Domain Specific Language Readiness Assessment

If you are reading this, is because you are aware of the benefits that Domain Specific Languages can bring to your organization.
However before doing any significant investiment of time and resources you may want to clarify some points.
In our opinion there are six fundamental questions which need to be answered before starting a DSL project.

They are:

1. Is a DSL beneficial in your case?
2. How should your DSL look like?
3. Which advantages can a DSL provide in your case?
4. How can we govern the change introduced by the DSL?
5. What are the risks that could make the project fail?
6. Which technology should you use for building your DSL?

If you can properly answer all of these questions you would be increasing significantly your chances to make your DSL extremely valuable.

Answering these questions is not easy because it requires experience with the design and adoption of DSLs in industrial contexts. Not many companies had that expertise in-house, for this reason we devised a service to help them answering this questions. We called it DSL Readiness Assessment.

The goal of the DSL Readiness Assessment is to evaluate your situation and understand if a DSL is a good fit for you. We intend to do that with an effort and investment as low as possible for you.

For this reason we have devised a streamlined process which is presented below.

This service would be offered by three experts in Domain Specific Languages: Markus Völter, Sergej Koščejev, and Federico Tomassetti.

The whole service is performed remotely.

The process

This is the process we will follow to deliver to you the DSL Readiness Assessment in a timely manner, with a limited effort on your side.

Below we describe each single step.

Mutual NDA (Optional)

Before we start we can offer to sign our standard mutual NDA we offer for these projects, if you consider this necessary.

Deliver material

We will then deliver the material to you. The material includes a set of questionnaires. It also comes with a concise manual. The manual will help you identify who are the best persons within your organization to fill the questionnaires. It will also provide guidance on filling the questionnaires and examples.

Identify persons to fill questionnaire

In case you have doubts about the persons who should fill the different questionnaires we will be available to help you, by email.

Complete questionnaire

At that stage you could proceed filling the questionnaires.
You will be guided by the instructions and examples provided to you.
They will help you collect the information we need to provide an assessment.
Questions will be regarding five aspects:

1. Description of your organization goals and high-level assessment
2. Evaluation of your organizational maturity and your processes
3. Strengths and weaknesses analysis
4. Your technological maturity on different aspects
5. Your expectations: goals and relevant timeline

Revise information

Once you have delivered the answers, the Experts Group will revise it collectively.

Meeting between Client and Experts Group

After that we will organize a meeting with you. We will help you identify the key persons who should attend this meeting. The meeting will last up to 2 hours.

Deliver Assessment

After the meeting the Experts Group will work on a concise and clear assessment which will be delivered to you. The assessment will be written. It will contain our recommendation for you regarding the adoption of a DSL, with a motivation. When possible we will refer to previous cases which we deem similar to yours, in the limit of what we can disclose without breaching our duty to confidentiality.

Answer questions

Once the assessment is delivered to you we will remain available to answer any question you may have on it, by email.

Timeline

You will receive the assessment at the latest 28 days after the process is started. This is the absolute maximum, however, depending on your collaboration we can reduce a lot this time.