“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.”

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

2. 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
2
© 2012 IBM Corporation

3. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
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
3
© 2012 IBM Corporation

4. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
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
4
© 2012 IBM Corporation

5. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
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
5
© 2012 IBM Corporation

6. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Introducing the Software Factory Tools
WebSphere Message Broker
1) Simplified
Reducing the complexity of integration authoring
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
2) Dynamic mediation
and reliability requirements –
complexity 3) Routes and transforms data
4) Supports multiple
technologies
6
© 2012 IBM Corporation

7. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Introducing the Software Factory Tools
Rational Requirements Composer
1) All-in-one editor – 2) Easy traceability
Managing and communicating text as well as link creation and
your software requirements diagrams “surfing”
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 3) Visual focus –
Often the author > review > process, use case, 4) Built-in review
feedback > rework process is screen mockups workflow
inefficient 5) Strong lifecycle links – to plans, to
designs, to code, to builds, to tests
7
© 2012 IBM Corporation

8. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Introducing the Software Factory Tools
Rational Software Architect for WebSphere
Controlling the architectural 1) Supports popular modeling
quality of your software standards – UML, BPMN2, SoaML
2) Turn models into
Difficult to handle software
code with
complexity – too much of it
transformations
Lose sight of good patterns when
3) Automatically
you are “down in the code”
apply model
Refactoring of code is expensive
patterns
Large mental leap between
requirements and code 4) Graphical code
How do you make design a “team editors and visualizers
game”?
5) Design Manager
adds web-based
collaboration
8
© 2012 IBM Corporation

9. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Introducing the Software Factory Tools
Rational Team Concert
1) Like 5 tools in one – plans, work items,
Managing and enabling change SCM, build, project data warehouse
Plans can quickly become out of
date
Progress views limited to point-in- 2) Fully integrated data
time snapshots and waste effort across lifecycle
How to easily track what work was
3) Excellent support for
delivered in a new build? agile as well as
How to easily track SCM changes
“traditional” project styles
against plans?
How to correlate all project data in 4) Built-in build support
a format that is easy to consume including build engine
(and has value)
5) SCM provides support
for streams, components,
workspaces – flexible,
simple, powerful
9
© 2012 IBM Corporation

10. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
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)
10
© 2012 IBM Corporation

11. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
The Software Factory Workflow
Timing is everything!
 Ideal: Back-end WSDL available to SOA integration analysts.
11
© 2012 IBM Corporation

12. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
The Software Factory Workflow
Timing is everything!
 Not so good: Back-end WSDL arrives during SOA design.
12
© 2012 IBM Corporation

13. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
The Software Factory Workflow
Timing is everything!
 Getting bad: Back-end WSDL not available for SOA implementation.
13
© 2012 IBM Corporation

14. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
The Software Factory Workflow
Timing is everything!
 The pits: Back-end implementation not available to test against.
14
© 2012 IBM Corporation

15. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
The Software Factory Workflow
Coordinating distributed development and integrating the results
 Workflow tuned to high velocity without sacrificing quality.
implementation
wsdl
SOA SOA
analysts designers
implementation feedback
wsdl
RSA Cairo SOA
Continuous
build/deploy
RRC RTC devs RTC
service
requirements scm implementation scm
model wsdl
WMB
DEV
wsdl
implementation
wsdl
On-demand
China SOA build/deploy
WMB
QA
devs
UI & back-end UI & back-end
implementation
analysts, designers, wsdl
stakeholders stakeholders
implementation
wsdl feedback
US SOA
devs
15
© 2012 IBM Corporation

16. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
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
16
© 2012 IBM Corporation

17. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Key Practices for Success
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
17
© 2012 IBM Corporation

18. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Key Practices for Success
Collaborative configuration management using RTC
 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
18
© 2012 IBM Corporation

19. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Key Practices for Success
Collaborative configuration management using RTC
 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
19
© 2012 IBM Corporation

20. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Key Practices for Success
Hassle-free build and deploy using RTC
 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
20
© 2012 IBM Corporation

21. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Key Practices for Success
Hassle-free build and deploy using RTC
 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!
21
© 2012 IBM Corporation

22. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Key Practices for Success
Project dashboard using RTC - Overview
22
© 2012 IBM Corporation

23. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Key Practices for Success
Project dashboard using RTC – Release Status
23
© 2012 IBM Corporation

24. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Key Practices for Success
Project dashboard using RTC – Impediments
24
© 2012 IBM Corporation

25. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Key Practices for Success
Project dashboard using RTC – Change Controls
25
© 2012 IBM Corporation

26. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
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
26
© 2012 IBM Corporation

27. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
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
27
© 2012 IBM Corporation

28. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
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!
28
© 2012 IBM Corporation

29. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
www.ibm.com/software/rational
29
© 2012 IBM Corporation

30. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Daily iPod Touch giveaway
 Complete your session surveys online each day at a conference kiosk or on your
Innovate 2012 Portal!
 Each day that you complete all of that day’s session surveys, your name will be entered
to win the daily IPOD touch!
 On Wednesday be sure to complete your full conference evaluation to receive your
free conference t-shirt!
30
© 2012 IBM Corporation

31. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
Acknowledgements and disclaimers
Availability: References in this presentation to IBM products, programs, or services do not imply that they will be available in all countries
in which IBM operates.
The workshops, sessions and materials have been prepared by IBM or the session speakers and reflect their own views. They are provided for
informational purposes only, and are neither intended to, nor shall have the effect of being, legal or other guidance or advice to any participant.
While efforts were made to verify the completeness and accuracy of the information contained in this presentation, it is provided AS-IS without
warranty of any kind, express or implied. IBM shall not be responsible for any damages arising out of the use of, or otherwise related to, this
presentation or any other materials. Nothing contained in this presentation is intended to, nor shall have the effect of, creating any warranties or
representations from IBM or its suppliers or licensors, or altering the terms and conditions of the applicable license agreement governing the use of
IBM software.
All customer examples described are presented as illustrations of how those customers have used IBM products and the results they may have
achieved. Actual environmental costs and performance characteristics may vary by customer. Nothing contained in these materials is intended to,
nor shall have the effect of, stating or implying that any activities undertaken by you will result in any specific sales, revenue growth or other results.
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012. All rights reserved.
– U.S. Government Users Restricted Rights - Use, duplication or disclosure restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM Corp.
IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Rational, the Rational logo, Telelogic, the Telelogic logo, Green Hat, the Green Hat logo, and other IBM products and
services are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. If
these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), these symbols
indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered
or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at
www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml
If you have mentioned trademarks that are not from IBM, please update and add the following lines:
[Insert any special third-party trademark names/attributions here]
Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
31
© 2012 IBM Corporation

32. The Premier Event for Software and Systems Innovation
www.ibm.com/software/rational
© 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,
express or implied. IBM shall not be responsible for any damages arising out of the use of, or otherwise related to, these materials. Nothing contained in these materials is intended to, nor shall have
the effect of, creating any warranties or representations from IBM or its suppliers or licensors, or altering the terms and conditions of the applicable license agreement governing the use of IBM
software. References in these materials to IBM products, programs, or services do not imply that they will be available in all countries in which IBM operates. Product release dates and/or capabilities
referenced in these materials may change at any time at IBM’s sole discretion based on market opportunities or other factors, and are not intended to be a commitment to future product or feature
availability in any way. IBM, the IBM logo, Rational, the Rational logo, Telelogic, the Telelogic logo, and other IBM products and services are trademarks of the International Business Machines
Corporation, in the United States, other countries or both. Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
32
© 2012 IBM Corporation