The concept of “commander’s intent” has been around for almost 200 years. It’s a compelling military concept, originated by the Germans. The idea is that rather than apply tight command and control, leaders provide a clear sense of the outcomes they seek and the parameters they will accept. It’s a trusting relationship between manager and subordinate, and it’s one that has clear implications in the business environment.

The April 2012 Cutter IT Journal, with Guest Editor Mike Rosen, will address enterprise security architecture from a practice-based perspective. Please send us your ideas – proposals of interest are due 8 February 2012.

To respond, please visit http://www.cutter.com/content-and-analysis/journals-and-reports/cutter-it-journal/callforpapers03.html

In general, “big”, to me, can be “lean”. As a matter of fact, big should be lean as otherwise scale will quite possibly pose a problem.

Specifically, in the Agile context I expect “Big Agile” to incorporate various elements of Lean. For example:

Michael Roberto is the Read more ...]]> Wow, I can’t believe that our Summit 2012: Executive Education+ is less than 3 months away! A while ago, I blogged a little about Prof. Amy Edmondson’s keynote on Teaming, which will be preceded by two teaming exercises run by Prof. Alan MacCormack. At the time, we hadn’t yet firmed up the case study portion of our program. But we have since then. We’ve chosen a case that bridges the topic of leadership (which is the focus of Prof. Richard Nolan’s keynote on Monday morning and the debate that follows it) and teaming. As with Alan’s exercises, we’re keeping the title of the case under wraps so there are no preconceived notions of the outcomes! I will tell you, though, that the case will be taught by its author, Prof. Michael Roberto.

Michael Roberto is the Trustee Professor of Management at Bryant University in Rhode Island. He joined the faculty at Bryant after six years as a faculty member at Harvard Business School. You can get a taste of his energy and enthusiasm as well as the impact he has on students – and you’ll be one at the Summit — in this short video in which he talks about teaching at Bryant.

The topics of leadership and teaming go hand in glove. And when you couple that with presentations by current and former Harvard Business School Professors who know one another, the synergy is especially powerful! Our best offers are expiring on Monday, so if you’re considering joining us at the Summit, now’s the time to register!

A hefty majority of devops articles come from writers of the development persuasion who are motivated by the legitimate frustrations of the application deployment process. The movement to agile development has been a key contributor in the increase of handicaps encountered as a result of more frequent transitions from development to operations IT groups. Online and verbal discussions identify the primary challenge as getting IT operations to be more creative and flexible in their approach to changes coming from the application development discipline.{1}

Given its critical involvement Read more ...]]> It would seem that the devops discussion is mostly driven by development’s incentives, and appropriately so, given developers’ focus on building functionality for the business user. So it’s no surprise that development is the originator of the whole devops lifecycle, but are there any dangers lurking in a one-sided focus on devops issues?

A hefty majority of devops articles come from writers of the development persuasion who are motivated by the legitimate frustrations of the application deployment process. The movement to agile development has been a key contributor in the increase of handicaps encountered as a result of more frequent transitions from development to operations IT groups. Online and verbal discussions identify the primary challenge as getting IT operations to be more creative and flexible in their approach to changes coming from the application development discipline.{1}

Given its critical involvement in deploying new and enhanced applications, why hasn’t IT operations been more active within the devops movement? Given the opportunity for IT operations to be more effectively heard by its primary IT companion organization, why hasn’t IT ops been more responsive to devops strategic initiatives? Given that changes to the operational model are almost guaranteed, why isn’t IT ops more proactive in anticipating such changes? Given the need for more effective alignment with the business user, whose automation needs are frequently accommodated by inhouse development, why hasn’t IT ops seized the chance to leverage this obvious path to improving IT’s core value proposition to end-user communities? I’ve heard many theories, but few have resonated.

Devops is a maturing discipline and is obviously offering an increasingly visible value proposition for the enterprise. This growing devops “maturity” is driving more effective partnerships and better integration opportunities. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the devops partnerships and integrations are not coming fast enough to appease the significant IT market demand. One proof point is the rapid escalation in demand for SaaS application deployment, which is a symptom of the ongoing struggle between development and operations groups in satisfying end users’ business demands. Competitive options now exist (and are expanding) for businesses to choose alternatives to IT-delivered and -supported applications, which further fuels the customer’s questioning of IT’s contribution to achieving corporate business objectives.

