On Triads...

Word on the street is that I'm not the best program manager ever. At least, that's what the T-shirts say. Regardless of whether you can believe everything you read, and given that I'm often asked what it is that I do for a living, I thought I'd take a moment to explain what exactly a program manager (PGM) is...

A program manager at Embarcadero is a cross between a product owner (in the agile sense) and a project manager. We "own" the user experience; that is, we determine how requirements get turned into functionality that appears in our products. Organizationally, as a program manager, we're part of two triads.

As part of the external, or customer-facing, triad (the "cone of silence"), a program manager works with a product manager (PM) and a product marketing manager (PMM) to gather requirements, assess the market, validate product roadmaps, and analyze the competition. Being a keelboat racer, I like to think of this triad as as the strategic part of my job. In sailing, strategy is what you'd plan to do to win the race if there were no other boats on the course. For more insight into this side of the business, check out the interview that Greg did recently with my PM (Jason Tiret) and PMM (Josh Howard).

As part of the internal, or engineering-facing, triad, a program manager works with a software development manager (SDM) and a quality assurance manager (QAM) to deliver a product which satisfies its requirements, on time and with quality. I like to think of this triad as the tactical part of my job. In sailing, tactics is how you actually make it around the course when there are lots of other boats out there trying to do the same thing. There are typically two kinds of software projects: time-based (where the product is released on the scheduled date, even if the scope needs to change to do so) and content-based (where the product is released with the planned content, even if the date needs to change to do so). At Embarcadero, our projects are of the former kind, and "he who ships, on time, speaks".

Oh, one more thing. We're always looking for good people, so if this role sounds attractive to you, drop me a line. ;)

On Darkness...

Speaking of darkness, I spent some time yesterday producing updated XMI serializations for UML 2.2 and was reminded of some recent banter in the blogosphere about UML's apparent demise. As original author of the de facto reference implementation of the UML 2.x metamodel (i.e. the abstract syntax), I feel the need to offer my perspective on the issue.

In my opinion, tool vendors have failed. MDD is a sham, at least the way it has been employed in tools to date. Rather than contorting the artifacts, interface, and user (!) to meet the needs of the model or modeling language (UML, DSL, or otherwise), tools should be applying MDD (and visualization in general) where it makes sense to bring about real productivity and result in better quality software. I know there’s increased productivity and quality to be gained from modeling because I (and many others I know) have experienced it. But then I tend to be more accepting of the whole “no pain, no gain” mentality than most users. Tools need to evolve to make consumption of this stuff painless.

What's interesting to me, despite reports of UML's decent into darkness, is that a once long-time detractor of UML has recently changed its tune and started incorporating support for it into one of its tools. Maybe this really is the beginning of the end. UML is dead! Long live UML!

On People...

At the risk of getting sentimental, I'm going to get sentimental for a moment. Today, Embarcadero Technologies released ER/Studio Enterprise Portal 1.0, the first product I've been directly involved in launching since leaving my previous employer just over a year ago.

Looking back at how we got to this day, I'm reminded of a major reason why I came to Embarcadero in the first place - the people. A lot has been, and will be, said about the many virtues of this product. But when I think about it, I can't help but focus on the people that persevered through many challenges so that this product could see the light of day. This is what the word "team" is all about. w00t!

On Trojan Source...

Like me, Gord's product is also on the eve of its release. Oh, what a feeling! What a rush! The last time I felt like this wasn't all that long ago, actually. At the time, Ed blogged about how it felt like the end was nigh. Well, that end has since come and gone, and now everybody knows what Ed was really talking about. Personally, I think he should have entitled his farewell blog entry "So long, and thanks for all the FOSS".

Or is that FLOSS? The product I'm about to release is based on an open source platform that, believe it or not, isn't Eclipse (gasp). Their approach to open source, dubbed "professional open source", is somewhat... different from that of Eclipse. It seems ironic (at least to me) that a platform which boasts freedom from closed, proprietary software would switch to a more restrictive license mid-stream... it's almost like it was part of the grand plan all along.

So what does 'open source' really mean, then? According to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), which officially owns the definition, the distribution terms of open source software must comply with ten criteria. The OSI maintains a list of the open source licenses which have successfully gone through their approval process and comply with these criteria; both EPL and that other license are on it, as are many others. So what's the big deal? Just ask one of the customers or OEM partners who, if they want to adopt the next major version of said platform, may be forced to decide between releasing some of their software under the new open source license and purchasing a commercial license for the platform...

