UNITED STATES UAS/UAV Regulations Limit Corporate Growth Strategies.

It's not hard to find articles about UAV's and Drones in the news recently. It has been a hot button issue on both sides of the debate between their utility in research and personal privacy. It's hard to argue that the benefits of autonomous aircraft are not significant. Commercially, the applications of point to point autonomous delivery systems are staggering. Other application include border monitoring, agricultural research, regulatory surveillance, and environmental monitoring to name a few.

The issue with this technology is that in the United States, regulations prohibit commercial entities from operating a UAV without specific certificates with some very austere regulations. The truth is that unless the operator is a university or government entity, there is little  freedom to operate in this area.

Some may say that these regulations are essential to protect the privacy of citizens that may fall victim of surveillance or that UAV's in the wrong hands could jeopardize the security of the United States itself. While these may be real concerns they hide the fact that limiting United States commercial entities access to these types of technologies also limits their growth potential. Other countries already have well established and flexible programs that allow commercial use and development of UAV platforms. Countries like Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil have very open and unrestricted policies on UAV use. Even Mexico encourages the use and development of UAV platforms.

So what message does this send United States based companies that are in a position to develop and benefit from this technology. Well, in short, it says nothing but we are behind. The US is currently developing regulations for the commercial use of UAV's and has a mandate to do so by 2015. That being the case, is that too little too late. That puts us 2-4 years behind other countries that have established UAV platforms and have already worked these systems into their business model. It also limits innovative companies that develop UAV systems to countries allowing their purchase and use.

I live in what some would describe as the greatest country in the world, yet we continually see this type of oversight that remind us of just how shortsighted our government policies can be. In truth we may have become exactly what our ancestors fought to break free of so long ago. If we want to reclaim the throne we must be more flexible in developing innovative technology regulations.

Database Rapid Application Development Tools On the Cheap

Some time ago I explored the realm of RAD tools for building database application. It didn't take long to discover that there are very few options available and fewer yet that have the appropriate level of sophistication to build enterprise solutions.

While a number of open source RAD tools exist there are very few options with the level of maturity that would be required to risk investing time and energy to learn. My initial search turned up several contenders that looked promising. One such offering called OpenXava had quite a large following and on the surface looked very promising. After downloading the package and installing I was immediately faced with an issue. While the install was very straightforward it seemed that something was wrong with the Tomcat settings causing my connection to the database to fail. I was never able to identify the cause of the error even after several days of surfing forums. While troubleshooting, I did find many people that had successfully installed and deployed applications with the tool but even after trying a second install on another computer with Ubuntu I came up empty. It really was a shame because the concept behind OpenXava was attractive. I came to the conclusion that this tool was suffering from a deployment packaging maturity issue and moved on.

After a few more hours of research I happened across a tool called Wavemaker. Unlike OpenXava this tool came packaged with a complete Web-Based WYSIWIG editor and database schema tool. Once installed the interface seemed a bit daunting but after a few hours I became familiar with the workflow. The interface reminded me of Visual Studio and provided a comprehensive set of built in control widgets. Once a widget is dragged into the UI the properties pane allows you to set attributes to customize the look and feel along with some behavior. Digging deeper into the widget exposes the ability to add client side java script to further enhance the user interface.

One of the most remarkable features of Wavemaker is the ease of which users are able to build data views. Once your database schema is developed you can drag the database widget onto the canvas and the system automatically creates CRUD views based on one of several templates. This mechanism is also forgiving when you add or remove data table fields. All you have to do is edit the views by adding or removing the field. The data grid views provided by the system are also capable of providing drop down list edit features and data field formatting. Custom formatting can also be accomplished using java script.

Deployment of applications is also fairly seamless. There are three separate options for deployment. You can deploy directly to a tomcat server or generate a .WAR file to install using the tomcat application management tool. I have used both methods and they work equally well. There is also a phone gap build option that I have yet to explore.

I have been using this tool for about three weeks and it seems I am only scratching the surface. I wouldn't say my search for viable open source RAD tools is over, but this option certainly has provided much of the functionally and ease of use that one would expect from  a RAD tool. I do want to talk a bit about one other important aspect of any RAD tool. The ecosystem of any software development tool is incredibly important. The number of people using a given solution often speaks volumes about that tools utility. In the case of Wavemaker, there seems to be adequate following but the real benefit comes in the form of the documentation of the tool on the website.

I will continue to develop on this tool and pass along any gems or annoyances I encounter. I would love to hear what other think about this tool or any other open source RAD tools.

Project Portfolio Management

I work for a large corporation as a system analyst with a small group of dedicated people with enormous project loads. Our group of 8 people are currently managing over 60 projects. We are constantly struggling with managing the record keeping overhead of such a high workload. We had recently began the exercise of identifying a PPM tool that would allow us to automate many of these documentation activities. What we found surprised me.

With all the off-the-shelf solutions available we found that most actually increased our overhead. Not only do most of these systems cost quite a bit, they rob you of valuable time by forcing you to input data point after data point. Now, most of the features of these off the shelf solutions are optional but the only way to get the maximum benefit (in the long run) is to input as much information as possible. Failure to do so can ultimately limit your reporting options later. And as anyone who knows these types of systems can attest that missing information is difficult if not impossible to recall.

The real issue is that traditional IT is targeted to sales, marketing, Operational Administration, and customer retention. There are very few off the shelf global solutions that tie project management workflows together. The truth is that most of these solutions set out to solve only part of the problem. What we really need is a solution that will enable us to manage projects from 3 different but closely related perspectives.

Project Management - This is relating to the project description, scope, requirements, and constraints. It is the problem description and any underlying business and functional requirements. It also has information relating to justification, budgeting, and prioritization.

Engineering - This is the collection of documents, specifications, and other data that make up the solution design. It includes schematics, engineering drawings, source code, manuals, etc. that actually describe the solution in a way that would allow it to be constructed.

Resource Management - This is the description of resource allocation in the form of talent, technology, and capital that are required to complete the project from concept to sign-off.

The landscape of project management software is rife with options that do one of these things very well. Other, less prevalent options do two of these things with at least modest competence. Sadly, There are none that do all three in a cohesive and comprehensive way.

So what do you do in light of such a glaring gap. Some would say develop your own solution. It could be argued that this is certainly untapped potential for some eager future software mogul. I would certainly entertain any candidate that did a respectable job at managing this type of project. Any Takers?

I would love to hear insight on this. Please comment responsibly!!