that the standards chosen are done for ‘tick the box’ purposes, with little or no joined-up thinking applied. Using case studies and tools developed by JIT Software it will be demonstrated how, by combining a number of standard management planning techniques, any organisation can design and structure an information systems architecture that is founded on its key information needs. Using the approach described can go some way to eliminate one of the perennial problems of IT, the communications gap between the systems designer and the business user.

Allen Woods CISP, MBCS, MIAP, Managing Director of JIT Software Limited, has been writing software systems for a variety of national and international organisations for the last 20 years. Specialising in developing management reporting systems designed to support performance management techniques including the Balanced Scorecard, Allen has developed a number of management planning tools designed to support a systemic approach to organisation design and structuring. Currently Allen is assisting the UK MoD Defence Supply Chain and the New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture to implement ‘joined-up’ strategic planning tools.

e-Crime-Down to Business: Ian Walker

e-Crime is an issue that can affect us all, whether we’re software developers, hardware engineers, computer users and even if you don’t use a computer at all. Somewhere, at any one time, everyone’s personal information is stored on more than one computer. Ian will expand on the themes of his series of articles in VSJ. He’ll look at some of the issues we must address – not just as an Industry, not just as computer users, but as a society – if we are to continue to reap the benefits that IT has to offer.

Ian J. A. Walker, FIAP has been in the IT profession since the early 1980s, working in the railway and, latterly, construction industry before forming his own consultancy business in Wales in early 2005. Snowdonia Design & IT Services couples traditional IT consultancy with a graphic design business and, in conjunction with partners, supplies consultancy, software and hardware to the film and TV industry. It is also looking towards building on a successful track record in Data Recovery, expanding into IT Security and combating e-Crime. Snowdonia has recently launched an online IT e-Shop, IT 4 Wales (www.it4wales.co.uk). Ian has been a wheelchair user since a car crash 14 years ago.

Linux: Kevin Groves

Linux provides power and platform scaleability previously unavailable in such a neat little package – and for so little cost. Kevin will outline the Linux/GNU project, then explain why it is better (or not) than other platforms. Being privy to a range of projects/products in his role as Chair of the Kent Linux User Group and a part-time Linux consultant, he will be able to give some real world examples from the point of view of a developer. Points covered will include Web and server side development and Open Source projects such as the Karoshi school project in which he is involved.

Kevin Groves, MIAP is IT Supervisor for a Kent-based pharmaceutical company, managing and developing internal systems. In his spare time he runs a Linux consultancy serving the county of Kent. He has been Chair of the Kent Linux User Group since it was reformed five years ago. Personally, and through the LUG, Kevin is working to promote the use of Linux in business, charities and the home. His consultancy kSoft Creative Projects produces custom applications based on mini-ITX hardware and, of course, Linux.

Managing the Needs of an Offshore Client Base: Tim Benest

Tim will explain the challenges of servicing a client base that is both geographically and culturally disbursed. It is not just about technology but about managing the needs of the people who will use the software and solutions that analysts and programmers have developed. Tim will describe some of the techniques he uses to support his client base remotely, both from Jersey and from hotel rooms around the globe. Communication is key – understanding clients’ needs and being able to put yourself in their shoes.

Tim Benest, MIAP formed Taskforce Systems Limited about 15 years ago having previously worked in the financial sector as a programmer/analyst. His wealth management software, designed for the offshore finance community, is now used by major banks and private wealth management organisations in the Channel Islands, the Caribbean, Switzerland and Singapore.

The Institute of Continuing Professional Development: Jonathan Harris

A qualification is like food – it goes off after a few years! Many professions are imposing on their members a requirement to keep up-to-date. Continuing professional development is the systematic maintenance and improvement of knowledge, skills, competence and enhancement of learning, undertaken by professionals throughout their working lives. CPD and the wider concept of lifelong learning are vital in our increasingly networked world, where the growth of information and communications technologies dissolves distances. But to motivate busy people to really take CPD seriously is not easy – hence the founding of the Institute of Continuing Professional Development. The Institute promotes the values of lifelong learning and encouraging networking and partnership among individual professionals and the groups with which they are associated.  It also provides a real reward to those who take CPD seriously with a Fellowship of the Institute and a right to display the distinguishing letters FInstCPD after their names.