“Services” Mindset of IT Operations Essential to Devops

Fundamental to understanding the mindset of IT operations is its emphasis on delivering and maintaining “services” that are of value to the business community.

Solutions to business problems and support for business models, strategies, and operations are increasingly in the form of services. The popularity of shared services and outsourcing has contributed to the increase in the number of organizations who are service providers, including internal organizational units. This in turn has strengthened the practice of service management and at the same time imposed greater challenges upon it.{2}

An essential requirement for devops success is to think of, prepare, implement, and support the new application as a mandatory component of a service that is being offered to the business customer. That service is positioned as having an intrinsic value that is broader than the application by itself; as a result, the business executive can easily identify it as critical to achieving business goals. IT operations brings a rich experience of managing those services to devops initiatives. Ops needs to be more aggressive about sharing that unique perspective at the same time that IT development needs to be more attentive to those IT service management (ITSM) best practices that are documented, promoted, and used on behalf of devops by its core practitioners.

IT operations has struggled for decades to deliver more and more technology services with fewer and fewer resources — and is actually doing a fair job.{3} Fundamental to that achievement has been a focus on ITSM best practices specifically designed for improving the operational alignment between IT and its business customers. These guidelines and processes have been captured and documented by leading ITSM professionals for the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), funded by the UK’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

As a starting point for understanding the mindset, roles, and values of IT operations within the devops discussion, ITIL V3′s focus on delivering business value through more effective IT services is invaluable. ITIL positions these best practices as “based on expert advice and input from ITIL users [and] … both current and practical, combining the latest thinking with sound, common sense guidance.”{4} The success of that “common sense” approach has contributed significantly to the rapid acceptance and global implementation of ITIL V2 and V3 by ITSM organizations over the last 10 years.

Bridging the Devops Gap

So what might the operations perspective on devops initiatives be? I would offer that ITIL’s V3 Application Management (AM) function {5} is probably one of the more useful resources available for describing that operational viewpoint. It is written as a set of best practices or guidelines for supporting …

the organization’s business processes by helping to identify functional and manageability requirements for application software, and then to assist in the design and deployment of those applications and the ongoing support and improvement of those applications.{6}

As such, ITIL AM is designed to help bridge the devops gap and articulate some of the common language or terminology now lacking between the development and operations organizations.

As a process improvement approach, the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) has become a highly successful, best practice model for software engineering. CMMI is a set of process guidelines driven primarily by development’s need to deliver applications of value to the business user and secondarily by how the end customer uses the application as a service to achieve business purposes. This is a subtle yet critical distinction. The CMMI model does not adequately address the service mentality and service priorities of the IT operations organization, which has fully embraced ITIL for that role instead.

In the August 2011 issue of Cutter IT Journal, Bill Phifer of HP Enterprise Services created a compelling case for embracing a host of ITSM processes, with the ITIL Service Lifecycle becoming the needed counterbalance to the development perspective that is incorporated and respected within CMMI (see “Next-Generation Process Integration: CMMI and ITIL Do Devops,” Vol. 24, No. 8). The strength of ITIL is its unrelenting emphasis on “serving” the needs of the business community and adapting any IT deliverable to the “whole” of the system — as perceived by the business customer, not IT operations. For devops, this requires a correlation of management processes and tools that can address the demands coming from end users, business functions, and technologies as well as applications. ITIL in its intended form {7} does not create a focus on IT management processes for the sake of IT personnel. An ITIL-oriented project fails miserably when such an IT-only focus happens.

Notes

¹ Read, Chris. “DevOps: State of the Nation.” Agile Web Development & Operations, 30 November 2010.

² Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle. ITIL V3. Office of Government Commerce (OGC), 2010.

³ McAfee, Andrew, and Erik Brynjolfsson. “What Makes a Company Good at IT?” The Wall Street Journal, 25 April 2011.

⁴ITIL (www.itil-officialsite.com).

⁵ ITIL Service Operation. ITIL V3. OGC, 2007. (ITIL published a “Summary of Updates” in August 2011; see www.itil-officialsite.com.)

⁶ ITIL Service Operation. See 5.

⁷ Fry, Malcolm. ITIL Lite: A Road Map to Full or Partial ITIL Implementation. The Stationery Office, 2010.

