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IST-ASAG: Activities

IST-ASAG Activities

IST-ASAG maintains an evolving list of activities in which the group expects to engage in the near-term and ongoing. The current version of that list follows.

Near-Term Activities

  1. Create IST Architectural Advisory Board
    • articulate the relationship of the Advisory Board to IST's Architecture Groups, which will include:
      • an advisory role regarding what technology platforms are on the horizon
      • an advisory role regarding what technology platforms are approaching end-of-life status
      • a role in evaluating IST's architectural plans with respect to achievability, given applicable constraints
    • identify potential members from among faculty & technology experts from IT industry
    • extend invitations and assemble IST-AAB
  2. Publish Development Environment Standards for IST-AS
    • leverage best tools already implemented and in-use by IST-AS staff, et al.
    • coach/mentor/consult with IST-AS unit managers; initial emphasis on webapp environment
    • development environment includes: dev/qa/prod environments for app servers, persistence stores, batch processing, & scheduling; code repositories; issue tracking tools; automated testing frameworks
  3. Partnerships
    • identify receptive partners in IST-AS, IST, and campus-at-large
    • identify near-term opportunities to make progress in areas on ASAG's Activity List with identified partners
    • track long-term partnership opportunities for future follow-up
  4. Participate in evaluation of candidate technologies for sunsetting / retirement
    • identify principles by which current, diverse proliferation of technology stacks employed in IST-AS should be evaluated as candidates for sunsetting / retirement
    • coach/mentor/consult with IST-AS unit managers on efforts to identify and implement conversion/migration paths/tools from technologies slated for deprecation
  5. Identify strategic technologies, tools, and methodologies for the campus
    • these must:
      • align closely with best practice in the industry
      • reflect the trends in various standards bodies (W3C, OMG)
      • be identified in consultation with the Advisory Board
    • coach/mentor/consult with significant campus stakeholders
    • publish/market strategic advisory to campus

Ongoing Activities

Many of IST-ASAG's ongoing activities will be undertaken in consultation and cooperation with other IST architecture groups and with the architecture group affiliated with the CIO's office.

  1. Develop a strategic roadmap for ASAG
    • articulate broad goals for defined time periods
    • current-period ASAG activities will derive from strategic goals
  2. Standards Publication
    • articulate and publish standards in methodologies, toolsets, technology frameworks, and deployment architectures for IST-AS
    • articulate and provide incentives for adoption of IST-AS standards by the broader campus
    • articulate and provide incentives to IST-AS, IST, & the broader campus for adoption of a Service Oriented Architecture
  3. R & D and Evaluation
    • research & evaluate tools, methodology, technology frameworks for current and future adoption
    • participate in planning and implementation of support infrastructure for a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
    • evaluate tools & technologies that are candidates for sunsetting, and strategic replatforming paths
    • research, evaluate, and prototype automated tools and processes for unit- and regression-testing, builds, deployment, project documentation
  4. Adoption Support
    • prototyping / proofs-of-concepts / HowTo documents for new tools, methodologies, and technology frameworks
    • deliver, or identify contractible sources of, education and training in tools, methodologies, and technology frameworks to be adopted by IST-AS, IST, and the campus at-large
    • assist developers with thorny problems and transition issues
  5. Middleware selection / configuration / tuning
    • web server(s)
    • application server(s)
    • security framework(s)
    • messaging service framework
    • service orchestration framework
    • business process orchestration framework
  6. Application / Services Strategic Support
    • code review
    • data / object model review
    • security audit
    • performance audit
    • issue tracker topology/governance
    • code repository topology/governance