Jonathan Harris, CBE has long been an active member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. He was instrumental in formulating the policy and driving its change from a UK based profession to a global one. He was its Millennium President (2000/01). Outside the RICS, he has a long-standing commitment to education. He was a Governor of the University of Westminster and was a member of the Professional Working Group of the Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership, set up by HMG. He is a Trustee of, and has chaired, Business Dynamics. 25 years ago he formed the Continuing Professional Development Foundation (an educational charitable trust that provides wide-reaching and economical CPD to busy professionals). More recently he established the Institute of Continuing Professional Development.

[Interesting project or development? Let us know at eo@iap.org.uk!]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Notice Board

The IAP Annual Symposium is at Trinity House, Tower Hill, London on Thursday, 10 March. Tickets are £70 per delegate (members) and £100 (non-members). Contact the Office on 020 8 5672118 for reservations. See Work in Progress for detailed information about the presentations.

Softworld HR & Payroll runs between 2-3 March 2005 at Grand Hall, Olympia, London. See www.softworld.co.uk for more details.

[Got an activity or event coming up? Email eo@iap.org.uk with the details.]

———————————————————————————————————————–Employment Exchange

Gareth Hobson, LIAP is MD of intelligent Data Solutions. iDS is making innovations in data management and development using modern techniques in ETL processes to achieve the very best results. To find out more visit www.ids-limited.co.uk, e-mail info@ids-limited.co.uk or phone 07786 160915.

[Want your entry printed here? Email eo@iap.org.uk with the details.]

———————————————————————————————————————–

Members’ News:

Nominations for the Council of the IAP

The Institution is a democratic body governed by a Council elected by and from its members. Five members of the 15-strong Council retire in rotation each year. Nominations for the 2004 election, accompanied by the nominee’s manifesto (in electronic form and not exceeding 150 words, please) must be received at the Institution Office by 21 February. Contact the Office (020 8 5672118 or admin@iap.org.uk) for further details or an informal discussion if you are interested in playing your part in the governance of the Institution.

David Deeks, of the University of Sunderland (an IAP Partner) tells us a little about a new development in his Process Improvement System, PISO^® , discussed in these pages before.

Regular readers may recall my previous articles on PISO^®  or Process Improvement for Strategic Objectives. It’s a method that allows a business system’s users to redesign it for themselves. Several hundred successful PISO^® projects have been completed. For instance, South Tyneside Health Care Trust has made newspaper headlines with massive improvements to its A&E service.

The PISO^® team is continually responding to feedback from users by strengthening PISO^® and augmenting its suite of tools. Any development must reflect the PISO^® ethos by providing maximum usefulness for minimum effort. The first addition was pisoSIA^®, developed by team member Jean Davison and reported on in the May 2003 issue. pisoSIA^® helps identify all the stakeholders in a system improvement (i.e. not only direct users) and helps analyse both the impact of these stakeholders upon the improvement and the impact of the intended changes upon the stakeholders.

pisoMETRICS^® , now underway, will provide a simple means of measuring the changes proposed in a typical PISO^® project. It is based on three elements – cost/benefit analysis, risk assessment and ‘warm glow’ analysis. The latter is a fascinating new development. It measures how stakeholders feel about a change. Successful trials include Northumbria Police and two health trusts. How often do system implementations fail because users aren’t committed to them? A significant aspect of PISO^® is that it helps ensure that stakeholders are committed because they have designed the new system. ‘Warm glow’ analysis provides senior managers with a detailed, pre-implementation measure of the stakeholders’ preferences between the existing and proposed new systems with the wide range of stakeholders identified via pisoSIA^® helping to ensure that the analysis is rigorous. Uniquely, risk assessment can then be informed by the outputs of both the ‘warm glow’ and the cost/benefit analyses thus providing more reliable outcomes. I’ll describe pisoMETRICS^® in more detail in later issues.

But if you can’t wait, talk to David on 0191 5152666 or email david.deeks@sunderland.ac.uk. The Web site is at www.piso.org.uk

[Don't forget to email eo@iap.org.uk with items of news about you or your company.]

———————————————————————————————————————–
Work in Progress

This month, we’re previewing the Annual Symposium (see Notice Board). As usual, the speakers are experts in their fields and their chosen topics fascinating and current, as you’ll see from the résumés below. Trinity House is a beautiful venue, as the photograph suggests, but it isn’t huge. So make your reservations fast!

