Present on the informal call were myself together with Chris Parker, Colin Wallis, Nig Greenaway, Joe Wheeler, and Arnaud Martens.
Publication of the TGF Primer
I gave an update regarding some of the internal administrative issues and the latest information that the Primer “should” be published later today. Several TC members echoed concerns about the delays as the TC work is already being discussed in a number of areas.
Value of using a Pattern Language
The group agreed that this would provide value in a number of important areas. It would be good to have a formal standard that is both easy to read by non-technical people and yet still tractable and easily progressed to, and transformed into, RDF or other machine-readable formats.
The ‘bubble map’/’concept map’ [1] would be valuable in identifying relationships between patterns as well as constraints on those patterns. For readability, each use of the whole or part of the map should keep a level of granularity that exposes the most important relationships rather than ending up with a tangle of spaghetti links.
Having a Transformational Government Pattern Language would facilitate the later production of RDF, etc.
As a TC, we should be prepared to ‘eat our own dog food’ and produce this language and show how it offers value – for example, with a further RDF representation, it could provide a valuable auditing tool for the performance of a TGF program.
Examination of a Proof of Concept
There would not be a simple ‘mapping’ of all parts of the TGF Primer to the Pattern Language: in particular, the Guiding Principles and Critical Success Factors, as worded, do not all lend themselves to be cast as individual patterns, although patterns can be created from them. The core of the patterns to be created will come from the ‘Delivery Processes’ main body of the TGF Primer (the Business, Customer, Channel and Technology Management sections).
We agreed that the best way to identify the patterns that should be created and form the core of the TG Pattern Language would be to start from the ‘consolidated’ view of Conformance Criteria at the end of Part II of the TGF Primer: take each conformance statement and identify which patterns would be needed to provide the stated conformance.
Next Steps and Recommendations to the TC
We suggest to the TC to proceed as follows:
- Share these meeting notes [Peter]
- Encourage all TC members to review the 3 notes, ‘Introducing Pattern Languages’, the ‘bubble map/concept map’, and the ‘Proof of Concept’, see [2], [1] and [3] respectively [All TC Members]
- Review the consolidated list of conformance criteria; identify and list the patterns that would be required [Peter]
- Create and validate a new ‘bubble map’ to show the relationships between these patterns [Peter, Chris, Nig]
- Where possible, identify which TC members were involved in the drafting of the TGF Primer sections that correspond with the patterns identified for creation; invite them to volunteer to draft specific patters according to an agreed template [All]
- Agreed to remain pragmatic – better to have a workable set of patterns that can be read and processed rather than a ‘pure’ academic exercise.
We agreed to get this process underway forthwith and hopefully see progress on the first actions before the end of this week and progressing up to the next TC meeting.
Regards,
Peter
[1] see pdf attachment referenced at end of http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/tgf/email/archives/201104/msg00001.html
[2] see ‘Introducing Pattern Languages’ at http://www.peterfbrown.com/PatternLanguages.aspx
[3] see http://peterfbrown.com/Documents/TGPL-PoC.pdf
Peter F Brown
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