Software Factories in the Real World: How an IBM WebSphere Integration Factory Helped an Automotive Retailer Keep Its Customers on the Road

Software Factories in the Real World:
How an IBM® WebSphere® Integration
Factory Helped an Automotive Retailer
Keep Its Customers on the Road
Session 1602
André Tost,
Senior Technical Staff Member, Software Group
Greg Hodgkinson,
Practice Director, Lifecycle Tools and Methodology

© 2012 IBM Corporation
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The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Session Introduction
 Abstract: “Getting any software development team to effectively scale to meet the needs of a large
integration project is actually harder than it sounds. For a large Automotive Retailer based in Florida,
this is exactly what they needed to do. They needed a large amount of integration to be built between
their brand new Point of Sales system and their new SAP back-end. In this session, you will hear about
how tools such as Rational Software Architect and WebSphere Message Broker Toolkit were integrated
with a Rational Team Concert-based development environment to set up super efficient software
factory employing techniques such as Model-Driven Development and Continuous Integration to help
this retailer keep their customers’ wheels on the road.”
Topics for today:
 The project
 The challenges faced
 The software factory tools
 The software factory workflow
 Key practices that helped us succeed
 The benefits
 Final thoughts

3
Introducing the Project
A new automotive retail in-store experience
 Replacing green screen terminals in the store with modern user interfaces
– Touch screens
– Tablets
– Customer self-service “kiosks”
– In-store WiFi
– Completely new private network (MPLS)
 Replacing legacy backend application for customer management, order management and
inventory management
– Transitioning from JDEdwards to SAP
 Middleware integration layer
– Exposing backend functionality as reusable business services
– Fully virtualized, scalable infrastructure
– Private cloud on X86/Linux

4
Introducing the Project (cont.)
Service orientation as the architectural foundation
 Building an integration layer consisting of service exposure AND provider creation
Diagram taken from developerWorks article “The Enterprise Service Bus, re-examined”,
see http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/1105_flurry/1105_flurry.html

5
Introducing the Project
Challenges faced
 Multi-vendor, global development team
– US
– China
– Egypt
– Philippines
 Requirements were limited to screenshots
– Hundreds of wire frames, very useful for data modeling
– No functional business requirements
 Three layers (client UI, integration layer, backend/SAP) all designed and developed in parallel
– (Semi-)Agile development process required
 Brand new infrastructure
– New network, new platform, new middleware
 Plus, all the usual project constraints 
– Tight schedule
– Constrained budget

6
Introducing the Software Factory Tools
WebSphere Message Broker
Reducing the complexity of
integrating your systems
Point-to-point is expensive
Integration requires specialist
knowledge of API technologies
Integration plumbing and mapping
code wastes developer hours
Mixing integration code with
application code makes
applications brittle
Integrations have high availability
and reliability requirements –
complexity
2) Dynamic mediation2) Dynamic mediation
4) Supports multiple4) Supports multiple
technologiestechnologies
3) Routes and transforms data3) Routes and transforms data
1) Simplified1) Simplified
integration authoringintegration authoring

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Managing and communicating
your software requirements
Poor requirements is the #1
reason projects fail
Traceability is NB, but time
consuming
Difficult to correlate scope lists
with specifications
As soon as requirements
documents are released they can
become out of date
Often the author > review >
feedback > rework process is
inefficient
1) All-in-one editor –1) All-in-one editor –
text as well astext as well as
diagramsdiagrams
2) Easy traceability2) Easy traceability
link creation andlink creation and
“surfing”“surfing”
3) Visual focus –3) Visual focus –
process, use case,process, use case,
screen mockupsscreen mockups
4) Built-in review4) Built-in review
workflowworkflow
5) Strong lifecycle links – to plans, to5) Strong lifecycle links – to plans, to
designs, to code, to builds, to testsdesigns, to code, to builds, to tests
Rational Requirements Composer

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Controlling the architectural
quality of your software
Difficult to handle software
complexity – too much of it
Lose sight of good patterns when
you are “down in the code”
Refactoring of code is expensive
Large mental leap between
requirements and code
How do you make design a “team
game”?
1) Supports popular modeling1) Supports popular modeling
standards – UML, BPMN2, SoaMLstandards – UML, BPMN2, SoaML
2) Turn models into2) Turn models into
code withcode with
transformationstransformations
3) Automatically3) Automatically
apply modelapply model
patternspatterns
4) Graphical code4) Graphical code
editors and visualizerseditors and visualizers
5) Design Manager5) Design Manager
adds web-basedadds web-based
collaborationcollaboration
Rational Software Architect for WebSphere

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4) Built-in build support4) Built-in build support
including build engineincluding build engine
5) SCM provides support5) SCM provides support
for streams, components,for streams, components,
workspaces – flexible,workspaces – flexible,
simple, powerfulsimple, powerful
Managing and enabling change
Plans can quickly become out of
date
Progress views limited to point-in-
time snapshots and waste effort
How to easily track what work was
delivered in a new build?
How to easily track SCM changes
against plans?
How to correlate all project data in
a format that is easy to consume
(and has value)
1) Like 5 tools in one – plans, work items,1) Like 5 tools in one – plans, work items,
SCM, build, project data warehouseSCM, build, project data warehouse
2) Fully integrated data2) Fully integrated data
across lifecycleacross lifecycle
3) Excellent support for3) Excellent support for
agile as well asagile as well as
“traditional” project styles“traditional” project styles
Rational Team Concert

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The Software Factory Workflow
Coordinating requirements and designs across technology stacks
 Constraint: 3 teams working on 3 separate but related streams.
 Driven by UI wireframes
 Derived scope list (RRC)
 Transferred to plans (RTC)
 Requirements specs written for
service operations (RRC/RSA)
 Designs specs written for service
operations (RSA)
 Front-end-WSDL generated
(RSA)
 Implementations and stubs
(WMBT)

