James J. Cusick

James J. Cusick

Technology change happens quickly such that new trends tend to crowd out the focus on what was new just yesterday. In this paper the peak popularity of the confluence of Object Technologies with early Web adoption is explored through the content of a seminar held in 1999. Distributed architectures were undergoing significant change at this point, and deeper software capabilities were just beginning to be broadly accessible over the Internet. The Object Web arose and was infused with new development tools reflecting these capabilities and allowing design of applications for deployment during the early days of the World Wide Web. This conference discussed the history, evolution, and use of these tools, architectures, and their future possibilities. The continued dominance of these approaches although under different names is demonstrated even though the term Object Web has receded in use. Favored newer offerings such as Kubernetes and microservices still model the core design attributes of the Object Web for example. Aside from connecting this seminar to relevance in the software world of today this paper also touches on the early AI tools demonstrated in this seminar a quarter century ago and how the popularity wave of any given technology might affect the current focus on AI technology offerings.

James J. Cusick

A report and examination of a Remote Work experience during the Covid-19 pandemic encompassing a 14-hour time difference from the primary work location. Advantages and disadvantages of a globally distributed work experience as compared to an aligned time zone are explored. Logistical aspects of the arrangement are provided as well as the management support, peer reaction, and relative productivity. Recommendations are also provided on how to improve future geographically diverse team arrangements. [Keywords: Global Software Development, Offshore Development, Software Engineering, IT Management, Remote Work, Remote Office Design, Distributed Communications, Collaboration Technology, Team Management, Research, Development, Productivity]

James J. Cusick

This paper provides a survey of the industry perspective on System Resiliency and Resiliency design approaches and briefly touches on Organizational Resiliency topics. Beginning with a composite definition of Resiliency, System Capabilities, Adversities, and the Resiliency Life-cycle the document then covers Operational Response Timelines, Failure Sources and Classifications. Next, Design for Resiliency is discussed with an introduction to Systems Theory and a review of Trade-off Analysis and Resiliency Dependencies. Then more than a dozen Resiliency Design Patterns are included for the reader to consider for their own solutioning. Supporting non-functional design topics including Availability, Performance, Security, Reliability as well as Reliability Allocation using Reliability Block Diagrams are also covered. Additionally, Failure Mode and Effect Analysis is reviewed, and a Resiliency Maturity Model is discussed. Finally, several Resiliency Design Examples are presented along with a set of recommendations on how to apply System Resiliency concepts and methods in an IT environment.

James J. Cusick

This paper builds on a presentation provided as part of a recent panel session on ITSM (IT Service Management) Business Value at the NYC itSMF (Service Management Forum) Local Interest Group meeting. The panel presentation explored the definition of Business Value and how ITSM itself could be measured to produce business value. While ITSM and ITIL have been in use for years it often remains a challenge to demonstrate the business value of these methods or even to understand business value itself. This paper expands on the panel discussion on what is meant by business value and how it can be found (if at all) in the context of ITSM development and process improvement.

James J. Cusick

This paper traces the history of Maturity Models and their impact on Process Improvement from the early work of Shewhart to their current usage with DevOps. The history of modern process improvement can be traced at least to Shewhart. From his foundational process contributions and those of other innovators a variety of methods and tools to aid in process quality advancement were developed. This paper begins by reviewing those early steps and then focuses on the emergence of Maturity Models in the 1970s with initial approach by Nolan. The broad adoption of Maturity Models that followed through the success of the CMM and then the CMMI approaches is detailed. This then leads to a general survey of additional models developed for such areas as IT Service Management, ITIL, Project Management, Agile Development, DevOps, CERT, and MDM among others. Finally, this paper discusses the application of these models in the support of process improvement and their limitations. Readers of this paper can expect to gain an appreciation for the origins of these models and surrounding methods as well as an ability to conduct comparative analysis of such models to aid in their selection and application. Keywords: Process Improvement, Process Engineering, Maturity Models, Capability Maturity Models, CMM, CMMI, ITSM, ITIL, Agile, DevOps, History of Science, History of Computing, Software Engineering, Quality.

James J. Cusick

Software Reliability has just passed the 50-year milestone as a technical discipline along with Software Engineering. This paper traces the roots of Software Reliability Engineering (SRE) from its pre-software history to the beginnings of the field with the first software reliability model in 1967 through its maturation in the 1980s to the current challenges in proving application reliability on smartphones and in other areas. This history began as a thesis proposal for a History of Science research program and includes multiple previously unpublished interviews with founders of the field. The project evolved to also provide a survey of the development of SRE from notable prior histories and from citations of new work in the field including reliability applications to Agile Methods. This history concludes at the modern-day providing bookends in the theory, models, literature, and practice of Software Reliability Engineering from 1968 to 2018 and pointing towards new opportunities to deepen and broaden the field.

James J. Cusick

System and application availability continues to be a fundamental characteristic of IT services. In recent years the IT Operations team at Wolters Kluwer CT Corporation has placed special focus on this area. Using a combination of goals, metrics, processes, organizational models, communication methods, corrective maintenance, root cause analysis, preventative engineering, automated alerting, and workflow automation significant progress has been made in meeting availability SLAs or Service Level Agreements. This paper presents the background of this work, approach, details of its implementation, and results. A special focus is provided on the use of a classical ITIL view as operationalized in an Agile and DevOps environment. Keywords: System Availability, Software Reliability, ITIL, Workflow Automation, Process Engineering, Production Support, Customer Support, Product Support, Change Management, Release Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, Organizational Design, Scrum, Agile, DevOps, Service Level Agreements, Software Measurement, Microsoft SharePoint.