The road from Starter Sites to Products

Over the past 10 years, Click (Huron) has established a solid track record of providing software and services that enable research institutions to improve operational efficiency, capture critical data, achieve and sustain accreditation, and service the needs of the research community. Over that time, we’ve also learned a lot about what it takes to accomplish those goals. Our base Click Portal platform has evolved significantly over that time as we continue to identify ways to better meet demand and institutions have been able to benefit from these improvements by simply upgrading to the latest software. We also continually hone our best practices in application design and implementation patterns, but unfortunately these advancements have been significantly more difficult to realize for existing customers. This is due primarily to our reliance on what we’ve called “Starter Sites”. Starter Sites are fully configured solutions that serve as a point of departure for a custom implementation. Think of it as a head start on your custom site. The model works well but assumes that all future development is the responsibility of each institution in partnership with Click Professional Services. Advancements in the starter site can only be realized in your site through custom development. In December of 2011 we began to chart a new course that aims to change this reality through the introduction of products.

Epic Battle: Simplicity Versus Complexity

I’ve seen this too many times to not consider it a common theme in every project. I’m sure I’m not going out on a limb when I say that everyone starts their project with the goal of simplifying their current process, but with all that can be accomplished with the Extranet framework and starter solutions, the temptation to add additional complexity is often tough to resist. I submit the following for your consideration:

Complexity is evil and should only be allowed into your project when absolutely necessary

Strong statement, I know, but I find that we don’t ask the question “Is there a simpler way?” often enough. I’ve been wondering lately why this is the case and have formed a theory:

Simple is boring and we don’t like being bored

Now, before you disagree with me, let me explain.

Phone, Web Conferencing and Email are all inferior

As I sit here in the Detroit airport facing a 4 hour delay and scheduled arrival back in Portland at 2AM PST, it would be easy for me to rail against the need for face to face visits, but I won’t. It’s incredibly valuable to get together with the team who is ultimately responsible for delivering solutions and countless updates of those solutions to a user base that is always asking for more. In fact, my visit with just such a team this week at University of Michigan only serves to reinforce my belief that there is no replacement for the occasional face-to-face get together. Phone, Web Conferencing, and Email are all inferior to physical presence.

What’s new in Professional Services

With only one week before the annual Click Compliance Consortium meeting in Chicago, the office is buzzing. The agenda is firming up and it looks like we’ll be hovering near record attendance levels. Each CCC has it’s own flavor thanks to the fact that it’s really an event hosted, presented, and attended by members of the consortium itself – yes, that means you. Of course there’s always the expected presentation by those of us at Click Commerce, but it’s learning what all of you are doing and the free exchange of ideas that I look forward to the most.

This year we’re trying something different that I’m excited about. On the second day the agenda splits into three tracks and we all get to spend a couple of hours in an open discussion about one of three topics: IRB, Grants, or Animal Operations. I, with the help of a couple of customers, will be moderating the Animal Operations discussion and I hope those of you with interest will be able to join in on the conversation. I hoping that this will be a lively session.

Closer to home, I’ve been continuing the drive to refine our development practices. I’m not quite ready to share any results but here’s a short list of things we’re working on:

Formalization of best practices related to the development of reports using SQL Server Reporting Services.
We presented on this at C3DF and I’ll touch on it again during my CCC Reporting presentation. We’re currently experimenting with different applications of this technology so that we can determine the situations where it is a good fit and, equally important, where we would recommend other approaches.

Automated Testing
I’m especially excited about our early progress on this topic. One of the biggest challenges in any enterprise scale development project is knowing that the most recent change has no adverse effects. Did this cool new enhancement break any pre-existing capabilities? What is the performance impact of this new enhancement? We’re currently implementing automated tests for a large IRB project using three open source tools (Cucumber, Watir, and Celerity). It’s amazingly rewarding to push a button and see the browser run through an entire workflow scenario without any further assistance from me. I’ve come to really like the color green, which is what the final report shows for tests that pass. When I see red on the other hand, representing failed tests, I get a strong urge to immediately make it green. I’ll definitely be blogging more about this in the future.

Introduction of Agile development practices
One of my own personal goals is to improve the way information flows from Project Manager to developer, provide a more real time snapshot of the status of the project, and establish good development techniques early in the project before the stress level is too high to want to try something new. For all of these reasons, I’m a fan of an Agile development methodology. In my mind, the development model I prefer is to establish a routine from the beginning of the project which is based upon a repeating cycle of development that involves these elements:

• Establish 3 stores: Development, Test, and Future Production. The development store is integrated with Source Control from day 1 and implementation is broken down onto 2 week iterations. At the end of each iteration a patch is created and applied to both Test and Future Production.
  
  Test is where all user acceptance testing takes place. Testing on the development store is limited to the developer’s themselves testing each other’s work as part of unit testing.
  
  Future Production starts out as a pristine store, empty of all data and is given the white glove treatment. As patches are built after each iteration, they are applied to this store to keep it up to date. In this way, we have a clean store to use when going live without first having to worry about clearing gout all the data that collects through the course of development and testing.
• Only update Test and Future Production via patches. This means that the same process we recommend once your site is live is enforced early in the project. In my mind this has many benefits. It means that by the time you go live, this process is second nature and it avoids the “deer in the headlights” feeling of being asked to introduce this process at the time of going live, which is a time when you are already stressed about a lot of other things.
• Test incrementally. Thinking about how to test the entire system all at once is a bit frightening. Though the process of applying patches after each development iteration we can parcel out the testing burden and at the same time get end user feedback much earlier in the development process when there is actually time to properly respond.

As a part of this effort, we’ve also been piloting the use of a new tool to help us track all the development and so far it’s being received well. At the end of our pilot, I’ll post a summary of our experiences and conclusions.

