Using metadata to drive the modern software development organization.

Metadata Strategy Advisors (MSA) helps organizations modernize their software development practices by using metadata to manage their software assets and processes. Using metadata enables the organization to evolve into a “Semantic Enterprise”. The use of metadata primarily addresses cross project concerns, but requires a solid foundation based on effective project teams.

Project Level Concerns

Effective project teams are the foundation of the software development organization. Any efforts to build enterprise-level capabilities depend on effective project teams as the projects will be more interdependent.

The funded project is the agent of change in the software development organization. At the end of the day, projects are where the money goes and where the applications get built. Ensuring that things are in order at the project level is job one when evolving/modernizing the software development organization.

Are your projects consistently:

• building the applications their customers want?

• using defined and documented software development processes?

• delivering on schedule?

• delivering high quality applications?

• building applications that are easily maintained and enhanced?

• effectively managing change (assets, requirements, defects...)?

• sharing and utilizing successful best practices with others?

• can you measure any of it? (metrics in place?)

MSA can perform assessments of your project teams to identify their strengths, as well as, opportunities for improvement. The assessment includes recommendations to address weak areas.

Enterprise Level (Cross Project) Concerns

Building on the foundation of the effective project teams, cross-project initiatives can now be addressed. The goal is for projects to utilize existing software assets (services, components, etc.) and also contribute new software assets to the organization's software asset portfolio. The software asset portfolio is driven by the target architecture for the organization. A service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a good combination with a software asset management strategy.

The software asset portfolio becomes an important part of the project planning process. Understanding which assets are already available facilitates more accurate project budgeting and planning. Project contributions to the software asset portfolio are also identified. Metrics and chain of evidence also need to be addressed; are the projects meeting the organizations tactical and strategic goals?

Although the effective project team is the foundation on which to start, from the enterprise view, consistency between project teams is important. As teams use assets from the portfolio, consistent supporting artifacts, such as documentation, become more important. To this end, the project teams must evolve to a common software development process based on the existing successful best practices in the organization.

MSA can perform assessments to identify the current state of your organization's cross-project capabilities and recommend a strategy to move forward.

The Semantic Enterprise

Building on solid enterprise-level capabilities, the semantic organization uses metadata, such as ontologies, to fully describe things like the organization, its processes, its assets, and the business domain. Such rich descriptions facilitate the use of emerging technologies such as reasoners and inference engines to make better and faster decisions, identify inconsistencies, and better understand the business.

MSA can help with you with taxonomy and ontology development.

For more information contact Metadata Strategy Advisors at Metadata Strategy Advisors