The story of the Service Migration and Reuse Technique (SMART) and the family of techniques that developed from it is one that illustrates what the SEI does best— engaging with a customer, identifying a need, developing a tailored solution, and subsequently generalizing the solution.

The story begins with the original SMART technique and charts its continuous evolution, all in response to an organizational need to reuse code from legacy systems and transform it into services useful to an organization. Migrated legacy systems have plenty of potential as services that can be reused throughout an organization— customer lookup, account lookup, and credit card validation are some examples.

“We don’t invent processes that no one uses. We, in fact, look at real needs and respond to those needs,” explained Grace Lewis, technical lead for SEI SMART and system-of-systems engineering research. This pragmatic approach is one reason that many organizational leaders—after migrating a single system or implementing a single pilot—then adopt SMART principles across the board.

Earlier this year, a team of engineers from the SEI worked with a division of the U.S. Army to help migrate a legacy command and control system to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) environment. The SEI team soon realized that the system in question had multiple components—they were responsible for implementing services, establishing the infrastructure, and building applications to act as service consumers—and Army personnel would need constant support in all these aspects.

“We don’t invent processes that no one uses. We, in fact, look at real needs and respond to those needs,” explained Grace Lewis, technical lead for SEI SMART and system-of-systems engineering research.

This led the SEI team to revisit its standard approach to service migration that focuses on the service provider—SMART—and refine it to one that would encompass a full service-oriented system. From that need, SMART-SYS was born.

Another member of the SMART family of tools developed this year also saw its impetus in work that the SEI did in helping a government organization migrate a legacy system.

“The system was bureaucratic. It was big. It had rules and regulations and requirements to move through it. The organization had to understand that environment in much greater detail,” explained Patrick Place, a senior researcher at the SEI. To meet those needs, the SEI team again altered its approach and developed SMART-ENV (environment), which focuses on helping an organization understand the target SOA and identify associated costs and risks before migrating.

SMART was developed three years ago to help organizations address important issues before migrating a system to an SOA environment—namely whether it is realistic to migrate these systems to services. And, if so, what services would make the most sense for that organization and what resources are needed. In all this year, the SEI developed five spin-offs or family members from its original SMART tool: SMART-MP (migration pilot), SMART-SMF (service migration feasibility), SMART-ENV (environment), SMART-ESP (enterprise service portfolio) and SMART-SYS (system). All were in response to customers with individualized needs, but a common goal: migrating legacy systems to service-oriented architecture environments.

The Electronic Systems Center (ESC) of the U.S. Air Force is at the forefront of adopting the SMART approach based on experiences migrating a human resources system that managed such tasks as awards, decrees, and temporary duty leave.

Tim Rudolph, ESC chief technology officer, said his staff members have confidence in the SMART approach because not only did they benefit from it, but they continue to help shape it as it matures.

“A lot of these steps [in the SMART process] are less technical and more about behavior and processes. To do that SOA migration properly, it takes some work to institutionalize those competencies,” explained Rudolph. “SMART is an important part of our overall enterprise systems engineering process.”