Understand business analytics. The past few years have seen dramatic increases in the capabilities of business intelligence systems, accompanied by decreases in costs, to the point where most organizations can easily afford to take advantage of business analytics. The problem is that the information that these systems need to analyze is not readily available. While this is not a trivial problem to solve, it does present a major opportunity for enterprise architecture. When we provide management or decision makers with information that they don’t currently have but that would help them make better decisions, it accomplishes several things. First, it sparks their interest in what architecture has to offer and, second, Read more ...]]> Welcome to the seventh-anniversary edition of my enterprise architect’s New Year’s resolutions. I hope it will give you food for thought and some inspiration for architectural growth in 2012.

Understand business analytics. The past few years have seen dramatic increases in the capabilities of business intelligence systems, accompanied by decreases in costs, to the point where most organizations can easily afford to take advantage of business analytics. The problem is that the information that these systems need to analyze is not readily available. While this is not a trivial problem to solve, it does present a major opportunity for enterprise architecture. When we provide management or decision makers with information that they don’t currently have but that would help them make better decisions, it accomplishes several things. First, it sparks their interest in what architecture has to offer and, second, it makes them want to give us more resources to give them more information. Now is a perfect time to take advantage of this opportunity.

Embrace SCARF. A little while ago, I wrote about the SCARF model (see “Take a SCARF to Architecture Reviews,” 30 November 2011). The SCARF model involves five domains of human social experience: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. Status is about relative importance to others. Certainty concerns being able to predict the future. Autonomy provides a sense of control over events. Relatedness is a sense of safety with others — of friend rather than foe. And fairness is a perception of fair exchanges between people. These five domains activate either the “primary reward” or “primary threat” circuitry of the brain. Neuroscience tells us that threatening someone is counterproductive to getting them to think clearly or to cooperate. SCARF provides a model for understanding the threats and rewards in a social situation, such as an architecture review or other communications in order to achieve the best results.

Reduce technical debt. Technical debt refers to delayed technical work that is incurred when shortcuts are taken, usually in pursuit of calendar-driven schedules. Technical debt accrues in systems as we maintain and evolve them without spending the time to refactor them to accommodate the changes. Over time, this builds up fragile systems that can’t be changed and can’t accommodate the evolving business requirements. Beyond a single system, enterprise complexity results in technical debt in terms of system integration, system redundancy, and inconsistency. So the cost of technical debt isn’t simply the cost to fix it, it is also the cost to the business of inflexible and fragile IT systems that can’t be changed to meet current business needs and the lost opportunities they present to the enterprise. Architecture helps to address complexity, especially at the enterprise level. As projects are undertaken, look for opportunities to use those projects to also reduce technical debt.

Incorporate design principles. Earlier this year, I also wrote about Dieter Ram’s “Ten Principles of Design” (see “Principles of Design: Part I,” 13 September 2011, and “Principles of Design: Part II,” 28 September 2011). Ram explains that good design: is innovative, makes a product useful, is aesthetic, makes a product understandable, is unobtrusive, is honest, is long lasting, is thorough down to the last detail, is environmentally friendly, and is as little design as possible. Try to incorporate these principles into your architectural designs moving forward.

Initiate business architecture. Over the past few years, the field of business architecture (BA) has been evolving rapidly. It used to be the exception that an EA program had business architects, but now it is the rule. A consensus is emerging about what BA is, what it produces, who practices it, and how. Professional organizations such as the Business Architecture Guild are creating communities of architects and developing best practices. Now, BA is delivering results that are impacting the business and getting attention for doing so. And finally, the critical mass of successful results, best practices, skilled professionals, resources, and tools, has reached the point where business architecture is a mainstream capability within most advanced organizations. If business architecture is not already playing a major role in your enterprise, it’s time to get started.

Well, that’s it for 2012. Of course, you don’t need to make these official resolutions, but they do provide some ideas about practicing enterprise architecture. And while you’re thinking about it, have a happy, successful, and prosperous 2012.

Editor’s Note: Mike Rosen and Bill Ulrich will lead the interactive workshop Insider Secrets: Architecture Programs that Work at Summit 2012: Executive Education+, April 2-4, 2012 in Cambridge, MA.

[Editor's Note: This post is part of the annual "Cutter Predicts ..." series, compiled at the Cutter Consortium website.]

I didn’t rush out to get an iPad when it was announced, but what I discovered was that those who started using them really liked them. Then, every major vendor started producing their own version of the pad. My wife and son now have iPads and I chose an HP TouchPad even though production has been discontinued. It serves my needs just fine for the time being.