The Radiate Theory: Peter Green

“Technology driving the business, well that’s a bit like the tail wagging the dog!” This type of thinking is out of date. The smart company will accept that there is a bit of wagging at both ends, with some business aspects driving technology and also technology driving the business model. The Radiate Theory is based on the radical view that if technology allows us to model the business in a better way then that’s what we should be doing. The principle of this strategy is to maximise the use of technology by defining how it can improve the business as a holistic entity, not just add improvements to the sponsoring or requesting business unit. One of the results from utilising the theory is that it changes the company’s view of technical managers to business managers and promotes the use of technology as a business-modelling tool.

Peter Green BA, FIAP, MIScT, Dip Man, Dip Hp graduated in computing and electronics, followed by four years of management study. He has spent his career within the newspaper industry and has been at the forefront of developing systems and standards for publishing. Currently I.T. Director at a national newspaper, he has had similar roles at the International Herald Tribune, Press Holdings and was formerly Software Development Manager at Associated Newspapers. He has worked on various world-wide committees and with universities to introduce technical standards into the publishing industry. He has also completed consultancy roles at newspaper groups in China, the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia.

Look – no wires! : Philip McLauchlan

Allan Jaenicke and I founded Imagineer Systems Ltd four years ago with the aim of building innovative products based around computer vision technology. We released our first product, Mokey, in 2001. The main application of Mokey is “wire and rig removal”, involving 2D tracking of backgrounds in order to paint out foreground objects. More recently we have used our core 2D tracking technology to create Monet, a new product designed for “element replacement” tasks. With Monet you can insert images into TV screens, change the background of an image sequence, or replace one logo with another. It brings together a unique set of tools for handling difficult tracking situations, camera distortion, curved surfaces, shadows and highlights, with the aim of achieving the illusion that the resulting images look as natural as possible. In my seminar I shall cover some of the history of the company and summarise the algorithms and software we have developed.

Philip McLauchlan is a co-founder of Imagineer Systems. He obtained a BA in Mathematics from Cambridge, a MSc in Computer Science at Edinburgh and then a PhD in Computer Vision at Sheffield. He has since done post-doctoral work at Sheffield, Oxford, and the University of California at Berkeley.  He returned to England in the late 90s and held a Foundation Lectureship at the University of Surrey. His research work has been in the areas of computer vision and mobile robotics.

The Open Source Jungle: Seb Bacon

Open Source Software (OSS) offers an attractively simple promise for computer users: high quality software that is free of licence costs and restrictions on how you can use it. However, the domain can be hard for the uninitiated to untangle. Outside the movement, business interests spend vast amounts of money to discredit what they see as a threat. Within the movement, different priorities provide competing definitions and interpretations.

Seb will explain the movement and its detractors by examining its historical roots and the current business and political environment in which OSS has to operate, including the current software patent debate. Finally he hopes to summarise the benefits and risks associated with Open Source and its various proprietary models.

Seb Bacon is Technical Director of Jamkit, a leading supplier of Internet solutions to the charity and public sectors. Jamkit was founded in 2000 to bring to smaller markets benefits traditionally provided only by multi-million pound software. All its solutions are FLOSS-based and are targeted particularly at advocacy and information-based organisations. Clients include Breast Cancer Care, Moorfields Eye Hospital, the Home Office and Lastminute.com. Seb is a fervent advocate of Open Source for the charity sector and in government. He is a trustee of the London Advice Services Alliance, and a co-founder of both the ‘Social Software’ and ‘ZopeUK’ advocacy associations. Seb has played an active role in the development of the Open Source application server, Zope.

Email – a risk worth taking? : Steven Jenkins

This topic – and speaker – were scheduled for last year’s Symposium but unfortunately, Steven had to cancel owing to illness. Many delegates had been particularly keen to hear him speak, so he’s kindly agreed to try again this year.

It is not generally appreciated, certainly by the mass of non-technical users, that emails can be compromised from both inside and outside the originator’s office. They are so insecure as to be virtually public and the consequences can be costly. Steven will explain how basic spying software works and the range of measures that can be taken to defend against it from quite simple precautions to high-level encryption.

Steven Jenkins has been with SafeMessage, a company specialising in email security, since 1999.

