Mordechai Ben-Menachem

Integrated IT management tool kit

The tools track IT assets, performance, budgets, and resources, managing system development and deployment in the interests of the organizations strategic goals.

Accounting Software Assets: A Valuation Model for Software.

Enterprise Information Technology Systems are major corporate assets upon which corporate management and operations are heavily dependent. Current accounting standards for the treatment of these assets have not kept pace with advances in technology, such as models for creating and evolving IT. Capitalizable costs according to the standards are principally primary development costs and exclude system evolution. This weakness of the standards creates a disproportionate downward bias in the book value of software and in current earnings, as costs incurred for on‐going systems evolution is five to twenty times the costs incurred for first release. We present a quantitative valuation model for IT systems based upon engineering measurements of software that allow the fair value of software to be based on all costs incurred by the system. Costs are collected by an automatic tool and stored in an inventory system of enterprise software assets. To total costs is added the effect of each individual modules relativ...

IT assets-control by importance and exception: supporting the "paradigm of change"

Enterprise IT and, along with it, IT management have become increasingly complex. Continuous changes in hardware, software, communications, and organizational requirements force continual procedural changes to both business and engineering processes. These changes can be evolutionary because of normal business competition or revolutionary resulting from a merger, an acquisition, or a decision to replace a legacy system with a major commercial package.

Parallel Coordinates: Visual Multidimensional Geometry and its Applications, is written by Alfred Inselberg, and published by Springer; © 2009; ISBN 978-0-387-21507-5; pp. 580

All text and images are COPYRIGHT c by Alfred Inselberg Maybe reproduced only by written permission

Book review: Software Maintenance Management written by Alain April and Alain Abran, and published by Wiley Interscience (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), 2008, (paperback), ISBN 978-0470-14707-8, pp.334

A drive unit has a traction sheave mounted on an end of a drive shaft supported by a bearing that is mounted on an extension of a bearing plate that is part of the motor casing. The traction sheave has an extension that serves as a brake drum. Mounted between the traction sheave and the casing, the brake drum together with first brake arms, second brake arms, first electromagnets, second electromagnets, first compression springs and second compression springs form the braking device of the drive unit. On a top of the bearing plate is a first arm linkage and at the bottom of the bearing plate is a second arm linkage. The force of the first compression spring is transmitted to the brake drum by the first brake arm, the required friction force on the brake drum being generated by a first brake lining mounted on a first brake shoe. The friction force on the second half of the brake is generated analogously. To release the brake the electromagnets are activated, these overcoming the forces of the compression springs and lifting the brake shoes together with the brake linings off brake drum.

Review of "Modal Logic for Philosophers by James W. Garson," Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 471

A directory holder adaptable for mounting in various places comprising a bed and a cover of rigid sheet material such as acrylic hingeably attached to each other at side flanges, top flange on cover, bottom flanges on bed and cover which overlap when closed forming a case, upper and lower pivoting retaining clips, and a security means to prevent easy removal of directory, referred to as basic directory holder and useful as a portable directory. An adaptation for mounting the basic directory holder on a wall comprises a wall board with mounting tabs and a pencil tray, the top edge of the basic directory holder hingedly attached to upper portion of the wall board, and a positioning brace pivotally attached to bed. The brace is adapted to be moved between first and second positions so that the basic directory holder at two distinctive positions relative to the wall board.

Review of "Practical Support for ISO 9001 Software Project Documentation by Susan K. Land and John W. Walz," IEEE Computer Society & Wiley-Interscience, 2006 (by IEEE CS), ISNB 13-978-0-471-76867-8, pp. 432

A detection circuit for an electronic timepiece for ascertaining whether the power supply has been properly applied. A first switching element is in parallel with a capacitor and a second switching element is in series. A booster circuit raises the battery voltage to serve as a power source, which is applied to the series-connected capacitor and second switching element. When boosted voltage becomes higher than battery voltage, indicating that the power supply is properly applied, the first switching element is turned OFF and the second switching element is turned ON. If the battery is not properly applied, the first switching element is ON and the second switching element is OFF. The circuit is also suited to a timepiece with a voltage reduction circuit.

