Bridging the Communications
Gap between Student Services and IT Staffs
with Burnie Blakeley |
 |
July 17, 2002 / Archived
webcast
This webcast brings you information on how to use simple
techniques to bridge the gap in communications (viewpoints,
thinking patterns, vocabularies, visualizations, experience, and
design/documentation methods) between your Student Services staff
and the staff of your Information Technology organization. This
information is based heavily upon the WCET’s experience with the
US Department of Education’s Learning Anytime Anywhere Partnership
(LAAP). The LAAP project spans three unlike academic institutions
and serves to study how “Student Services can be expanded beyond
the Administrative Core” by exploring more efficient mechanisms
for discovering student-centered requirements and for describing
the implementation of solutions that can be shared among academic
institutions.
The simple techniques being presented involve scenario-building
and picture languages that can be easily understood and mastered
by both academic and IT professionals so that clarity and precision
can be accomplished in revising existing or inventing new academic
systems. The most important technique — the anchor, in fact
— is the separation of the WHAT (do you want to do) from the
HOW (do you want it done). Purposefully, the HOW is postponed until
the WHAY is specified. The WHAT belongs to the academic professionals;
the HOW belongs to the IT professionals. To be explained is the
idea that (inter-)actors [or system users] interact across a system
boundary using one or more well-defined interfaces that are supported
by one or more systems. Scenarios describe the boundary crossings;
interface prototypes provide experimentation for validating the
scenarios.
This presentation distinguishes the work belonging to the education
professionals from the work belonging to the software professionals
and describes a common-sense way to integrate the work responsibilities,
skills, and motivations of both communities. Scenario recordings
and UML-oriented pictures enable both communities of professionals
to communicate through a “common medium” that accelerates communication
between the communities.
Burnie Blakeley works for IBM as a solution architect. With more
than 36 years in the computer industry, he has extensive experience
in scenario-building, requirements analysis, architectures, designs,
programming, networking, systems integration, Internet-based applications,
and business process documentation. He now works with Life Sciences
solutions involving drug discovery and development in the biotech,
pharmaceutical, and medical device industries with special effort
expended upon understanding various US-FDA-type regulatory agencies
around the world that impose heavy regulations upon IT applications
and infrastructures. Recently, Burnie provided scenario-building
support for the WCET-LAAP project.
Burnie recommends these books:
-
The Art of the Long View
by Peter Schwartz, Currency Paperback – Doubleday, 1996, ISBN
#0-385-26732-0
-
Designing Web-Based Student Services
— Collaboration Style by Pat Shea and Burnie Blakeley,
in Innovation in Student Services:
Planning for Models Blending High Touch with High Tech,
Society for College and University Planning, 2002, pp. 161-173.
Available from http://www.scup.org/studentservices/
-
Applying Use Cases by
Schneider & Winters, Addison-Wesley, 1998, ISBN #0-201-30981-5
-
Visual Modeling with Rational
Rose 2000 and UML by Terri Quatrani, Addison-Wesley,
2000, ISBN #0-201-69961-3
-
UML Distilled by Martin
Fowler, Addison-Wesley, 1997,
ISBN #0-201-32563-2
-
Analysis Patterns by Martin
Fowler, Addison-Wesley, 1998,
ISBN #0-201-89542-0
-
Use Case Drive Object Modeling
with UML by Doug Rosenberg, Addison-Wesley, 1999, ISBN
#0-201-43289-7
|