There are reasons the pads will continue to grow in popularity within corporate environments:

The year of 2011 will most likely be characterized by further innovation and reliability of mobile technology allowing organizations to explore mobility on a much larger scale. Business models and processes are likely to be redesigned to embrace this potential.

The year of 2011 brought clarity about the real causes and trends of the so-called “economic crisis”: surprisingly (or not) globalization, as it consolidates, has triggered what I call a “beneficial leveling of wealth” around the globe. While this leads to “economic crisis” in certain parts of the world, especially in the northern hemisphere, in other parts of the world (especially in the southern hemisphere and Asia) it brought economic growth, Read more ...]]> Last year, my prediction focused on the emerging impact of Internet-based mobile technology on the business models in the context of the economic and financial crises. I predicted:

The year of 2011 will most likely be characterized by further innovation and reliability of mobile technology allowing organizations to explore mobility on a much larger scale. Business models and processes are likely to be redesigned to embrace this potential.

The year of 2011 brought clarity about the real causes and trends of the so-called “economic crisis”: surprisingly (or not) globalization, as it consolidates, has triggered what I call a “beneficial leveling of wealth” around the globe. While this leads to “economic crisis” in certain parts of the world, especially in the northern hemisphere, in other parts of the world (especially in the southern hemisphere and Asia) it brought economic growth, better living conditions and opportunities.  This will continue in 2012, and with stronger consequences: organizations that are capable of establishing truly global operating models will prosper; the ones that don’t will suffer and some will disappear. These models are not just about large organizations and companies; they also apply to small businesses. At the heart of it lies a new and emerging specialized remote working culture, coupled with Internet-based mobile technology.

Internet-based mobile technology was, in 2011, at the core of major social and political transformations (not to say revolutions), in different parts of the world. I believe that changes that occurred in 2011 would have never been triggered and undertaken without the presence of this technology, and that they demonstrate the technology’s potential and, above all, its irreversible presence in all dimensions of today’s humanity – not just business. Internet-based mobile technology has become part of us, and the future is that we will not be able to accomplish even our most basic daily activities without it. Can you imagine a useful and attractive mobile phone, laptop, iPod, or even a television without Internet connection? In 2012 practically all electronic devices will be Internet based.

As people progressively learn to explore and mature the use of this technology, the growing impact on business models and collaborative working models will trigger new rules of survival in the new Internet-based global economy. Successful organization will transform accordingly.

In 2012, changes in political systems, environmental concerns and issues, climate change and natural disasters, will all create a focus on emerging priorities and Internet-based technology will play a vital role.

[Editor's Note: This post is part of the annual "Cutter Predicts ..." series, compiled at the Cutter Consortium website.]

From everything we see at clients and in the press, this means a (perhaps uncomfortable) return to basics in IT. That is, we will see great emphasis by CIOs and CTOs on the things that have in the past been very important. This includes, for example:

In short, CIOs and CTOs will be Read more ...]]> That there’s turbulence for 2012 that will affect business and IT isn’t much in question.  With great economic uncertainties (recession, Europe, elections) and, at the same time, significant changes in IT such as widespread user devices (tablets) and cloud, a lot is in flux. But what will this mean?

From everything we see at clients and in the press, this means a (perhaps uncomfortable) return to basics in IT. That is, we will see great emphasis by CIOs and CTOs on the things that have in the past been very important. This includes, for example:

• Improving Operational Excellence
• Understanding IT’s costs and taking action to reduce them
• Successfully delivering IT value (and projects)
• Doing effective business-focused IT planning
• Assuring the availability of suitable talents in the IT organization
• (Re)building the relationship with business

In short, CIOs and CTOs will be focusing on improving IT’s performance in the tried-and-true areas of IT management activities.

Back to the Future? This prediction, with the same bulleted items, could have been written ten (or maybe twenty) years ago. Oh sure, in 2012 we’ll be overwhelmed with continuing hype about new technologies, the disappearance of the traditional IT organization and/or the CIO, and the wonders of new opportunities (read “BI”, etc.)  These will be factors for some. And perhaps the means for achieving them will have changed for some (e.g., Agile, architecture). But for the largest group of CIOs and CTOs,  2012 will, indeed, be a year of focusing on traditional areas of IT’s performance: Back to the Future.

[Editor's Note: This post is part of the annual "Cutter Predicts ..." series, compiled at the Cutter Consortium website.]