A Joint Language of Development for Business and IT
“For
these reasons, best practice in systems upgrade or renewal dictates the
use of a business rules management system (BRMS). A big question in any
software development is where to put the business rules. The business
rules should be kept separate from the remainder of the application
logic, and held in the BRMS. In this way IT retains control over the evolution of the software, while the BRMS
can be exposed to an interface that allows business people to enter new
rules in ordinary language, using pull-down menus that allow simple IF THEN scenarios for example.”
Managing the relationship between knowledge and power in organisations
“Findings
– Pulling together evidence from across a wide range of academic
disciplines leads to the conclusion that the successful management of
the relationship between access to knowledge and access to power must
be framed within an overall organisational context, in which all power
resources are seen to be exercised in a legitimate manner. In this
context, knowledge is no longer regarded as a personal power resource,
but rather as a communal resource which will then be more likely to be
shared freely in order to facilitate the joint and mutually beneficial
achievement of organisational goals. Underpinning this organisational
dynamic is an environment of trust.”
Enterprise 2.0 and the Organizational Sociology of Implementation
“The
use of knowledge in a networked context is very often much more
horizontal, sideways and based on accessibility and collaboration than
is the use of knowledge in formally structured hierarchies.
“As
more and more knowledge work is carried out by people communicating and
exchanging information using hyperlinks, in social networks where the
places knowledge lives and that facilitate its routing to where it
needed, at that point in time, the vertical arrangements for the flows
of knowledge are disrupted, if not subverted.”
What BPM Experts Know About Business Process that SOA Folks Don’t
“Indeed, the story of business process has been at times so buried within the discussion of SOA that to the business, SOA itself has no business relevance. And yet, if there is any hope to a long-lasting impact and benefit of SOA, it must indeed be business relevant, and thus business process-driven.
“Indeed, for SOA to be successful, it must merge or more comprehensively combine with the efforts of BPM in order for it truly to be a business-focused architectural approach that successfully gives business the freedom to change.”
System life span: system definition
“To increase system life span, you need to manage:
- Ownership. IT requires responsible owners, to argue the case for resources and to make clear decisions.
- Decoupling.
Different areas of IT need to be kept separate from each other so that
changes in one area do not disrupt other areas and shorten their life
span.
- Measurement. IT needs to be measured to understand
what needs to be done to keep in step with the changing business and
technical environment.”
Funny thing about Software – It is Alive
“Software has a well-defined lifecycle – Conception, Gestation, Birth, Growth, Maturity, Old Age, and finally Obsolescence.
“We
in the industry are well aware of this, but it is useful to reflect on
this life cycle periodically. Are the features or subsystems we are
designing high-maintenance or low? Will they come out fully-formed, or
will they need a long phase of childhood to reach maturity? Will they
have a life cycle long enough to justify the investment in features we
propose?”
