Enabling Operational Excellence
Enabling Operational Excellence
Enabling Operational Excellence
Enabling Operational Excellence

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Posts Tagged ‘IT methodologies’

Why Don’t Requirements Approaches and IT Methodologies ‘Get’ How to Use Strategy as a Technique? … Not Acceptable!

An enterprise architect recently said to me, “The motivation (why) column of the Zachman Architecture Framework is the most underrated, underutilized construct in architecture.” Absolutely correct. Even worse, IT methodologies (that is, the people who create and use them) don’t realize how far afield they are on the matter. As a result they cause business people to focus on the wrong things … or to drop out entirely. Ironically, IT then becomes the impediment, rather than the solution, to much needed business innovation. A bit of background: The Business Rules Group (BRG – www.BusinessRulesGroup.org) identified the area of business strategy as a missing ingredient for business rules in the mid 1990s. In 2000, we came out with a standard for the area, now sponsored by OMG, called the Business Motivation Model. It’s a highly readable document with lots of good examples (and free): http://www.businessrulesgroup.org/bmm.shtml. It provides standard vocabulary and structure for strategy. Zachman, by the way, was a key participant. I am proud of my role as co-editor and author of the first working draft. My business partner, Gladys S.W. Lam, and I have just come out with a new book that explains how strategy (and business rules) can be an integral part of business analysis. It’s actually not that hard to do (if you have the right people, motivation, scope, and approach), and it doesn’t take all that long (ditto same caveats). Those are big myths. Gladys is generally given credit for some of the key ideas in the standard. She grew up in a highly entrepreneurial environment and has a natural sense of business risks and solution sinkholes. But I digress … See Chapter 4 of Building Business Solutions: Business Analysis with Business Ruleshttp://www.brsolutions.com/b_building_business_solutions.php.

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I talk about business rules – Roger Burlton and I both talk about recent problems of the financial sector

Here’s a short clip about business rules from an interview in Amsterdam not too long ago. I actually agree with what I said … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhv7bGf3r3Y&feature=related There are several related clips there with John Zachman, Roger Burlton, and Silvie Spreeuwenberg (LibRT) worth a few minutes of your time — business rules, decisions, business processes, enterprise architecture, and more.

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HarvardBiz and Use Cases?!? Yes, Seriously … And Seriously Misguided!

HarvardBiz  The Case for Starting a Design Revolution http://s.hbr.org/nXsdOk
 
This article is fundamentally misguided. I’m surprised to find such an article associated with HBR. Use cases are about designing systems, not developing business solutions for business problems.
 
All change initiatives should start with a clear, structured view of business goals and business risks, and what business policies and business tactics will best solve the business business problem. I’m talking, of course, about business strategy. That’s the conversation that business leads want to have. Get them engaged in a discussion of system interaction and GUIs and you’ll inevitably miss the big picture.
 
What if your business *is* about eCommerce? No matter, you still need thought first given to business strategy — the goals, risks and policies needed for a winning business solution. Good requirements will flow naturally from that base. This have always been a notoriously weak area of IT requirements methodologies. Just don’t believe IT professionals who say use cases will solve your business problems. Design attractive systems, yes (done correctly). Guarantee business success? You’re counting on nothing more than good luck.

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What vs. How … Could We Get This Straight?

Some professionals view the interrogatives what and how as peers, each addressing a distinct area of engineering solutions (e.g., designing systems). Other professionals characterize ‘requirements’ as the what, and the design for a system as the how. Contradiction? No, just a bit of confusion over perspective. 
  • From the perspective of designing a system, both what (data) and how (processes) must be addressed. Both interrogatives (as well as the other four – where, who, when, and why) are essential for engineering a complete, robust solution.  
  • From the perspective of IT methodologies, requirements are always incomplete, so what the requirements say must be transformed into a system model that indicates how the requirements will be supported. 
In other words, the former use of what and how is based on an engineering point of view; the latter use is based on an IT-methodology point of view. Don’t confuse business people or IT professionals – or yourself – by failing to make the distinction.

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