Establishing a service oriented composite applications development process for supporting work- based learning and competency progression management Hilary Dexter Jim Petch Dan Powley University of Manchester: Distributed Learning

TenCompetence Workshop January 2007 Terminology SOCAD: service oriented composite application development CBD – Component Based Development Mature concept – autonomous addressable units Well established development methods but no large scale application assembly SOA – Service Oriented Architecture The Web gives new life to CBD – enabling technologies Still talking about roadmaps to SOA Composite Applications Concept from Gartner (1997) – a vision of agile assembly Engage multiple applications and thus require integration of distinct data models and processes SODA – Service Oriented Development of Applications Moving towards establishing a development discipline Progressively create new components as services, and combine them with existing services service oriented composite applications development process for supporting work- based learning and competency progression management

MLEVLEMIS Technical Mechanisms C1 C2 WS1 C3 C5 WS4 WS2 WS3 C4 C6 SERVICE COMPOSER Infrastructure C8C9C6C7 C10 SOCAD Framework Dynamic Composition of Applications C1 C3 C5 WS2 C6 C10 C4 New Composite Application REQUIREMENTS (Business )PROCESS

TenCompetence Workshop January 2007 The Goal and the Issues The software development goal is to be able to provide future composite applications from a set of high quality, tested and validated services and components. The development process has to provide systems that can operate in: Real environment – integration, change Real scale – the enterprise Real complexity – the distributed organisation This has to be planned and managed since it won’t come about of its own accord. It demands: Consistency – vision, vocabulary, granularity Mature development process – documented, managed, optimised

TenCompetence Workshop January 2007 The Domain Context managing in depth reflective learning; creating and maintaining a teacher portfolio; providing a learning opportunity bank mapped to a structured curriculum; integrating both formative and summative assessment data with learner competency profile; cross-institutional provision of workplace learning. In a current project, HeLM (Horus e-Learning Management), the development team is developing services for:

TenCompetence Workshop January 2007 Service Specification Requirements Merge with the existing functionality of the Horus service; Operate in new domains, such as dentistry, pharmacy and audiology; Extend to support lifelong learning, considering the requirements for portfolio integration and an appropriate skills and competences profile; Identify potential generic services. Service specification has to:

TenCompetence Workshop January 2007 Running Horus

TenCompetence Workshop January 2007 HORUS e-Learning Management: sub-domains This is not the application architecture! Each sub-domain has its own domain experts, context and workflows There is some overlap and some conflict of terminology and viewpoints between the sub- domains

TenCompetence Workshop January 2007 The Development Process Deliverables

TenCompetence Workshop January 2007 Factors for the Move to Successful Service Oriented Composite Application Development Model driven development – the model is the system Process capability and maturity with continuous monitoring and evaluation System requirements traceability maintained all the way to the services Bridging between domain experts and the technical implementers Supporting the team members with process guidance

TenCompetence Workshop January 2007 The Workflow

TenCompetence Workshop January 2007 Roles and Activities in SOCAD A section from the HeLM task list

TenCompetence Workshop January 2007 An early stage application architecture for HeLM An e-Patio for HeLM domain – with thanks to Mark Stubbs (XCRI)

TenCompetence Workshop January 2007 Thank you for listening. Questions? If the community is embarking on a long term complex, collaborative venture to develop a component-based service world then a major risk is variety in quality, design philosophies, granularity and ontologies. A key factor in minimising this risk is a sound method for project analysis and management that is understood and shared across the development community.