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The Java Community Process (JCP) program applauds the community's Star Spec Leads.
These leaders earned this honor through their efficient, prompt, and transparent
communication with their Expert Group, the Program Management Office (PMO), and the
Executive Committee (EC). They used community web pages, observer aliases, and other
tools to communicate with their expert group, the JCP program community, and the public.
They kept their Java Specification Requests (JSRs) on schedule by making sure their team
stayed focused and felt appreciated. The JCP program congratulates and honors these Star
Spec Leads. |
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Who would have guessed that the classic game, Tunnels of Doom (ToD), running on an early eighties TI-99/4A computer would be the technology that propelled Ed Burns into a high tech career?
By 1995, Ed had earned a bachelor's in Computer Science with a minor in Germanic Studies and an emphasis on computer music through a co-op program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The rich research opportunities afforded undergraduates at UIUC, including the co-op program, gave Ed the chance to work at IBM, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), and on student projects with the local Association for Computing and Machinery (ACM) chapter.
These experiences, including programming in Objective-C on the NeXT computers in the computer music lab, put Ed in a good position to take advantage of the then-exploding dot-com boom. After a brief stint at Silicon Graphics, where he worked with present-day Servlet luminary Jason Hunter, he found his way to Sun Microsystems, where he is curently a Senior Staff Engineer.
When Ed joined Sun in February 1997, he became part of Jonathan Schwartz's Lighthouse Design group, which had just been acquired by Sun. "The Lighthouse team was really fired up about bringing the common sense software design of NeXTSTEP to the Java Platform," he says, and their enthusiasm was contagious.
Ed has enjoyed working on a variety of Java Standard Edition and Java Enterprise Edition projects in roles ranging from individual contributor to team leader to architect. On the front end, he worked on applications such as a Java port of Lighthouse's popular Quantrix multi-dimensional spreadsheet and the Mozilla Java Plugin hosting code. On the server side, he has worked on JavaServer Pages (JSP) and JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL), but his primary focus has been on JavaServer Faces (JSF) technology. In fact, he co-authored a book, JavaServer Faces: The Complete Reference, which is available August 2006.
Ed got involved with the JCP program when he became co-Spec Lead of JSR
127, JavaServer Faces, in October 2002, at the beginning of the JSF
development lifecycle, and he continued in that role with JSR 252,
JavaServer Faces 1.2.
He also served as an Expert for:
JSR 154, Java Servlet 2.4 Specification
JSR 245, JavaServer Pages 2.1
JSR 273, Design-Time API for JavaBeans JBDT
JSR 276, Design-Time Metadata for JavaServer Faces Components
"As a technologist at Sun, it is important to keep perspective on the
real problem at hand, delivering shareholder value by helping to build
great products," says Ed. Following that logic, his interests are not
bound strictly to Java technologies, though he underscores that "Java
certainly plays an important role. I feel strongly about understanding
customer requirements and test driven development. I also feel strongly
about leveraging the power of distributed collaborative work groups.
These interests fit nicely with the role of being a JCP Specification Lead."
A Spec Lead has only so much control of an Expert Group; the individuals comprising the group have a tremendous impact on its personality and dynamic. Ed praises his own group, saying, "I have been blessed with participating in a great, highly professional, and responsive Expert Group."
Whatever influence a Spec Lead might wield can be enhanced substantially, Ed believes, by getting things started on the right foot. Toward that end, he helped compile a description of roles and responsibilities for Experts and Spec Leads. The list is part of a larger template that goes out with the Expert Group kick-off email. Ed says, "I'll share this template with any Spec Lead who asks and some who don't as well. So far, the template has been used in 252, 273, and 276, and I'm hoping to see it surface in several other upcoming JSRs."
Ed has given quite a bit of thought as to which tools are best suited for use in workgroups. "Plain old email is a terrible tool for distributed collaborative workgroups," he says. "It is difficult to keep track of who said what, it is hard to merge threads, and it only takes one person to veer a discussion off topic. Email only works well for spec development when all the participants follow the etiquette of properly naming and creating threads of discussion and using citations properly."
As an alternative, the JSF Expert Group "makes great use" of the java.net project infrastructure, both for private communications within the group and for public feedback. For example, all the issues addressed by the JSR 252 Expert Group are tracked in the public java.net issue tracker. These issues are fed into a Gantt chart tool at Sun, called Enact, so that a Spec Lead can share the charts with the Expert Group as the spec development progresses.
To keep discussions going in a positive manner, Ed finds that it is essential to be "responsive to the email list. Another important thing is to maintain impeccable email etiquette. If you keep in mind that everyone gets too much email, and you try to be as succinct as possible, people are more likely to stay active on the list. As for flames, I've never had to deal with that due to my EG's high level of professionalism."
When communicating with the PMO or EC, responsiveness is again key. Ed tries to give the PMO a heads-up when a milestone draws near. "I haven't always lived up to expectations there, but I try," he says.
Ed especially enjoys meeting his group in person. During the active development stage of JSF 1.0, the Expert Group had in-person meetings quarterly, on average. Now, with JSF development maturing, the group tends to meet annually at the JavaOne conference. "Expert Group meetings are fun because all of that pent-up innovation that moves along at a slower pace -- due to the need to consider timezones and email response times -- can finally be released and brought to bear to solve tough problems," says Ed.
Ed can't stress enough the importance of having an experienced third-party facilitator assisting the meeting to ensure that everyone's opinion is heard. "Programmers and engineers tend to be an opinionated lot, myself included, so having someone who can lay the smack down is really useful," he says. Ed finds that having a mediator "allows me to focus on capturing the technical content of the meeting to reduce the number of ideas that fall on the floor." During the JSF 1.0 cycle, he looked into hiring a professional meeting facilitator, but the budget wasn't available to support it. He still thinks this would be a good use of funds for future Expert Group meetings, but in the meantime, the JCP program's Liz Keiner has offered her time to act as a facilitator.
"The Star Spec Lead Program is a really great idea. I thought that the moment I learned about its existence," says Ed. "Many people don't know this, but most of the Expert Group members that work on JCP specs do so in their precious spare time. I'd like to say that no Spec Lead can be a star without lots of dedication from their Expert Group."
Ed also points out the effectiveness of sharing the Spec Lead role with another engineer. "For JSF 1.0, Craig McClanahan was the main Spec Lead, and I was the understudy." Ed handled the schedule and issue-tracking side and participated in the email discussions, as well as leading a few design tasks. In JSF 1.2, he and Roger Kitain were co-Spec Leads, sharing the core design tasks. "Roger had the additional responsibility of working with the JCP during Expert Group formation and handling other process tasks," says Ed. He thanks Roger for his help on JSF 1.2.
Ed telecommutes to the Application Engines group at Sun's Santa Clara, California headquarters from Altamonte Springs, Florida, where he is married with two sons (three years and four months old).
He hasn't forgotten his first love: on the TI-99/4A webring, Ed hosts a Tunnels of Doom fan page that offers his personal tribute, screen shots, links to interviews with the ToD author and ToD musician, and other resources.
Go to the Star
Spec Lead Program page for more information.
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Ed Burns