On Search Providers...

I mentioned that I spent a lot of my time recently on a deep dive into one of Embarcadero's products that's about to release in the coming weeks. I had planned on giving a "sneak peak" as to what it's all about, but it turns out that Greg beat me to it (thanks, Greg!).

Rather than repeat everything that Greg said, I'll focus on a lesser known aspect of one of the portal's main features. Despite the incredible value of its shared reports, explore dashboard, ad hoc query interface, and administration console, perhaps the most popular (and most scrutinized!) feature of the portal thus far has been its search capability.

One of the cool things (at least in my mind) about the search capability of the ER/Studio Enterprise Portal is that, like other Web-based search interfaces, it can be integrated into the search bar of your favorite browser. I'll walk through the steps to do this for Internet Explorer as an example.

1. Select the 'Find More Providers...' item from the search bar's drop-down menu.



This will take you to a Web page where can choose from among several exiting providers or create your own.

2. From a different browser window, type 'TEST' into the search box of the ER/Studio Enterprise Portal and hit .

This will take you to the Search Results page.



3. Copy and paste the URL from the Search Results page (the "&x=8&y=6" portion at the end isn't necessary), specify a name for the new search provider, and press the 'Install' button.



This will open a dialog asking you to confirm that you want to add the search provider (click 'Add Provider').



4. Choose the new search provider from the search bar's drop-down menu, type in your text, and away you go!



To avoid having to log into the portal each time you want to search, you can also add your user name and password to the URL before pressing the 'Install' button in step 3 above by appending, for example, the string "&userid=MyUserID&password=MyPassword".

On Status Quo...

What the heck is Blaugust, anyway? Well, it's what James has been calling the month of August lately in light of a little challenge we have going within the program management team here at Embarcadero (yes, another fest). blaugustFEST is a contest to see who can reach out to the community by blogging or commenting on a blog entry a minimum of twenty times during the month of August. So, keep your eyes peeled for some creative blogging by James, Gord, Wassim, and others... it could prove to be quite entertaining.

I don't mention Ian above because, alas, Ian has decided to move on to another pasture (I don't say greener since, as Ed often says, the grass on the other side only looks greener because you're looking at it from an angle). So, things aren't exactly status quo around here, for various reasons.

I'm glad. Not about Ian leaving, because we'll really miss him, but about things not being status quo. The problem with status quo is that it tends to stifle innovation. I get frustrated (and did just recently, in fact) when faced with a situation where "our users have come to expect that it works this way, and if we change it, we'll never hear the end of it". I'm sure many of you have been in the same boat. There's no doubt we'll be facing scenarios like that with e4.

There's this old story about a woman who always cut the ends off a roast before putting it into the oven. When asked why by one of her kids, she realized she didn't really know - her mother had always done it that way. The next time she saw her mother, she asked the same question, and her mother explained that she had to because she didn't have a large enough pan to fit a whole roast.

The real challenge, IMHO, is to face opposition in the name of progress. Sometimes we need to consider new, potentially better, ways of doing things. That's what innovation is all about, after all...

On Blaugust...

Not unlike John, it seems as though I dropped off the face of the planet(s) nearly three months ago. James has a great expression for this kind of phenomenon - "going dark". Well, I can assure you that while I have been dark in the blogosphere of late, I've been bright in other spheres.

So where have I been? So much has happened since my last entry, it's hard to remember it all...

• I participated in the e4 Summit in Ottawa. I know, old news, but now there's an actual proposal for the e4 project. What area will you be contributing to?

• I had a chance to meet with my CodeGear brethren in Scotts Valley for the first time, and I'm very excited about what we'll be able to accomplish now as a combined company. Stay tuned!

• I co-hosted the second of two Eclipse/OMG Symposia in Ottawa, and I'd venture to say that it was even more fruitful than the first!

• I played a part (as lead of the MDT project) in ensuring that Ganymede, in all its glory, was successfully released. w00t!

• I took a much needed vacation (they're never long enough!) - one week camping in New Brunswick and a second week at a chalet in Charlevoix. Oh, the stories...

• I helped orchestrate a summit for Embarcadero's Software Consultants in Toronto. What a great team!

• I did a deep-dive on one of my products that is about to release in the coming weeks.

I'll be taking time to blog about each of these activities (and others) in more detail over the next month because, as of today, it is Blaugust after all!