11
Timing is everything!
 Ideal: Back-end WSDL available to SOA integration analysts.

12
 Not so good: Back-end WSDL arrives during SOA design.

13
 Getting bad: Back-end WSDL not available for SOA implementation.

14
 The pits: Back-end implementation not available to test against.

15
Coordinating distributed development and integrating the results
 Workflow tuned to high velocity without sacrificing quality.
RRC
requirements
RSA
service
model
RTC
scm
RTC
scm
WMB
DEV
WMB
QA
wsdl
implementation
wsdl
implementation
Cairo
wsdl
implementation
wsdl
implementation
China
wsdl
implementation
wsdl
implementation
US
wsdl
SOA
analysts
UI & back-end
analysts,
stakeholders
SOA
designers
UI & back-end
designers,
stakeholders
SOA
devs
SOA
devs
SOA
devs
Continuous
build/deploy
On-demand
build/deploy
feedback
feedback

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Key Practices for Success
Tighter architectural control using RSA
 Solution architecture modeled
in UML
 Service model developed in UML
– Initial version derived from
use case descriptions
– Collaboratively finalized via
LotusLive sessions
– ~30 services with ~160 operations
 WSDL automatically generated
from UML
– Using out-of-the-box RSA
transformation
– Some required modification
done via XSLT
 Both UML and WSDL stored
in RTC

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Keeping the team on track using RTC
 Service operation tracking
– Separate tracking for each service interface and each service operation gives indication
of progress
– See later slide for example
 Easy assignment of work items to individuals
– For net new development and defect fixes
– Good way of communicating with offshore teams
 Impediments
– Communication of (typically blocking) issues across distributed teams
– Identified and/or assigned also during daily scrum meeting
 Custom “change control” work item allowed tracking of changes to the service model
– Linkage to individual work items (model change, implementation change, etc)
– Notification to interested users

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 Streams for easy management of different
configurations
– Code configuration for each environment:
DEV > QA > PROD
– Easy to promote changes through
environments
 Components allow for groups of artefacts to
be managed together
– Separate out code components, tests, stubs,
models, documents
– Component per application component
• Loading and unloading
• Consolidated history
• Easy to snapshot
Collaborative configuration management using RTC

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 Project events provides an excellent way to
quickly see latest changes
– Easy to see what real (as opposed to planned)
current focus of work is
– Can click straight into work context for more
– Keeps team aware of dependencies
 The “Pending changes” view became a core
element of governance
– Good overview of who changed what and why
– Allows enforcement of compliance with established
standards - Naming, code structure, etc.
– Changes are organised by component – making it
easier to focus on the changes that matter to you
Collaborative configuration management using RTC

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 RTC’s simple build engine + Prolifics Build Conductor
= effortless builds!
– ANT build engine simple and easy to use
– PBC adds automation scripts for WebSphere apps:
WESB, WMB, WPS, Portal
– Automated build, override, deploy
 Build record publishes a wealth of information
– What was built – BARs
– What tasks/requirements/fixes included
– What change sets included
– Full log files as well as activity view
Hassle-free build and deploy using RTC

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 Different builds for different purposes
– Continuous integration build that only catches compile
errors can look for changes every few minutes
– Continuous integration build that deploys to DEV can be
run every 2 hours
– On-demand build to target QA can be triggered when
needed
 Accelerated fix delivery
– From build record snapshot, can create a new fix
workspace within seconds
– Suspend and unload existing changes, then code the fix
and deliver to fix
– As soon as delivered, on-demand build can deploy
changes automatically to environment of choice
– Fantastically quick turnaround of fixes!
Hassle-free build and deploy using RTC

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Project dashboard using RTC - Overview

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Project dashboard using RTC – Release Status

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Project dashboard using RTC – Impediments

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Project dashboard using RTC – Change Controls

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How Did We Benefit?
Improving team efficiency
 Using RTC client plug-in for Eclipse-based tooling supports online and offline work
– Especially helpful when having many travelling developers
 Fine grained control over which changes are replicated/downloaded
 Using one component per service was a good structure
– Good support of having development teams work concurrently on different service
implementations
 Minimal delays to get changes to testers
 Separate build streams for dedicated, continuous builds
– More build engines would have been beneficial
 Shared build infrastructure meant developers didn’t maintain their own

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How Did We Benefit?
Improving deliverable quality
 Using a UML-based service model
– Visual representation used to communicate interface to the development team
 Component-based source control made developers think more about how their
code was structured
 Automated build and deploy caught issues earlier
 Handed over a fully automated and structured build and deploy infrastructure along
with the source code - to the benefit of the maintenance team

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Final Thoughts
Session wrap-up
 A large project, with a global team of developers and testers, required global
collaboration and cooperation
 Tying individual development tools into one team environment, RTC, facilitated
sharing of artefacts and joint development of solutions
– Need good structure of streams and components, based on target runtimes and team
organization
 Project management features of RTC allow direct integration of planning activities
with the developed artifacts
 Continuous automated builds important enough to have a full time release engineer
 Using Eclipse as the foundation for all tooling makes it easier to integrate different
environments and target runtimes
 You still need good developers and strong governance!

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Acknowledgements and disclaimers
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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012. All rights reserved. The information contained in these materials is provided for informational purposes only, and is provided AS IS without warranty of any kind,
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www.ibm.com/software/rational

Software Factories in the Real World: How an IBM WebSphere Integration Factory Helped an Automotive Retailer Keep Its Customers on the Road

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