NBIC – even bigger that IT? : Henry Nash

Henry believes we are on the threshold of a revolution more amazing than anything we’ve seen so far. Moore’s Law may have driven the IT revolution and given us more computing power in our pockets than there is in a Space Shuttle, but that’s nothing to what it might do for the Life Sciences. Already it has enabled us to decode the human genome, decades before predictions of its completion. Combine that with breakthroughs in Nanotechnology and an increasing understanding of neuro- and cognitive sciences and you get ‘NBIC’ (Nanotech + Biotech + IT + Cognitive Science). Will this be an even bigger revolution than IT itself? Are the results of this integration still decades away or should we all be blowing the dust of our biology books and re-training?

Henry Nash, FIAP is one of the UK’s most accomplished entrepreneurs. He has built four

companies, all of which produced ground-breaking products. His companies have earned both The Queen’s Award for Technology and The Queen’s Award for Export. His technical expertise spans simulation systems, databases, communications, nano-technology and bioinformatics. He has operated in Europe, Asia and the USA and is an advisor to start-up companies through all phases of their growth.

Introduction to Agile Software: Sean Hanly
Sean will explain what Agile software development is and how it is currently developing within the software community. Based on a real user story from a current Exoftware development project, Sean will describe an entire cycle, from initial presentation, estimation, scheduling, delivery of acceptance tests and implementation through to Test Driven Development. He will demonstrate Agile implemented to its fullest extent.
Sean Hanly is Head of Agile Services at Exoftware. He is a prolific speaker and writer on Agile topics and it is largely through his vision that Exoftware has become a centre for excellence in Europe. Sean has been instrumental in the development of the Irish and UK Agile Special Interest Groups and the Agile Alliance Europe Group. He has worked with the DSDM Consortium to bring XP and Agile together and is spearheading the move to write an open source automated acceptance-testing framework for the software community at large.

[Interesting project or development? Let us know at eo@iap.org.uk!]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

We are pleased to welcome the following new Fellows, who have recently been admitted to the Institution:
Ciaran McDonnell BSc MSc PhD

Dr. McDonnell is an Irish academic. He took his first degree at University College, Dublin, in 1972. The distinguished academic career that followed, as Researcher and Lecturer at University College, Trinity College, Dublin and since 1983 as Head of Computing at the Dublin Institute of Technology, has not prevented him from also engaging in a variety of research and commercial projects with world-wide applications. He is widely published; to say that his main field is concerned with Image Processing is probably to hugely underestimate Ciaran McDonnell? prodigious energy and talent.
Christopher E. Harnetty BSc(Hons)

Christopher trained as a programmer in the early eighties and has since occupied a variety of contract and permanent positions as Software Consultant, Analyst/Programmer and Project Manager. He has mainly worked in the Banking and Financial sectors, for example with the Bank of England, BACS, Customs and Excise, Inland Revenue and P&O Properties.

His PC skills are augmented by capabilities in RDBMS and Mainframes. Typical applications have included Financial Control and Regulatory Reporting, Electronic Funds Transfer, and Share Registration. Chris is currently employed by Citibank as Domain Architect for the European Architecture Group.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Readers may know that 2005 is the centenary of Einstein? seminal paper on Special Relativity. Over the next few months, Terry Longhurst, FIAP takes the opportunity to develop his distinctive, maybe unique, ideas about the theory from, as he says, an analyst? standpoint. This month he sets the scene.

As a technical manager in a software house, I? more used nowadays to a spreadsheet than a compiler but my approach to life is still based on the mindset acquired through years of programming in low (and high) level languages. The human mind has a wonderful capacity for fuzzy logic. This is an essential function of decision-making with insufficient data. It also has a part to play in some brilliant conceptual leaps, which are obvious only in hindsight. Such lateral thinking is a major contributor to scientific and technological progress.

However computer languages punish woolly and incoherent thinking. The acronym ?igo?(garbage in, garbage out) is just as true with modern development tools as it was with assembly language. It? just less obvious. So working in a development environment tends to imbue a rigidly logical approach to problem solving.

This is a mindset that, I believe, has benefits in other areas of human endeavour and in particular when trying to comprehend the nature of the universe. This is a very wide topic, with philosophic, spiritual, and religious, as well as scientific connotations. I think that the approach of a logician has merit in all of these fields. However, I want to focus on the scientific aspects in general and relativity in particular.
Relativity

My interest in relativity began in 1978 when I read an article in Wireless World by Dr Louis Essen, a fellow of the Royal Society and one of the foremost authorities on the measurement of time. Dr Essen was convinced that the effects on time and space proposed by Einstein? theory would result in some of the ?icks?of an atomic clock being lost. To him, that was a fatuous suggestion. Eminent physicists replied to his article pointing out errors in his logic and expounding the ?ccepted?interpretation. He then replied to their comments, and so on.