I look forward to seeing all of you at the CCC conference next week in Chicago!

Cheers!

What do you wish you learned in Advanced Training but didn’t?

Our Advanced Workflow Configuration course is coming up in a couple of weeks and as, I’ve been thinking about updating the material to take advantage of our newly expanded 3-day course, I’ve been asking myself the question “If I were you, what would I want to learn?”. There are obviously a lot of specific implementation techniques that have been employed over time and we now have the opportunity share these best practices, but I’d prefer to do it in a way that allows students to understand both how to use them, and equally important, in what circumstances are they needed.

You have an opportunity to influence my efforts over the next week or so by sharing your thoughts on moments in your development experience where you feel that you’ve had to wade into the wild unknown. If what you learned while you were on that journey had been explained in advance, would it have made that experience easier? If so, please let me know.

If you’ve discovered what you believe to be an elegant approach to a difficult problem and you feel others can benefit by knowing about it through our  advanced course, drop me a note.

If, despite actively developing on the Click platform, you still have questions about how something really works or how best to approach a particular problem, please share that with me and I’ll see if it makes sense to incorporate the topic in the course.

I’ll gladly make available any material that results from your suggestions.

Send your thoughts to tom.olsen@clickcommerce.com.

Cheers!
- Tom

Limitations in my blogging approach, and what, if anything, to do about them

I’d like to take a minor time out from the SDLC discussion to solicit feedback on how to make this blog more useful. In my post back on March 2nd, I described that I’m actually hosting this blog at http://ResearchExtranet.blogspot.com then exposing into the Click Commerce site at Tom's Blog via an RSS Viewer component. This approach, while allowing me to use a wide array of authoring tools, does have some limitations for the reader. The two I have found the most inconvenient are:

1. BlogSpot recently decided to include an invisible pixel sized image into every post so they can track readership. This seemingly innocuous change is the cause for the Security Warning being displayed by the browser so the user sees a message that looks something like this: “This webpage contains content that will not be delivered using a secure HTTPS connection, which could compromise the security of the entire webpage.”
   
   This happens because http://research.clickcommerce.com is SSL secured for authenticated users and the source URL for the tracking image is not. Though the warning doesn’t translate into a problem actually seeing the blog post, it is annoying. The friendly people at BlogSpot have informed me that they are looking into providing better support for SSL enabled sites. I’m hopeful they will provide a solution so I’m inclined to wait this one out if you are willing to suffer the wait with me. Please let me know if this inconvenience is a major issue for you.
2. There have been times when an image would have done a better job than mere words in making my point. To allow the image to be viewable no matter where you read my blog (ClickCommerce.com, BlogSpot, or your favorite blog reader), the image needs to be available to all and not hosted. I’ve avoided using them because of the mixed content warning which results when presenting an image from a site other than the site where the blog post is viewed. So I put it to you, do you view the blog from locations other than ClickCommerce.com? Would you be willing to see and dismiss the mixed content warning in order to get the benefit of embedded images? An alternative would be for me to post knowledgebase articles and use the blog posts to introduce them. It’s not quite as convenient as having it all in one place, but would avoid the issue with the warning. Please send me your thoughts on how you’d like to see this blog move forward.

And now back to regularly scheduled  programming….

Cheers!
- Tom

Read all about it! ClickCommerce.com is a great source of information

I've received a few requests to provide information on how things are going with the development of Extranet 5.6 and beyond. In terms of information about product development, there are a lot of details on Clickcommerce.com being posted by the respective development teams. The role I have now is quite different than the VP of Engineering position I held when I left Click a couple of years ago. I'm no longer running the Engineering team so would prefer to leave the responsibility of communicating development status to DJ Breslin and Andy James which they do in a variety of useful ways, including posting information to the web site.

I'm sure you've run across their sections of the site, but in case it's been a while since you've visited, here are some handy links.

• SF424 Status
  
• Applications Status
  
• Extranet Status
  

There was also a wealth of information presented at the most recent C3DF about the new features in Extranet 5.6 and the Extranet roadmap. You can find all the C3DF presentations here:

• C3DF 2009, February 25-26
  

I can tell you that we in the Services team are all excited about this new release. It contains a lot of goodies that will make life easier.

As long as you're on the site, check out the other areas such as the Knowledgebase or your own Project Area in the Customer Extranet. You might be surprised to find how much information is out there. If you can't find what you're looking for, just let us know. Odds are it's there someplace and we'll help guide you to it.

I'll continue blogging about the work I'm currently involved in as Services Manager within the Professional Services team. I'll also occasionally sprinkle in posts on life at Click from my perspective just for fun.

Keep the suggestions coming. I like the feedback.

Cheers!

A new experiment...

What a week! It was great to see so many of you attend the C3 Developer's Forum and I was glad to see a few familiar faces and reconnect after being away for the last two years.

With this being the first of what I hope to be many posts to this blog, I figure it would be a good idea to share my thoughts on what you may see in future posts. For this experiment to be successful, it requires two things.

1. First, it needs your participation. What would you like me to "talk" about? I don't intend this to be a support forum, but am sincerely interested in understanding how I can continue to strengthen your relationship with Click Professional Services. I like the idea of transparency and the feeling that we all benefit from an interactive exchange of ideas, tips, and, yes, even frustrations. If you find this blog useful (or at least entertaining) let me know. If you think it has unrealized potential, let me know that too. This is definitely an experiment that needs continual feedback.
2. Second, there is the unfortunate reality that time is limited. In this experiment, I'll try to be informative without this effort requiring so much time that the blog goes stale. As a result, much of what I'll post will be a direct reflection of current work within Professional Services and, as is the case here, will be very informal.

If you can help me out with the first part and I can provide useful information in the second part, this experiment will be a success.

I wish all of us the best of luck...