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LIMITS TO AGILITY?
ASAS 2015
Gert Florijn & Eelco Rommes
October 2015
CONTEXT: IT-MAINTENANCE
Agile improves software development. But manyorganizations do not develop any software. Theybuy it.
What can such organizations learn from agile development? How can they become more agile?
hospitals waterboard municipality
IT IN HOSPITALS - THE IDEAL PICTURE
RDZ versie2.2 Referentiedomeinenmodel Ziekenhuizen van i-ziekenhuisi-ziekenhuis is een samenwerkingprogramma van de NL ziekenhuizen en UMC’s op initiatief van NVZ en NICTIZ
For example: a hospital fulfills many tasks, as thisreference model shows.
IT IN HOSPITALS - PRACTICE
Any hospital needs a lot of IT to run.
MANY FACTORS OF COMPLEXITY
P Projects
F Functional maintenanceF
The typical resulting IT-landscape is complex and hard to manage.
SOME CHARACTERISTICS
A few core systems, many satellites A few vendors dominate the market Many interfaces to sync data Old technology, old data Mostly COTS
Laws & policies
THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’
Vendors
Partners
Users
Coupling Pressure to change comes from varioussides. Changes cause a rippleeffect.
THE NEED FOR AGILITY - EXAMPLE
Hospitals become networkorganisations, exchanginginformation with all kinds of partners.
Mutual dependencies make theripple effect stronger.
Agility becomes more andmore important.
7 WAYS OF CHANGING (OR NOT)
...as seenin practice...
How do such IT-organisations typically deal with change?
ISOLATING THE CHANGE
Select, procure, implement in isolation.Create islands of automation to reduce complexity.But under water, these islands are connected. Theyform an ecosystem. Changes on one island cause changes on others.
Source: www.pixgood.com - archipelago islands
TRENCH WARFARE
IT-departments may try to avoid change by developingtactics to delay changes, like strictly followingprocedures, endless investigations, risk analyses, speaking in jargon, all kinds of approval boards, etc.This may buy time, but it is not very collegial.
Source: www.militaryhistorynow.com
BIG BANG
Large, critical systems are typicallyupgraded or replaced in a big bang migration.An incremental approach can be too complex to manage, due to the many interdependencies.
Source: The Big Bang Theory
SPECIAL OFF-THE-SHELF
Buying off-the-shelf software, thenadapting it to suit the specificneeds of the organisation is common practice. It is also expensive and risky andmakes it harder to implementinevitable fruture updates.
Source: Buzzfeed.com - the “Land, Air and Sea Burger”
REFUSING TO CHOOSE
Many organisations try to do too much at once. They lack overview and mechanisms forsetting priorities. This leads to manyunfinished projects. Some live for a long time, making no progress but not failing either.
Source: hdimagegallery.net – too much choice
IT AS A CROWBAR
Changing IT is often not enough to change an organisation.
JUST DO IT
Aka the golfcourse application.
“I just bought this new application, please install it for me.”
CHANGING THE WAY WE CHANGE
... 6 suggestionsto become
more agile...
How can organisations such as these become more agile?
VIEW THE LANDSCAPE AS A SYSTEM
Looking at a landscape as a single, coherent whole, challenges an organisation to manage it as such.
Interfaces, coupling, integration an integral part of that system, enabling it to work.
Source: posti più belli del mondo
LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY
An overview of the landscape is crucial. What do we have? Where is information stored, shared, used?
Landscape photographs are created with the viewer anda specific goal in mind.
Broad strokes are more important than details.Source: Barcelona Photography Courses
MANAGE THE TECHNICAL DEBT
Keep the technical debt manageable.Life cycle management, timely upgrades, reducingspecials, choose solutions that fit the regime.There is business value in refactoring.
Source: gifsgallery.com
IF IT HURTS, DO IT MORE OFTEN
Automate what you can: generating test data from production, deployment, monitoring, regression testing, etc.
Quality work requires quality tools.Source: Coyote & Correcaminos de Looney Tunes
THE PRODUCT OWNER IS A TEAM
Organize productownership at the landscape level.This is a hard task, which probably needs a team to support it.
Source: usa365.nl/murdock-interview
EARN A PLACE AT THE TABLE
Some IT decisions belong at the board level.IT-experts need access to them.
Source: www.amc.com/shows/mad-me
YES, BUT...
@@slide to be done – alvast wat tekst hieronder
This is not easy and there are costs involved.But that is no reason not to do it.
HOW AGILE CAN WE GET?
There are many open questions waiting to beanswered.
But perhaps we can make elephants dance.
Let’s see how agile we can get.Source: Who says elephants can t dance
