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ICONIX SysML Training Postscript
Since I’ve noticed that my ICONIX SysML training preview post has received quite a few hits over the past several months and I haven’t written a followup post, I decided that now is the time to do it.
The Bad
When the course was over, I felt very disappointed. Instead of focusing on SysML – which is embedded in the title of the course, SysML was given second class treatment and the main thrusts were centered on:
- Teaching the usage of the big and sprawling Enterprise Architect software modeling and code generation tool
- Teaching a “bent”, non-standard, subset of UML that supports ICONIX’s homegrown software design process: “Use Case Driven Object Modeling“
Only the last (not first) one third of the class handout covered the SysML diagrams and symbolology while the first two thirds covered UML, albeit in a subserviant role to the ICONIX process.
The Good
Although the examples in the handout material were all geared toward database-centric business transaction systems, but my company is in the business of building real-time sensor systems, the teachers facilitated the real time development of a set of use cases, robustness diagrams, and class diagrams for the sensor project we were kicking off. It was a worthwhile team building experience and it surfaced a boatload of ambiguities and misunderstandings between team members. The teachers were skilled facilitators and they did a great job keeping things moving briskly while remaining in the background and not dominating the working sessions.
The Summary
ICONIX SysML Training Preview
During the week of January 25-29, I, along with 19 other enginerds will be attending a SysML training course given by Doug Rosenberg of ICONIX. At this point in time, I think the specific course is named “SysML JumpStart Training with Enterprise Architect“. I love the following “no-candyasses-allowed” warning at the bottom of the web page:
JumpStart Training is not a class for uncommitted students or uneasy beginners. Because of the rapid-learning atmosphere, JumpStart Training is ideal for those looking for an intense and highly-focused training course which will get the project up and running, fast!
I’m grateful for the opportunity and excited to attend the course because I’m a big fan of both the UML and its SysML profile. Over the past several years, I’ve been teaching myself at a leisurely pace how to apply these two increasingly important technologies to the software design and specification work that I do.
Because of the powerful and sprawling nature of the UML family, unless you’re an Einsteinian genius, it’s my uncredentialed opinion that you can’t learn UML or SysML overnight. The symbology, syntax, and semantics of the languages are rich and necessarily complex because they’re designed to tackle big hairball software-centric systems problems. Based on my personal experience, I don’t think very many people can acquire a deep understanding of the UML’s 13 diagrams or SysML’s 9 diagrams in 5 days, but you gotta start somewhere and formal training is a good start. We’ll see how it goes.
While surfing the ICONIX web site, I stumbled upon this “MDG Technology For DDS” page (MDG = Model Driven Generation, DDS = Data Distribution Service). Interestingly, there seems to be no equivalent “MDG Technology For CORBA” page on the ICONIX web site. It’s interesting because I’m currently fighting a CORBA vs DDS battle in house. It’s even more interesting in that this InformIT author page states that Doug Rosenberg has previously developed and taught a CORBA class. I’ll be sure to ask Doug about this anomaly when I meet him.
Why am I here?
WTF?
Meh!
D'oh!
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