Jon Kern, February 23, 2004

Applying MDA in the Real World — Fact or Fiction? — A Counterpoint to Fowler and Ambler

You have probably heard or read of raging debates over Model Driven Architecture, UML’s immaturity, code generation controversy, and modeling is for wimps. Even such industry notables as Martin Fowler and Scott Ambler have negative opinions about the viability of MDA.

We found an author of The Agile Manifesto, Jon Kern (friends with both Ambler and Fowler), who takes a somewhat contrarian view. Jon is a fanatic about ensuring software development efforts deliver business value.

Jon will describe a pragmatic "distilled" usage that has high project value when combined with visual tool support. He will discuss where UML and MDA overlap, and will dismiss the "Silver Bullet" theory that often accompanies design and development tools.

Along the way, Jon will discuss three simple keys to software development success.

• Separation of Concerns
• Duality of Architectures
• Agile development

Bring along any favorite war story about a failed or stressed project — and Jon will point out where the project failed to follow one of his three keys to success.

How to move your game to the next level:

• If you think there is a career to be had in mapping columns, in doing deployment descriptors, and banging out repetitive code — think again.
• If you think that development requires lots of repetitive, boring code creation - you are doing something wrong.
• If you think learning the ins-and-outs of a technology is the only key to survival — you’re wrong.
• If you think clients are asking for stateless session beans or even relational databases, think again. They want business value not technology!
• If you think that your development teams are providing optimal value, then look again. Could it be better?
• If you think that management is even allowing you to provide optimal value, then look around to see if you are given adequate management support and slack time to — do the right thing — for long-term business gain for the enterprise.
• If you think agile development can only be achieved by starting at the code level, stop typing.
• If you think that modeling has nothing to do with agile development, step aside.

Model-Driven Development is coming to an enterprise development organization near you. At the end of his presentation, Jon will provide a 10-minute glimpse into how one tool can help accelerate development efforts and provide ways to do more with less.

Knowing Jon Kern, this is sure to be a bit raucous, stimulating, educational, controversial, and hopefully — lots of fun!

Speaker

Jon Kern is an author of The Agile Manifesto, a co-author of Java Design with Peter Coad, and one of the original execs who was a major contributor to TogetherSoft’s success prior to its sale to Borland. Jon has 15+ years of experience from jet engine R&D, to real-time flight simulators, to developing IBM’s manufacturing system, to leading TogetherSoft’s development and QA teams (in Russia).

Jon was recruited by Compuware’s OptimalJ product team in May 2003. Once he saw the vision and power behind the product, he was hooked.

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Directions

The Qwest auditorium is at their building on the corner of 17th and Curtis at 1005 17th Street. At street level, to the right of the escalators, are doors leading to elevators. Take an elevator to the "A" level (Auditorium). If those doors are locked, you can take the exterior escalators to Level 1 and enter via doors to the right of the escalator landing. If these doors are locked, go to the main building lobby which is on Level 1 if you walk straight from the escalator landing.

In addition to street parking, there is an outside parking lot on the East side of the Qwest building that costs a flat $6 after 4pm. Several other lots are within a few blocks and covered parking can be found in the Tabor Center for around $4.