It did not occur to me at the time to ask why Dr Essen wrote in Wireless World, instead of a scientific journal. Wireless World is a well-respected popular magazine with a world-wide readership of hobbyists and professionals alike. But it is not an academic publication. I found out later that he had become a born-again Christian and so believed in the literal truth of the Bible. However, there is such a wealth of scientific evidence that the Earth is billions of years old that it is difficult to understand how an eminent scientist could come to believe that the world was literally made in seven days some thousands of years ago. After that, scientific journals would not publish his writings.

Anyway, this discussion was an eye-opener for me. I was surprised to note that, whilst both sides appeared to successfully point out weaknesses in the other? position, neither seemed to be able to answer the criticisms of their own. Could it be that both interpretations were, at least partially, incorrect? This idea fascinated me. Just how accurate a model of the real universe is Einstein? theory?

So I started to research the subject. I found a book containing translations of papers by Lorentz, Minkowski and Einstein. These included Einstein? 1905 paper on his original theory of relativity and his 1916 paper on the general theory. This is a treasured possession. I can make no better suggestion to anyone who wants to ?et it from the horse? mouth?than to seek out ISBN 0-486-60081-5. You may not understand all the mathematics, but no matter. The concepts are intelligible without them.

In his 1916 paper, Einstein presented his general theory as a logical extension of the original theory. However, careful reading of both papers reveals quite a different story. The two theories are conceptually ?halk and cheese? To understand this, we need first to understand the conceptual environment in which Einstein developed his ideas?The Classical View

The classical view starts with Euclid, who formalised much of geometry around 300 BC. To this, in 1687, Newton added a detailed understanding of motion. Together, these pretty well defined our understanding of the mechanics of the universe. Geometry defines the physical space and physical relationships and mechanics defines the motion of material objects in that space. It? important to understand that the classical view assumes the existence of a material space, called the ether, in which material objects exist. And so it has largely remained. Indeed, there would be no reason to question the universal application of Newtonian mechanics, if it were not for the very strange behaviour of light.

By the nineteenth century, light was known to travel at a finite velocity and it was assumed that this velocity was constant with respect to the ether. It was realised that, as the earth was moving through space with a significant velocity, measurements of the velocity of light should be affected by the movement of the measuring instrument (which was stationary with respect to the earth) as it moved with respect to the ether. So experiments were set up to test this. The most famous was Michelson? interferometer experiment. The results of this were published in 1887 and they showed no discernible variation at all. It appeared that the velocity of light (in a vacuum) was fixed and finite, irrespective of the motion of the source and observer.

Scientists put forward a number of proposals as to how this strange result could arise. In 1895 Lorentz proposed that the motion of Michelson? interferometer with respect to the ether created a ?rag?effect that shortened the dimensions of the instrument in the direction of motion. This effect exactly counteracted the variation in the velocity of light so that it appeared to be constant. He developed this idea and published a paper in 1904 that set out the forces on the atom that would result in the orbits of the electrons becoming elliptical, hence shortening the dimensions of the whole instrument along the direction of travel. This effect became known as the Lorentz transformation.

So the apparently strange behaviour of light could be reconciled with classical mechanics and the existence of a material space. However, the experiment had been intended to prove the existence of a material space. The negative result had been explained, but it did not, of itself, prove anything.
Einstein? Original Theory of Relativity

Just a year later, Einstein came up with a dramatically different solution. He proposed that space did not exist as a material entity. There was no absolute state of rest against which all motion could be measured. All motion was relative to the material objects themselves, hence the description ?elativity? This was Einstein? original concept of relativity. To me, this is the greatest conceptual leap of all time.

However, he also proposed his principle of relativity, which states that the same rules of physics apply in all frames of reference. According to this, two objects mutually at rest share the same frame of reference, but an object moving with respect to them has its own frame of reference. The principle relates what takes place when viewed from one frame of reference to what happens when viewed from another. The important point is that they would be different. Why?

As I?e mentioned, Lorentz proposed that the physical dimensions of a material object change when it is in motion with respect to the ether because of a ?rag?effect. Einstein generalised this and proposed that the dimensions changed with the frame of reference. Furthermore, it was not only the dimensions of the physical objects that changed, the spatial distances between them changed as well. And that was not all. Not only space, but also time would be relative. Two events that are simultaneous in one frame of reference would occur at different times from another frame of reference. Wow!

