Comments on: On Agile, IT-Business Alignment, Martin Fowler and The Yawning Crevasse of Doom http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/ An industry analyst blog looking at software ecosystems and convergence Sun, 21 Mar 2010 03:26:39 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Kelly Waters http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/comment-page-1/#comment-63459 Kelly Waters Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:38:11 +0000 http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/#comment-63459 You or your readers may be interested in this blog all about agile development: http://www.allaboutagile.com In particular there is a description of 10 key principles of agile development irrespective of which methodology you may be using: http://kw-agiledevelopment.blogspot.com/2007/02/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-agile.html And there's also an agile development forum "all about agile" for further discussion with peers: http://www.groups.google.com/group/allaboutagile I hope these resources are useful. Kelly Waters http://www.allaboutagile.com You or your readers may be interested in this blog all about agile development:

http://www.allaboutagile.com

In particular there is a description of 10 key principles of agile development irrespective of which methodology you may be using:

http://kw-agiledevelopment.blogspot.com/2007/02/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-agile.html

And there’s also an agile development forum “all about agile” for further discussion with peers:

http://www.groups.google.com/group/allaboutagile

I hope these resources are useful.

Kelly Waters
http://www.allaboutagile.com

]]> By: Ed_Dodds http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/comment-page-1/#comment-56647 Ed_Dodds Mon, 09 Apr 2007 18:04:02 +0000 http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/#comment-56647 Ok, Grassley is looking - http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007704060380 Ok, Grassley is looking – http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007704060380

]]> By: Ed Dodds http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/comment-page-1/#comment-56126 Ed Dodds Sun, 08 Apr 2007 12:11:18 +0000 http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/#comment-56126 In a word: fraud ( or corruption ). Anyone who tracks current management strategy books knows that the trend du jour is on the emphasis in on opening the budgets, pushing the decision making down to the front line users, letting them set the case for funding -- but that's NOT what is done. Why? Well, the auditor ( or xbrl ). What if your industry is built on bribes, kickbacks, corruption in general. What if everyone in industry knows it -- but noone says it outloud. Ever try to build a UML diagram with a placeholder for graft? To oversimplify, there are only three impediments to a more mature geek-biz user parnership: 1) C-Suite full of greed-head immorals worried about short-term stock price driven targets -- long-term business viability be damned; 2) there is no standard business process; 3) the standard business process involve illegalities. Why do you think so many US businesses are choosing to go private at just the moment SOX is being understood well enough to actually be effective. Why is it the US biz news and politicians say "healthcare is too expensive" but never follow it up with "well, I wonder where the money is actually going now?" In a word: fraud ( or corruption ). Anyone who tracks current management strategy books knows that the trend du jour is on the emphasis in on opening the budgets, pushing the decision making down to the front line users, letting them set the case for funding — but that’s NOT what is done. Why? Well, the auditor ( or xbrl ). What if your industry is built on bribes, kickbacks, corruption in general. What if everyone in industry knows it — but noone says it outloud. Ever try to build a UML diagram with a placeholder for graft? To oversimplify, there are only three impediments to a more mature geek-biz user parnership: 1) C-Suite full of greed-head immorals worried about short-term stock price driven targets — long-term business viability be damned; 2) there is no standard business process; 3) the standard business process involve illegalities. Why do you think so many US businesses are choosing to go private at just the moment SOX is being understood well enough to actually be effective. Why is it the US biz news and politicians say “healthcare is too expensive” but never follow it up with “well, I wonder where the money is actually going now?”

]]> By: Ric http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/comment-page-1/#comment-55202 Ric Sat, 07 Apr 2007 14:58:58 +0000 http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/#comment-55202 “Any profession has jargon” - I had a quite discussion one day with a winemaker and a viticulturist - they both out-acronymed me easily ... I agree with Bill about the contractual difficulties - waterfall survives because it covers more arses - Agile exposes too many dickheads for the corporate machine to be comfortable with it. “Any profession has jargon” – I had a quite discussion one day with a winemaker and a viticulturist – they both out-acronymed me easily …

I agree with Bill about the contractual difficulties – waterfall survives because it covers more arses – Agile exposes too many dickheads for the corporate machine to be comfortable with it.

