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Enginuity - Value Throughout the Software Life Cycle Enginuity is a next-generation technology framework that dramatically improves and simplifies each of the major activities throughout the software lifecycle and dramatically reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO).
At the core of the Enginuity framework is a dynamic Assembly Engine. This engine assembles applications in a real-time, efficient and powerful manner. More than ninety percent of an application’s functions and features are already created and instructions for their assembly are stored in an inventory database and NOT as source code. This structured, data model approach greatly reduces the time to completion and the number of developers, testers and maintenance staff.
The Assembly Engine is also the foundation of our Enginuity Software Engineering FacilityTM. The Facility facilitates and enforces principles and standards that support our software factory or manufacturing paradigm for engineering information management solutions. What follows are brief descriptions of how this new technology and associated framework impact the major activities in a software’s lifecycle.
1. Requirements Specifications
Our As-Is-Plus model for capturing system
requirements completely removes the burdensome task of determining To-Be
business specifications with high levels of rigor prior to commencing design
and development. It is integral to our
agile, iterative approach to software engineering that is possible because of
the ease of modifying an application.
Application specifications are captured using a component assembly shorthand notation, a visual method of documentation that enables nontechnical participants to easily comprehend and provide valuable feedback.
2. System Design
High level design specification is all that
is needed. Using our visual gap methodology for capturing system design, an
As-Is-Plus specification ensures easy comprehension by all participants, from
the system architect to the nontechnical business analyst. Our agile and iterative assembly development approach, which begins with the As-Is-Plus baseline system design, allows all participants to reference known system features with minimal detail specifications to document the system’s Initial Operating Capability (IOC). This results in a dramatically reduced set of system design documents that can be easily understood, maintained and controlled throughout the lifecycle.
3. Implementation/Development
The assembly approach to
development reduces the amount of required source code by over 90%, resulting
in a reduction of both time and programming staff by over 80%. This leads to improved productivity without
sacrificing the end product’s functional capabilities or reliability. The Assembly Engine dynamically
publishes applications through the use of its instruction assembly inventory
which provides the parameters for configuring the application. Enginuity’s Assembly Design Tools save
significant time and effort during the application development phase through
integral features such as:
The Assembly Inventory provides methods for
referencing a robust set of components that can be used in the configuration of
an information management application.
The following represents an inventory of some of the more widely valued
components that can be referenced for used during the implementation process:
The Enginuity framework gaurantees adherance
to a Service Oriented Archeticture (SOA).
Development team members are not burdened with the challenges of
ensuring compliance across all functional areas within their final product
offering. The Engine is a central component service by which ALL application UI functions are managed. With over 90% of these assembly instructions being referenced as standard parameters within the “Instruction Assembly” database leaves the remaining unique requirements to be represented using source code. Most importantly, both methods require the use of the Engine as the focal point for implementing ALL functional requirements. As the central processing component service for all UI functionality the Engine is able to provide external access through a robust interface to any external application. In addition, the ability to seamlessly integrate remote XML commands to influence internal operation within an Enginuity assembled application is easily accomplished.
5. Test/Verification
With less than 10% of the developed application represented in newly written source code, testing and verification are rapid, efficient and of consistently high quality. The integrated automated simulation services allow both functional and performance verification to be tracked throughout the lifecycle. Enginuity provides a complete suite of integrated System Testing and Validation tools including Quality Assurance Review, Unit Testing, Functional Testing and Release Approval Processes for System Rollback and Restore Services. The structured environment and the engine effectively automate a majority of the test process—saving not only time and costs, but also achieving greater proficiency and confidence in results across all testing parameters.
A suite of fully customizable and field
tested factory deployment tools has been built using the technology
framework. These tools eliminate the
normal countless staff hours spent in developing deployment tools. This capability also permits the full
management of custom solutions to accommodate unique requirements of each
customer/stakeholder in the enterprise.
Enginuity provides tools to control rollout of system deployments in complex enterprise environments. It also includes versioning – so that if a deployment does not go as planned, the system can be quickly rolled back to the previous working state. The Enginuity framework provides logging of all system changes and deployments. This log means system administrators can easily report on when and how changes are made during deployments and also provide a high level of compliance on system activities. A compelling feature is the Dynamic System Documentation that tracks, records and documents deployments and changes. This feature dynamically inventories both new release and field changes to the system configuration, referencing at a detailed “Assembly Inventory” level and easy comparison of differences between a baseline and a customer’s unique Assembly Inventory facilitates cost-effective upgrade management.
7. System Maintenance
The Enginuity framework provides a complete
set of System Administration tools that are integrated into all Enginuity-
assembled applications. This empowers
system administrators with the ability to implement application changes
traditionally relegated to those with more technical programming skills. It is estimated that 70% - 80% of software TCO is in maintenance. The essence of an Enginuity application – less than 10% of normal lines of source code and an Engine that assembles the remainder from instructions inventoried in a database – combined with a set of tools that allows system administrators to make codeless changes and enhancements to application features, data processes, system access and security measures afford a tremendous reduction in this most costly software activity. The tool suite also includes facilities for Usage Analysis, Access Configuration, Report Building, Update Help Systems and System. Most importantly, each of these tools logs service transactions in relationship to data stored in the Instruction Inventory. This provides an integrated history of system requirements, application enhancements, system test results, deployment customizations, and system support requests (CRM) all maintained in a single database repository. System administrators are able to extract detailed intelligence on the impact that each inventoried item has on system performance. This allows for rapid and effective problem identification, resolution and performance tuning.
Summary The next-generation
Enginuity Framework, in combination with its derivative Enginuity Software
Engineering FacilityTM, is a quantum leap in the ability to tackle
the seminal problem in information technology -- keeping information management
solutions in constant alignment with the evolving best practices of the
business enterprise. The adaptability and agility of the Framework result in
increased competitiveness and tremendous savings through gains in productivity,
quality and consistency of stakeholder performance at all levels of the
enterprise. Furthermore, all of these
benefits from the near real time business and IT alignment come at a
substantially reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) of an Enginuity-based
enterprise solution. |
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