In September, Terry describes flaws in this edifice and takes us on to the General Theory. You can contact Terry via Robin Jones.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Email Redirection

Now and then we remind members of services we offer that may have slipped their memories. This month? note is about your right to an email address of the form @iap.org.uk.

Our scheme works like most such facilities. You apply for an IAP email address via the members?area of the Web site. Once it is set up, all emails sent to this address are forwarded to the target address you request. Of course, where replies to your emails go depends on how you configure your email client. But if you set it up so that replies are sent to your IAP alias, you need never notify all your contacts of ISP changes again. You just have to let us know when a change takes place.

But there? a less obvious reason why an IAP email address makes good sense. Some time ago, Yahoo! Mail conducted a survey into the attitudes of HR managers to the email addresses given in the CVs of job applicants. It found that they look at them quite closely at the ?irst trawl?stage. Unsurprisingly, they tend to ditch any that quote an existing workplace address. After all, would you employ someone who is not only prepared to use his or her current employer? facilities and time to job-hunt but who is happy to advertise the fact as well? Another thing they look for is what might be termed ?rofessional appearance? While there? nothing specifically wrong with it, john.smith3571@fsmail.net does not look terribly satisfying in this context. Attempts to avoid the fact that there are already several dozen people with your name on a given domain by choosing something like up_the_spurs@hotmail.com are even worse. The HR department will almost certainly reject that, even in the unlikely event that there is a Spurs fan in the office.

An email address at a professional body domain looks, by definition, professional. So, if you have not already done it, get over to members?area and pick up yours!
new IAP Council

Mike Ryan, the Director General, talks about the new IAP Council.

June 1st sees the start of the Institution? new administrative year 2005/2006. This is the date when five members of the Council stand down by rotation and are hopefully re-elected or replaced by even more enthusiastic new people.

This year, three members have agreed to stand again for a further 3-year term. They are Jim Bates, the current President, Edwin Keen, one of the earliest IAP members and David Morgan, who chaired our recent Symposium.

Treasurer Ian Hargrave has decided not to continue owing to pressure of work. Jeremy Gordon, MIAP is to replace him. Jeremy is a programmer and a barrister. He joined the Institution in 1994 and claims to have missed only one Symposium since then! (We reckon this is a record; but if you think there? another candidate, let us know.)

That leaves one last vacancy still to be filled and, as no one was nominated earlier this year within the period allowed, it will be up to the new Council to co-opt someone if and when they see fit.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

As regular readers know, Council member Paul Lynham traditionally writes a report on the annual symposium to which we devote the whole of ?AP News? Here is this year?.

The annual symposium of the Institution of Analysts and Programmers was held on Thursday, 11 March in Trinity House, Tower Hill, London. Mike Ryan, the Director General of the Institution began by calling for IT to be allowed to lead the way. He also noted that more business analysts are approaching the I AP as prospective members. The IAP is extending to businesses the partnerships that it has always had with academia. Mike went on to introduce this year? chairman, David Morgan, a long-standing Council member of the Institution.
Peter Green, IT Director at the Daily Telegraph

Peter talked authoritatively about the Radiate Theory, which can be summarised as allowing IT to drive the business. From a legacy viewpoint, this might be seen as ?he tail wagging the dog? The concept of the theory is to make functional IT a business integration tool, allowing the integration of users, senior managers and business units.

Often, Business Unit Managers consider requests for new systems or IT upgrades only in terms of their relevance to that business unit, rather than to the business as a whole. Peter went on to give diagrammatic examples of the perception of a request from a sponsoring business unit (unit A), by other units within the organisation. For instance, ?f the system can do X, then we will change our model to that of unit A? ?f unit A changes its model, it will cause our unit additional costs? ?he factory is unclear if it can keep up with the new model? ?nit D loves the new model?

Such requests can be managed by gathering all business units together for brainstorming sessions. The idea is to create a large map of the upsides and downsides. Each element can be expanded, so that several layers are produced. This can then help in deciding on the true benefits of the change and in fully costing it. Peter went on to show a simple formula that can be used.

As with any serious project, it must not only be correctly defined but also have a champion to give active support at board level. Peter gave some pointers to successfully implementing such changes, including an iterative approach, the importance of soft systems management and checking the validity of the statements of objectives and their continual review.

