Software DevelopmentSeptember 19, 2007 4:07 am
Software provides the very foundation for businesses to function in the way most of them are functioning now, in the sense that their overwhelming dependency on data capturing, processing and transferring into information makes Computer systems the nerve center of a modern day organization. Most of these organizations are operating in a world which has become ever more competitive and quality conscious. Companies have to keep on coming up with ways and means to increase production, sales volumes, market share while there are concerted efforts to cut down on cost and be more efficient.
Mergers between global organizations are here to stay as companies drive for market dominance and cut down on cost. New marketing strategies must be rolled out in minimal time with maximum effectiveness. It is also of paramount importance that the nerve centers of these modern day organizations are geared to adapt to these changing times.
As an industry we keep on developing Information systems for most of these organizations without identifying these ground realities. Most of the systems are too rigid (highly coupled) and accommodating changes to these systems need colossal amounts of money and resources. The most disheartening fact is that organizations identify these issues at a very late moment when they are about to do something extraordinary in the sense something which the Enterprise Architects never saw coming, or some change in business direction and strategy which needs quite big changes to current systems.
I think, as a mature industry it is more of a moral issue to charge our clients on these quite big changes to their systems, especially if we have overlooked or ignored the business realities of our clients at a very early stage of our engagement with our clients. We as the technical consultants must have been in a position to guide our client on these impending business realities and provide them with service which is of real value for their money.
As mentioned in the book Web Services and Service Oriented Architectures – The Savvy Manager’s Guide, its high time that ‘Form Follows Function’.
In this case, the “form” is the enterprise architecture. The “function” is the needs of the organizations that should be met by this architecture.
Imagine of an ERP Solution which a company X Co have bought for a hefty amount thinking that it enables X Co to function better in terms of Enterprise Resource Planning. The ERP vendor and X Co both overlooked a possible take over of another competitor Y Co by X. The take over forces X and Y to streamline their Information systems for enhanced access and communication, only to find that the recently acquired ERP cannot be customized for this business requirement, and thus could delay the possible take over of Y by X with a huge opportunity cost for X due to the delays caused by incompatible Systems.
Alternatively if both X Co and ERP Vendor had correctly evaluated this scenario before hand, X Co would have decided on a loosely coupled Service based Software opposed to the tightly coupled ERP Solution which now stands in the way of a possible acquisition by X Co. Thus the opposite ‘Function Follows Form’ has taken place. The advent of SOA software design promises a more flexible and adaptive application architecture in this scenario for X Co.
I’ll drill this down a bit more in my next post…………………………..
