gardeners not gatekeepers cal evans

How Users See I.T. User: I need a new feature on my application that shows me a list of my contacts to select from

IT: I’ll Need a change request for that.

User: It’s just a simple change

IT: It requires a change impact report that details changes to the data model, screen real-estate, list of controllers and models affected and signoff by the UX team for the view changes

User: Wha…what’s all of that? UX? Your making this up.

IT: UX==User Experience

User: Well so far, it’s been pretty poor!

How I.T. Sees Users User: I need a new feature on my application that shows me a list of my contacts to select from

IT: No problem at all, the application already allows you to do just that. Open Outlook, go to your contacts page, find the contact you want to select, right click, save to Desktop, swap back to the application Click on Tools->Contacts->YouDon’t WantToDoThis and select the contact from where you save it.

User: I’d really like to be able to do all of that from a button on the screen.

IT: Sure, sure, we can do that. I’ll need you to go to http://internal.local/it/ChangeRequestForm/unauthorized.itr0xr and fill out the request form. If you hurry, we’ve got a review board meeting in a few weeks and we can get it on the agenda to discuss and possibly plan a feasibility study.

Copyright © 2007, Zend Technologies Inc.

Gardeners not Gate Keepers

Cal Evans Zend Technologies, Inc.

Gardeners, Not Gate Keepers

Summary (Read this and you can sleep through the rest of the talk.)

1. Mashups are no longer cool, they are your competitive edge.

2. Mashups and RIAs allow your users to support your SOA.

3. IT has to transform itself from the Gate Keepers of IT to Gardeners of IT to survive.

Mashups are no longer cool, they are your competitive edge.


“[Jason] Blomberg draws a line between consumer-oriented mashups and service-oriented business applications (SOBAs), and argues that while mashup principles have their place within enterprises, serious challenges await any effort to implement them.”

“What’s the difference between a SOBA and a mashup? They’re sort of coming from different worlds. A SOBA is essentially a composite application composed of business processes. It comes from the SOA world. A mashup is essentially a collaborative app within a rich Internet application (RIA) environment.” http://www.webmashup.com/blog/2007/05/17/analyst-looks-at-mashups-vs-sobas/

Highly Questionably Quote

Mashups and RIAs allow your users to support your SOA.


What does any of this have to do with PHP?

(…and now a word from our sponsor)

IT has to transform itself from “Gate Keepers” into “Gardeners”

to survive.


“Combined, Ajax and SOA enable Rich Enterprise Applications, which places the power and enablement directly in the hands of the end user. With the potential for significant user empowerment within REAs, there can be considerable pressure from the user community for IT to make it happen.” -- John Crupi and Chris Warner

http://www.idevnews.com/TipsTricks.asp?ID=503

Prescient Quote


Impact of becoming Gardeners

• Deeper Business Intelligence • Lower Development Cost • Perceived Value


Three ways to grow your mashup garden (Let’s push the metaphore till everybody is sick of it)

• Plant the seeds with user friendly documentation. • Nurture your garden by supporting only standards

based protocols. Non-standard and home-grown protocols will choke your garden and kill it off.

• Cultivate, don’t execute, your mashup makers.


Summary (If your neighbor is sleeping, wake him up now so he can clap.)

1. Mashups are no longer cool, they are your competitive edge.

2. Mashups and RIAs allow your users to support your SOA.

3. IT has to transform itself from “Gatekeepers” to “Gardeners” to survive.


Vanity Slide

Cal Evans [email protected]

http://devzone.zend.com http://blog.calevans.com http://twitter.com/calevans http://friendfeed.com/calevans

gardeners not gatekeepers cal evans

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