Because IT isn? a service in this model, IT costs become a function of business unit costs. Again Peter demonstrated a formula that could be used. He summed up by reiterating that technology should not be servicing business, but driving it.
Seb Bacon, Technical Director of Jamkit

Seb gave an presentation entitled ?he Open Source Jungle? Seb has a personal interest in getting charities and public bodies to use OSS (Open Source Software). He believes that OSS is practical, cultural and ethical and that it is an intersection between proprietary business and open academia. It is ready for servers, enterprise applications and some desktops. Seb offered an overview of the history of OSS and described source code as ?ree speech? He gave an example of some source code that had been developed to interpret DVD encoding for use on non-MS operating systems. Delegates were greatly amused on seeing the code, bearing in mind his remark about free speech, as the code used 1 and 2 letter variable names and was comment-free!

Seb went on to provide the highlights of OSS development chronologically:
1969 saw the birth of UNIX by Thompson and Ritchie.
In 1978, the Berkeley System Distribution (BSD) version of UNIX was released.
A year later, DARPA adopted UNIX and contracted Berkeley.
The 1980s saw the deregulation and commercialisation of software.
In 1983 AT&T released their first public UNIX. BSD was the first OS to support networking for the Internet.
In 1989, UC Berkeley extracted their networking code from the rest of BSD under a loose licence.
1991 saw the removal of all UNIX code from BSD. BSD finished using Internet volunteers.

Seb talked about hackers (as in programmers who like to discover how things work), with a section entitled ?racks in Paradise? He described how Richard Stallman had habitually written code to modify the behaviour of printer drivers. When, however, printers were supplied without source code, this ceased to be possible. Stallman started GNU in 1983. In 1989 the GNU General Public Licence was formed with the Copyleft concept (after Copyright). This can be summed up as, ?ou can use this software however you like, but if you use it publicly, you must give away the source code and release it under this licence? Such licences have been described as ?iral?as they spawn further software and licences that must comply with the philosophy.

Seb compared BSD and GNU software by their ideals ?the BSD licence is to produce better software, where GNU is to produce more and more free software. Free in this context means free as in freedom to change, rather than free as in ?ree beer?

Seb described Linus Torvalds writing LINUX, the missing completed GNU kernel and Eric Raymond. He summarised by pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of OSS.
David Deeks, Sunderland University

David introduced PISO, Process Improvement for Strategic Objectives. David described how this methodology was formed and summarised it as a step-by-step business improvement process. He went on to outline the phases involved and the use of DFDs. PISO uses DFDs for system efficiency and to meet agreed strategic objectives.

The first stage, Stage 0, identifies an area requiring improvement. Stage 1 develops those objectives and Stage 2 analyses the current system (DFD logic). The final stage designs the new system.

Each stage is then broken down into further steps. For instance 0.1 identifies the general area of improvement, 0.2 identifies the initial stakeholders and 0.3 establishes the improvement area boundaries.

David stressed that the stakeholders don? merely ?et involved??they do the design. The system is a rigorous approach to requirements definition and the agreed strategic objectives drive the re-design. He referred to a case study using a GP system, which was driven by a need for increased efficiency. However there were other systems that were driven by a need for quality. These are not mutually exclusive, as quality doesn? come at the expense of efficiency. This is because part of the process is the logicalisation of the system for efficiency.

David went on to describe commercial products that have come out of this work, including pisoSIA and a number of applications such as pisoMetrics and pisoLEAN. He also detailed training courses, certification and training organisations.
Henry Nash, of The Apsley Group

Henry gave a presentation on ?BIC ?The Next Big Thing? He described NBIC as the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, IT and cognitive science. Other descriptions include BANG ?Bits, Atoms, Neurons and Genes, COMBINE ?Cogno, Meets Bio, Info and Nano technology, and ?he Singularity?

Henry outlined the exponential pace of innovation and cited Moore? observation of the doubling of power of computers every 18 months. He exemplified the future trend: $1000 will buy you the equivalent power and memory of a rodent brain by 2010, a human brain by 2020, a thousand human brains by 2035 and all the human brains in existence by 2060!

This not only applies to transistors, but to other technologies. For example, the Human Genome Project was originally expected to take 15 years and cost $3 billion. It took eight years to sequence the first 7% but the remainder took only another two. Celera? map cost just $200 million. Such stories will be repeated with Proteinomics and the Human Cognome Project.

