Many of our clients complain that IT is holding back their business
growth.  This is a harsh indictment, but
one that is all too true. Most IT departments struggle to provide the business
agility required to support rapidly changing business requirements.  IT organizations are frustrated with broken
promises from their vendors because  the vendors
are not helping them become more agile. 
Maintenance fees are growing, but only seem to add to rigidity.  Even seemingly simple projects take longer
than they should.  The question is, what
can IT do about it?   

New development methodologies that label themselves Agile and Extreme
are appealing, but often require adherence to their own sets of rules – yet
another way to be locked in.  The Agile
guys even have their own manifesto!

Instead of getting caught up in labels, consider some smaller, less
disruptive changes that are easier to adopt and present an opportunity to really
see what does and does not work in a given corporate structure.  Here are 7 lessons learned from our clients
that are successfully enabling business agility:

1.      Engage business
stakeholders in interactive cross-functional design (requirements gathering)
sessions and use visual representations (such as wireframes) of the proposed
application to gather end-user feedback. 
This approach works much better than relying on just stakeholder
interviews.  In many cases, end-users may
not really know what they want until they have something to react to.  While the business may balk at committing
time to these sessions, we have found that this approach actually requires less
time than traditional approaches to requirements gathering. 

2.      Iterate until you
get it right.  Refine the design based on
user feedback.  Discussions with
end-users and stakeholders often lead to innovation and process improvements as
the users begin to really “see” the future.

3.      Consider making
technology decisions at the component level – not at the all or nothing
platform level.  Seek components in favor
of custom developed code and open source components over off the shelf
packages.  By investing at the component
level it is easier, less disruptive and faster to make changes down the road by
swapping out specific components, without the need to touch other technology.

4.      Make use of Open
Source Software and save on long term maintenance and upgrade costs.  Reserve custom coding for only those
features/functions that are unique and provide competitive advantage to your
business.  

5.      Develop software
(assemble components) in short cycles. 
Frequent releases that are focused on delivering specific functionality
facilitate speed and agility. 

6.      Consider service-oriented
architectures (SOA) to promote your ability to make changes without having to revisit
your platforms and legacy systems.

7.      Utilize an
architecture that separates the user experience from the business logic.   This will allow the business stakeholders to
use scripting languages such as PHP to make changes on their own, without the
need to be proficient in technologies such as Java.

This is a just the barest outline of how to begin the process to
greater business agility through new IT approaches.  Please reach out to me to have a deeper
conversation.