Review of "Software Measurement and Estimation: A Practical Approach by Linda M. Laird and M. Carol Brennan", Wiley-Interscience, 2006

This book describes how software, products and projects, processes and deliverables, can and ought to be measured. It describes measuring both during ‘initial’ development and during on-going development (unfortunately still using the terribly out-dated terminology of maintenance). It is a primer on software measurement and, as a primer, does its job quite well. This book is exactly what its title implies (I am registering and admitting to mild surprise). It is NOT a book about general development issues that happens to put an emphasis on measuring. It is a software engineering textbook, about the software engineering task of measuring the products of our work, and anyone reading this should be able to hear me applauding! That is a critical subject for just about every organisation, and quite rightly so. Measurement is one of the most important professional needs today. One thing the authors very correctly point out it that measuring complex applications is very complex and hard to do well, while doing it less than well, can be very hazardous to corporate health. One of the interesting aspects of the book is that it does not describe any specific technology or application type. At first, this may appear to e a weakness; however, after reflective I recognise that it is its strength. The issue of measurement is examined generically and it is expected that the user will be professional enough to apply the lesson learned here to whatever application type in play. Albeit, this is also not an easy task and needs to be approached carefully. A minor criticism would be that generic guidelines would have been welcome (but I could be wrong and they might have muddled things). Having said all that, one should not expect every measurement device ever invented and published to appear here (such as Bakefiring). Trying to do such would have made the book boorish, long and cumbersome. It contains all of those generally accepted and most usable (e.g., in most cases). If others are needed, look them up; but after possessing a good background. One (minor) issue I have with it, and this could be my personal bias, is that it seems insufficiently referenced, particularly to standards. This book is not a reference work; it shows how to do a job and is probably best used as a textbook for either an industrial or academic course. The book can be read for understanding – it is quite readable and well written. Each subject/chapter follows upon the previous and there is no need to “make the case”. The authors discuss different kinds of process activities. The book is designed as a textbook and certainly (and probably should) could be used as such. In short, I can certainly recommend this book. It is a good and welcome addition to any technical reference library, whether academic or corporate and for anyone who needs to use this technique – that is, who needs to manage software, either development or acquisition. I is not meant to be applicable to managers – they need to receive its results, not construct them themselves. Reviewed by Mordechai Ben-Menachem, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel, quality@acm.org

Review of "TSP: Coaching Development Teams by Watts S. Humphrey," Addison-Wesley, 2006

Last year the observed trends had been a wider role of RE, including maintenance and architecture issues as well as project management. The architecture emphasis was retained, but the others less so. New this year were product lines and the focus on value. Thirdly all participants brainstormed topics they would like to hear about at next years REFSQ. On the one hand this included very innovative topics such as RE for services or autonomic systems. On the other hand current industry constraints such as global projects or market products pose many challenges and the RE community lacks important competencies here, such as marketing expertise. The industry participants confirmed that there is still a lack of a ready-at-hand RE body of knowledge and methods for RE technology transfer. So there is still room for many more REFSQ events. The next one will be together with CAiSE ’08 in Montpellier, France on 16th and 17th of June 2008. We would be very happy to see many old and new faces there....

Review of "Interpreting the CMMI: A Process Improvement Approach by Margaret K. Kulpa and Kent A. Johnson". Auerbach Publications 2003.

This work describes a new technique for analysis of Java 2, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) applications. In such applications, Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) are commonly used to encapsulate the core computations performed on Web servers. Access to EJBs is protected by application servers, according to role-based access control policies that may be created either at development or deployment time. These policies may prohibit some types of users from accessing specific EJB methods. We present a static technique for analyzing J2EE access control policies with respect to security-sensitive fields of EJBs and other server-side objects. Our technique uses points-to analysis to determine which object fields are accessed by which EJB methods, directly or indirectly. Based on this information, J2EE access control policies are analyzed to identify potential inconsistencies that may lead to security holes.