Henry went on to highlight some current examples of NBIC. There are artificial retinas with 5000-pixel resolution fed into patients?optic nerves. There are neural interfaces implanted with 1000 neural connections. Synthetic biology and nanotechnology will allow the first artificial strands of DNA to be written permitting medicines to be created in situ, rather than having to be transported to the site of need.

The predicted IT involvement in NBIC may be:
2005?010: The Tool era ?IT provides increasingly more powerful tools.
2010?015: The Embedded era ?this is now an active part of NBIC services.
2015?025: Non-human intelligence.
2020?030: True NBIC era ?NBIC now at work in most industries.

Also:
2005?010: 1 sq mm computing nodes appear, at less than 10 cents each.
2010?020: Such technology becomes invisible and nanotechnology becomes increasingly a part of the device.

Henry highlighted the technical issues to be solved in the next 10 to 15 years. Drug discovery will go exponential with ?n silicon?experiments rather than ?n vitro?being the norm. Most diseases will be curable or their progression halted. (Jim Bates remarked later that his goal was to survive until then!) Self-replication will transform accessibility to this technology. He summed up by saying, ?T changed the world. NBIC will change humanity?
Brian Swan, of Exoftware

Brian gave a presentation on Agile Software. Brian started by highlighting the number of projects that were either challenged or impaired due to incomplete or changing requirements. He went on to list some of the members of the Agile family, including XP, SCRUM, Adaptive Software Development, Lean development, Feature Driven Development, Crystal and DSDM.

Agile methods favour individuals and interactions over processes and tools, with working software favoured over documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiations and responding to change over following a plan.

Brian highlighted the principles of Agile development. Highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. It should welcome changing requirements, even late in the development cycle. It should also deliver working software frequently and build projects around motivated people. The best way to convey messages is by face to face contact. Working software is the primary measure of progress and there is continual attention to technical excellence. Simplicity ?the art of maximising the amount of work not done ?is essential. The team also reflects on how to become more effective.

One of the results of an Agile development process is that productivity increases. Success is proportional to size, with small projects having a much better chance of delivery than massive ones.
Dr Philip McLauchlan of Imagineer Systems

Philip presented a session entitled ?ook ?no wires? While supervising a post graduate student, he found that objects could be eliminated from frames e.g. a tennis player from a Wimbledon video. This led to the idea of removing from films objects such as wires used to allow people apparently to fly through the air. Thus it is a computer vision solution for postproduction in film and allied industries. In fact, the software developed can now be used for 2D tracking in visual effects, wire and rig removal, restoration, stabilisation, matte creation and rotoscoping.

The software uses the freely available Gandalf library available from Source Forge and also makes use of OpenRL. Several applications have been developed including Mokey and Monet. Monet incorporates Aspex Line Dancer acceleration.

Philip demonstrated how wires are removed from a film clip. This involved marking out areas on an initial frame, such as anchor points and the wires to be removed. He then ran through a few frames, just to ensure the software could track the wires. Finally, the whole clip was run and the wires were removed and replaced by the background automatically ?very impressive. Some leading postproduction companies have already purchased the software.
Steven Jenkins of Safemessage

Steven gave an presentation on the safety of email. Generally, people feel safe when using email. However, there are security weaknesses and email is only as secure as sending a postcard. The contents of an email are virtually public, easily intercepted and can be forwarded (unintentionally or maliciously). Further, identities can be spoofed. Data lives forever because copies can be archived all over the world without the sender? knowledge or approval.

The costs of email leaks include loss of valuable confidential data, client confidence and credibility. Direct costs are those of litigation and the effect on share price.

There are hacking and packet sniffing shareware applications that can be used for email interception. So is encryption the answer? Well, only partly. Emails can still be forwarded and delivery status is unknown. Often, encrypted material is quarantined at the firewall. Email client incompatibility may present a problem. And headers will still appear in plain text.

So what is the answer? Any solution to address these problems should encrypt the entire message and any attachments. It must give control over forwarding, printing and the life of the message. It must provide direct routing. And it must not allow an unencrypted version to exist. Finally, it must be easy for the user to work with.

Steve concluded that everyone should be aware that email is insecure and that confidential information should only be sent over a system that provides absolute security, not just basic encryption.
In conclusion

David Morgan called on the IAP President, Jim Bates. Jim felt that this year? Symposium had been an outstanding success. He closed the event by inviting delegates to the Piano and Pitcher where a good time was had by all.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites