For my perfect team I want to build a software development team and staff the lead roles. There are many roles involved with the creation and sale of a software product. I am going to focus on the team responsible for the creation of the solution. The roles I chose to staff are project management, requirements analyst, engineering, content and documentation, and customer support leads. Many people can share a single role, or each person can have multiple roles. For my case, each person gets a single role. The project manager is responsible for monitoring the progress, time lines, budgets, and in general doing what needs to be done to see the project reach its conclusion. The project manager is often a central figure of communication between the development team and other groups. My project manager is Meg Whitman from eBay. [1] Meg has turned eBay into an online mainstay with $4 billion a year in revenue and a $60 billion market capitalization. The requirements analyst uses a variety of techniques to understand the problem from first hand contact with stakeholders inside and outside the organization. Grace Hopper [2] lived from 1906 to 1992. She is responsible for such ideas as compiled source languages and was deeply involved in trying to make computers easier for developers and operators. She often placed herself in the problematic situation to understand it and help propose a solution. The engineering lead is a broad role incorporating all of the technical aspects and control systems in place for the project. For this role I will choose Alan Cox [3] from the team of Linux contributors. Alan was responsible for many of the improvements to Linux that helped it gain respect as a reliable platform. Although a deeply technical person, Alan has an MBA that I believe gives him an insight to the economics of engineering problems. The content and documentation specialist is responsible for all information included with the solution that is needed by the consumer. This role is also responsible for any included templates or other information that can jump-start the solution for the user. Carl Sagan [4] will be my content and documentation producer. Carl Sagan taught science and wrote about it his entire life. He contributed to the popularization of science in America. Customer support provides help, receives and records defect reports and enhancement requests, and provides assistance with unique problems or environments. Blake W. Nordstrom [5] of the Nordstrom department stores will be in charge of my customer service organization. Nordstrom has a reputation of excellent service and has been aggressively applying technology to improve their customer’s experience. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/31/news/newsmakers/top50_women_fortune_111405/?cnn=yes [2] http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/hopper.html [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cox [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_sagan [5] http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/biography/M-R/Nordstrom-Blake-W-1961.html

Risks associated with B2B e-commerce include the technical problems of creating an Internet-facing business system that enables you and your partners to save money and react quickly by doing all transactions electronically. Additionally, I found there is some concern about the antitrust risks of business-to-business exchanges. I initially started searching for technical risks, and came across this document about the business risks of competitors working closely in collaboration to negotiate prices. http://mipr.umn.edu/archive/v2n2/gotfredson.pdf Certain models of B2B exchanges would have the competitors in an open auction against each other to win the bid for some product or service. “In spite of the promises inherent in this new business model, B2B exchanges necessarily involve collaboration between competitors in a market, and thus raise potential antitrust concerns.” There is actually nothing new here about types of antitrust activities a company might undertake with B2B. I think the point of the paper tells us that the Internet potentially makes this easier to take place. Connectivity between competitors and collaborators over the Internet and the growing sophistication of software provides an atmosphere where antitrust activities can occur without immediate notice. “A second antitrust risk associated with B2B exchanges stems from the fact that the Internet allows for the aggregation and analysis of copious information concerning the exchange’s participants.” I was not able to determine if any company has had legal action taken against them for B2B-related antitrust activities. The technical risks involved with B2B are typical for Internet-facing servers of e-commerce applications. For instance, Amazon uses a web front end to interface with their customers. The front-end of an application is one place vulnerabilities can be exploited to someone’s gain. Even though B2B exchanges may use a different kind of communication protocol, like a web-service or EDI communication, if there are weaknesses in the protocol, there is a possibility someone could use it to their advantage without immediate notice. An act that is as simple as transmitting illegal values for valid operations could allow unauthorized access because of a lack of sufficient defensive programming on the server-side. I found a PowerPoint presentation (link below) that listed some areas of potential loss from poorly designed e-commerce systems. Theft of Intellectual Property Theft of Proprietary Information Sabotage of Data Networks System Penetration Insider Abuse Financial Fraud Denial of Service Virus http://www.business.duq.edu/BusinessSecurity/docs/mootcourt.ppt

No limit to bandwidth means that it would be possible to send any amount of information across a network with no latency. Such an achievement would change more things than just the web. For instance, with the capability of limitless bandwidth, data storage and processing power would no doubt have made equivalent leaps as well. These are components of networking infrastructure as well as general purpose computers. So, networking equipment that provided limitless bandwidth would also include processing power to handle the load - processing power with no limits. Moving any amount of information with no latency also means you need some place to put it - data storage with no limits. With these limits removed, there might be no need for a web at all. The ability to move any amount of information instantly might mean we keep a copy for ourselves of everything we interact with, continually accumulating and indexing data at a constant rate from other information providers for the rest of our lives. From this I can imagine having my own reference database of accumulated information that becomes our private web, or life encyclopedia.

The Internet is the worldwide network of networks, which is available to business, government, education, and individuals. Many different services are provided over the Internet, including electronic mail, instant messaging and web applications. Single devices and entire local networks can join the Internet and become connected worldwide at a variety of speeds. Many large telecommunications companies carry the backbone of the Internet. The Internet “provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein.” [1] An “intranet is a private network inside a company or organization that uses the same kinds of software that you would find on the public Internet, but that is only for internal use. An intranet may be on the Internet or may simply be a network.” [2] I have found that Intranet and internal web are often interchanged, as well as Intranet and internal network. I think in general it is safe to refer to the all services available within the private networking domain of the organization. The Intranet of a company is often available by plugging into the network at a business office or virtually plugging in to it through remote Virtual Private Network access. I have found several overlapping definitions of Extranet, but in general they all refer to the same concepts. An Extranet is a company provided extension of its Intranet services to customers and business partners. [3] Using Amazon as an example, they do business over the Internet with the majority of people with a web application. They also have business partners that receive orders and provide special services to Amazon’s customers. Business partners have access to Amazon’s Extranet, which allows them to interact with the private portion of the business’ network services, but only those services Amazon allows. [1] http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/internet/definition.html [2] http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Glossary.html [3] http://elab.vanderbilt.edu/research/studentprojects/extranet/execsumm.html [4] http://elab.vanderbilt.edu/research/studentprojects/extranet/extranet.html

Logical design is, “The part of the design phase of the SDLC in which all functional features of the system chosen for development in analysis are described independently of any computer platform.” [1] A logical design for a network is an abstract functional specification for a telecommunications solution. A logical design lacks specific details such as technologies and standards and focuses on the needs at a general level. A logical network design can be a view of any part of a network. An entire enterprise educational network can be a composition of many logical designs. The lower level designs can be a university campus network that connects each building to the Internet, or it could be a view of the standard office telecommunications setup. The important quality of a logical design is that is communicates all needs in general terms.Logical designs communicate with abstract concepts, such as a network, router or workstation, without specifying concrete details. A definition of abstraction that I like is, “the process of formulating general concepts by abstracting common properties of instances.” [3] Another is a “general concept formed by extracting common features from specific examples.” [3] Abstractions for complex systems, such as network designs are important because they simplify the problem space so humans can manage it. An example of a network abstraction is a WAN. A wide-area-network carries data between remote locations. To understand a WAN, you do not need to understand the physics behind fiber optic data communication, although WAN traffic may be carried over optical fiber, satellite, or copper wire. Someone specifying the need for a WAN connection on a logical network diagram can understand the concept of a WAN connection without understanding the detailed technical specifics behind it.Logical designs are often described using terms from the customer’s business vocabulary. Locations, processes, roles from the business domain can show up in the logical design. An important aspect of a logical network design is that it is part of the requirements set for a solution to a customer problem. The basic idea of physical design is that it communicates “decisions about the hardware used to deliver a system.” [2] A physical network design is created from a logical network design. A physical design will often expand elements found in a logical design. For instance, a WAN connection on a logical design diagram can be shown as a line between two buildings. When transformed into a physical design, that single line could expand into the connection, routers and other equipment at each end of the connection. The actual connection media might be shown on a physical design as well as manufacturers and other qualities of the network implementation. The primary difference between logical network design and physical network design is that of iterative production of a solution from the identification of a problem. For example, when a business needs to share information in real time with remote offices, they are thinking in terms of business first and technology second. This is where identification of a problem begins, and as the problem is documented, it can be iteratively evolved from a logical solution into many possible physical designs. The logical design of a network can be re-implemented with new technology, and yet the logical design remains the same. Logical designs can span generations of technology, while a physical design is one realization of a logical design. References[1] http://myphliputil.pearsoncmg.com/student/bp_hoffer_modernsad_3/glossary.html[2] http://lms.thomsonelearning.com/hbcp/glossary/glossary.taf?gid=21&start=p[3] http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn2.0?stage=1&word=abstraction

Morgan and Murphy From Dogs Morgan and Pablo From Dogs This Means “Excuse Me” in Dog From Dogs The Pack From Dogs

Adios to the best damn tennis-ball-fetch dog ever. Get some rest fella. From Dogs

I believe one of the reasons many businesses do not use the Software Development Life Cycle is due to lack of awareness that such a process exists. I have experienced this first hand from my own attempts at running projects early in my career. My first positions were in smaller companies where less formality was necessary. Those experiences with planning and running projects were for small tasks. I would do development for the solution, and I would work with at most three other people. The other technical people working on the task would test or help out in other aspects. Most decisions were made at the office kitchen table and little needed to be recorded in documents. Once an awareness of the Software Development Life Cycle exists, the next problem is how to go about producing the artifacts that are necessary to project success. We have been given a very wide and shallow introduction to the System Development Life Cycle. This is good if you never have seen this before in your life. I have specific questions now about what is needed to be documented in each project phase. For instance, what do good requirements look like? Seeing templates or samples of existing project documents would speed an immature team’s understanding of where formality can stabilize a project and how much overhead formal process will add to the project time line. The final possibility that may contribute to lack formal processes for development is that business management does not believe it brings as many benefits compared to the existing system of project management. The SDLC affects not only the Information Technology team, but the departments receiving and affected by the creation of an automated solution to a business problem. I found an article on the web, talking about formal methods of engineering. I think this paragraph brings some insight into the business decision of bringing formality to an existing business infrastructure: “The decision to use a new methodology is driven by economics: Do the benefits of the new method exceed the costs of converting to it and using it by a sufficient margin to justify the risks of doing so?” [1] [1] An Overview of Systems Design and Development Methodologies with Regard to the Involvement of Users and Other Stakeholders, SHAWREN SINGH AND PAULA KOTZ, University of South Africa

In my experience developing software, I find the most important phase is the Elaboration phase. The reason I feel it is the most important is because it is the join point between the definition of the business problem and the construction of the solution. During the Inception phase, you baseline your vision and solution to a problem and you make the business case for building it. At the end of the Inception phase you should have support and funding from the business to move forward. Everyone involved with the project should be in agreement about what the team is trying to build. If there is any misinterpretation, especially from your funding source, you need deal with it here. The Elaboration phase is when the technical solution is determined - not actually built. This phase is the clarification phase. There is modeling, risk analysis, prototyping and refining of the requirements. This phase is when you find out if the solution can actually be built. You leave the elaboration phase with an architecture on paper (or in a modeling tool) and something that runs just enough that can prove the system can be completed successfully. I believe this is the point where funding really needs to kick in. During Construction and Transition, headcount is being adding in the form of developers, testers, documentation writers, test engineering, release engineering, legal, etc. You are beginning to train the trainers, the sales staff, and the consultants. If the project is not going to succeed, it is in your best interest to kill it off before you begin construction phase.

This is Murphy. He is a Rottweiler mix - mostly mixed with love and anti-seizure medication. From Dogs Photo by www.nicolehowardphotography.com