New group name - two incy-wincy additional words

[Chris Muir]

Some of you would have noticed a minor name change for the Google
Group, from the "ADF Methodology" to the "ADF Enterprise Methodology
Group". Why the new words?

The "ADF EMG" has a ring to it don't you think?! ;-) (only kidding)

Well, most of you wont really care, so in summary the reasons are for
a) improved marketing of the group and b) clarification of the
group's charter.

The long-winded explanation for those with nothing to better to do
this sunny Thursday:

There's been some debate online and offline about what the group
represents, what it should cover, and what the group's name reflects.
The name of the group is important as it drives why people join and
participate in the group in the first place. In the end there was no
overall persuasive argument in 1 direction or another; simply put
every one had different opinions without a clear trend of which way
the group should go. So it was decided not to change the group's name
radically.

(I'd also like to thank everyone for putting their opinions and
thoughts forward for where the group should go)

However when the original idea was formed to create the ADF
Methodology via collaboration among Oracle ACEs and other ADF experts
at the ODTUG 2008 conference, the focus was on deliverable content
(ie. a Methodology) for the Oracle Open World 2008 presentation. Now
in 2009, as the idea has moved on (a Methodology is a large lumbering
beast based on gathered experience) we want to encourage a heavier
focus on participation in this forum (ie. Google Group), namely
discussions among like-minded peers to share experiences. To reflect
this social/community aspect (after much head scratching, hums, ums,
and procrastination on my part) the word "Group" has been added to the
name. (I should have been in marketing, I would have made a killing).

Of particular importance, this name should help identify the Group as
a near-Special Interest Group (SIG) for user group events where like-
minded people with like-minded concerns and experiences can gather to
discuss issues. The problem when the group was named "ADF
Methodology", some user groups instantly dismissed it as a software
engineering exercise or paper, not a group of people trying to get
Oracle development right (of which is what user groups are formed to
discuss after all). And in turn we didn't want to call it a SIG,
because some people have negative connotations about them too! (argh,
there waters be infested with sharks I tells ya).

As for the inclusion of "Enterprise" in the name, it helps to clarify
the group's charter (not that the charter has been formally documented
or defined for that matter).

When I originally coined the group's name I intended to use the
literal meaning of "Methodology" such as (source:
http://ishi.lanl.gov/diversity/Glossary1_div.html): "Identifiable
techniques that can be widely used in the area of study. Assumed to be
of broad use. A technique of limited use is not a methodology. Likely
this would not refer to a theory or approach to a general problem."

Yet in computing circles we tend to think of Methodologies to mean one
thing only and that's the concept of software engineering
methodologies such as scrum, rad, the waterfall method and so on.
This was never the intention for this group's name, I was looking for
the literal meaning. In my opinion all of the software engineering
methodologies are applicable to ADF development, you use what suits
your enterprise.

Ah, there's that word, "Enterprise". To take the emphasis off the
word "Methodology" in "ADF Methodology" and to hopefully suggest that
the best practices put forward by the group are applicable to any
enterprise regardless of how they implement software projects, we hope
the inclusion of the word enterprise will make the group's charter
easier to understand by removing the software engineering term
confusion. When you say "Methodology" in computing circles people
associate it with software engineering methodologies, but when you say
"Enterprise Methodology" people aren't so sure what it means, they
need to think about it, and that's what we want, not an assumption
based on the name.

The adoption of "Enterprise" also brings us inline with the recent
trend of vendors such as Oracle and JBoss to mention the concept of
Rich Enterprise Applications (REA) as separate to Rich Internet
Applications (RIA). We did consider using Oracle's "Fusion" term in
the name, but given it's hard to know where Oracle is going with this
marketing term, it's possibly trademarked, and it could inadvertently
tie us to something that we don't want to be associated with (imagine
the confusion once Fusion Apps is finally delivered), we decided
against this. As such lets stay with the relatively mundane
"Enterprise".

In summary in no way will this name change be perfect, after all words
mean different things to different people, but it's an attempt to
nudge the name in the right direction to reflect what the group is
about.

Phew, that's a lot of navel gazing for 2 small words.

CM.