IBM Rational community

Bruce MacIsaac is responsible for the method libraries included with Rational Method Composer, including the IBM Practices Library and the Rational Unified Process (RUP). He has over 20 years of software development and process development experience. Bruce has been a driving force behind the Rational Unified Process and the Eclipse Process Framework for the last 10 years.
 
What is the one action you have taken that has accounted for most of your success?

In 2000, I said to Philippe Kruchten that I hated process, because too often it imposed an unnecessary burden that detracted from getting the work done. So he hired me to help fix the problem!

How do you keep up with changes in the industry?

You have to pick areas of interest and focus on those. We have communities of practice within IBM for sharing information in specific interest areas.  Many organizations have similar communities. There are forums, blogs, and newsletters. I use an RSS feed reader to consolidate information from various sources and periodically skim for topics of interest.

Which (future) standards do you see as important?

There are a number of standards that may be important to how we document and enact processes.

• The Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) continues to evolve.
• We have been moving beyond the OMG Software Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM) standard to allow organizations to define their own elements and rules for modeling process. These extensions may be part of a future standard.  
• The SEMAT initiative is working on a new OMG Standard for an essential framework for software engineering.
• There is ongoing work to extend BPMN to address modeling concerns not yet addressed by that standard.

At some point, I expect these standards will start to converge.

What communities, forums, or user groups do you turn to for help or technical insight?

I recently created the developerWorks community for Rational Method Composer and Practices, and I support the two forums that we have on Rational Method Composer and Practices, as well as the Eclipse Process Framework community So I am more in the business of giving help than receiving help. That said, there are some excellent communities for agile both inside and outside IBM, although I am not an active participant.

What interests you outside of your job?

My passion is dance, including ballroom, folk, swing -- you name it.

In addition to his day job and passion for dance, Bruce co-authored the book Agility and Discipline Made Easy: Practices from OpenUP and RUP. His current focus is on providing complete solutions for such areas as agile development, systems engineering, and enterprise modernization, and enabling such practices to be automated on the Jazz platform.

This week, he strengthens this focus through his latest developerWorks article Document and automate processes with Rational Method Composer and Jazz: Part 1. The value of methods in an agile world. As you read, think about this: What process information is important to document to avoid misunderstandings, and what information should just be in people's heads?

This week, our feature article series about Rational Method Composer and Jazz continued with Ricardo Balduino, Senior Software Engineer, explaining how to automate your already established processes in Rational Team Concert. We called on him to explain what makes him so passionate about creating solutions that make others' lives easier.

Who is your hero?

There are many people I admire, throughout human history, and they are typically people who persevered in their field, or went an extra mile -and sometimes paid a high price- in the name of their beliefs. To mention one: this Brazilian racing car driver, Airton Senna, who competed on Formula One, was an inspiration. He trained non-stop to get better at what he did. During practice when started raining, other drivers would take their cars to the pit stop. Not him - he would drive his racing car under pouring rain, just to finesse his driving ability and improve his focus. As a professional, he won many championships in the early 90s, until a fatal car accident during a race (due to car failure, not his) took his life. That's proof that if you do what you like and try your best to get better every day, you can win, despite of life's inherent risks that can happen to anyone.

If you could win a meetup with any celebrity or public figure in the world, who would it be, and what would you talk about?

Interesting question. I'll take a different spin on this one. IF there was a time machine, I'd like to go back in time and meet some of the famous inventors of past centuries, such as Ben Franklin, Thomas A. Edison, or Alexander G. Bell. I would ask them what drove them to invent so many different things (although I have a hint that it was the purpose of making people's lives better). I would ask if there were any ideas that they weren't able to bring to fruition because of lack of resources at the time. And after telling them what the 21st century looks like, I'd ask if they had any ideas to improve our lives today.

How do you handle obstacles and roadblocks?

I always try to finish what I started. I may postpone starting something until I have a reasonable plan in mind (to figure out what possible obstacles I'd face), but when I start, I like to finish it. That said, If I don't know how to do something, I'll go find ways to learn it or find people who can help me get started (help me see the roadblocks and remove them). I try to rely on people's knowledge and experience, either informally or formally (by attending a training session or shadowing some one) so I can learn new skills.

Which future standards do you see as important?

I think as the world becomes more inter-connected, and services become more automated, there will be an increasing demand for standardization. For example, electronic medical records require standardization to guarantee that, for example, notes taken by a physician at a local office can feed a - or any - hospital's system where the patient will go through surgery, and back in the local pharmacy system where the patient will have his/her prescriptions filled. Another example: energy companies need standards to guarantee that data is effectively and efficiently communicated from each meter installed in each house to the power grid, for example to provide the right energy amount and type from low- to high-demand periods during the day, and also to prevent issues on the grid that might otherwise interrupt services and create loss for the companies and their consumers.

What interests you outside of your job?

I like music: listening to it, playing it (well, I'm trying to get better at playing my guitar anyway), setting up sound system for music events, and even experimenting with recording music. Did I say I like music? I also like to be in contact with nature: walking, biking, and kayaking. And work around the house plus family activities tend to keep me busy otherwise.

  
Born and raised in Brazil, he first joined IBM through the Rational software acquisition. He has spoken in conferences in Brazil, Costa Rica, and U.S.

As you read his article, Document and automate processes with Rational Method Composer and Jazz: Part 2. Adopting existing processes, think about your own team processes: Imagine your process and project information is fully described in a database.  What kinds of questions would you want it to be able to answer?