]]> By: Enterprise Decision Management - a Weblog http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/comment-page-1/#comment-54203 Enterprise Decision Management - a Weblog Fri, 06 Apr 2007 16:04:21 +0000 http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/#comment-54203 <strong>Are business rules a bridge or a ferry?...</strong> James Governer had a great post today - On Agile, IT-Business Alignment, Martin Fowler and The Yawning Crevasse of Doom talking about a presentation by Martin Fowler and Dan North. There were some wonderful comments in it: The biggest problem... Are business rules a bridge or a ferry?…

James Governer had a great post today – On Agile, IT-Business Alignment, Martin Fowler and The Yawning Crevasse of Doom talking about a presentation by Martin Fowler and Dan North. There were some wonderful comments in it: The biggest problem…

]]> By: James Taylor http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/comment-page-1/#comment-54184 James Taylor Fri, 06 Apr 2007 15:47:07 +0000 http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/#comment-54184 Great post - I love the bridge / ferry analogy! I think that if you want to "Create a ubiquitous language, where he names of the classes and how they are combined matches the business conversation" then you can just use a business rules management system. They work, they let you write business-friendly logic and they mostly support ways to build templates that let business users manage some of their rules. This helps close the gap between the different perspectives of IT and the business (about which I have blogged - http://www.edmblog.com/weblog/2005/08/different_persp.html) and solve one of the major problems with (for?) programmers (http://www.edmblog.com/weblog/2006/11/the_problem_wit.html). JT http://www.edmblog.com Great post – I love the bridge / ferry analogy!
I think that if you want to “Create a ubiquitous language, where he names of the classes and how they are combined matches the business conversation” then you can just use a business rules management system. They work, they let you write business-friendly logic and they mostly support ways to build templates that let business users manage some of their rules. This helps close the gap between the different perspectives of IT and the business (about which I have blogged – http://www.edmblog.com/weblog/2005/08/different_persp.html) and solve one of the major problems with (for?) programmers (http://www.edmblog.com/weblog/2006/11/the_problem_wit.html).
JT
http://www.edmblog.com

]]> By: Bill de hOra http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/comment-page-1/#comment-53484 Bill de hOra Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:49:17 +0000 http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/on-agile-it-business-alignment-martin-fowler-and-the-yawning-crevasse-of-doom/#comment-53484 “We know better than you, so we’ll overwhelm you with technical details.” Not sure about that. Let me tell you why. "One way to overcome this barrier is to make design decisions later in the process - rather than thinking through every potential scenario and developing accordingly, only set things in stone once they are needed. “We don't need to make the decision now. make it when we need to. Its easier.”" I keep saying this, but the idea of deferred decision making does not fly under orthodox commercial arrangements, especially fixed price. FP demands decisions are made up front and the customer scope is tightly controlled. I don't agree it's a good model, but the two extremes, agile and bduf exhortations do not produce results under FP. It's a pity someone wasn't there to ask Fowler about this, because he damn well knows agile and FP don't mesh. The biggest problems in IT delivery are contractual, not communicative. If you want agile development you need agile contracts (ask Cote' if you don't believe me). The models that seem to work are VC style rounded funding - more project money is realised on results - yet most governance/compliance process mitigates against that work style. There's all this this talk about aligning IT with business as if IT held the burden of responsibility and didn't get business, but seriously how many business stakeholders get delivery dynamics? I say the technical tribes have a far greater understanding of project dynamics whereas much business decision making and contracts are utterly naive and optimized for project failure. As a technical person, it's very very frustrating to be set up to fail; it's even more frustrating to see an utter lack of understanding as to how contract structures drive projects. It's problem number one. Why is no-one talking about this? “We know better than you, so we’ll overwhelm you with technical details.”

Not sure about that. Let me tell you why.

“One way to overcome this barrier is to make design decisions later in the process – rather than thinking through every potential scenario and developing accordingly, only set things in stone once they are needed. “We don’t need to make the decision now. make it when we need to. Its easier.””

I keep saying this, but the idea of deferred decision making does not fly under orthodox commercial arrangements, especially fixed price. FP demands decisions are made up front and the customer scope is tightly controlled. I don’t agree it’s a good model, but the two extremes, agile and bduf exhortations do not produce results under FP. It’s a pity someone wasn’t there to ask Fowler about this, because he damn well knows agile and FP don’t mesh.

The biggest problems in IT delivery are contractual, not communicative. If you want agile development you need agile contracts (ask Cote’ if you don’t believe me). The models that seem to work are VC style rounded funding – more project money is realised on results – yet most governance/compliance process mitigates against that work style. There’s all this this talk about aligning IT with business as if IT held the burden of responsibility and didn’t get business, but seriously how many business stakeholders get delivery dynamics? I say the technical tribes have a far greater understanding of project dynamics whereas much business decision making and contracts are utterly naive and optimized for project failure. As a technical person, it’s very very frustrating to be set up to fail; it’s even more frustrating to see an utter lack of understanding as to how contract structures drive projects. It’s problem number one. Why is no-one talking about this?

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