We have all heard of how agile is supposed to help us improve software delivery, making it faster, cheaper, better, blah blah blah. But does it always? What do we need to know to actually get the benefits we seek?
IT Strategy
God Module Preventers
OK, only developers know what “god modules” are and according to the internet functional architects are just glorified business analysts. So why is it that I see Functional Architecture as an application of design, simply preventing god modules in a more abstract way? Here is my argument…
The Elusive Inch Pebble
Of course this title has everyone asking “What in heck is an inch pebble?”, right? Well I was first introduced to this term by Johanna Rothman in an article she wrote about a hundred years ago. While I read it, and intuitively understood it, it didn’t at first occur to me that it was a…
Information Driven Projects
When you look at software development or corporate change projects, you often see some creative fiction. There is fiction in the plans, fiction in the designs and fiction in the requirements. This fiction is created by the notion that “Before we can start, we have to know everything required to get to done.” Intuitively, we…
Elastic Staffing Challenges
I have been away from this blog for a while. In fact, I don’t remember when I last posted (I looked it up it was May.) In my hiatus, I have worked on some other writing projects and spent some time with Zed A. Shaw’s excellent “Learn Python the Hard Way”. As a matter of…
Business Capability Model
Current group I am working in is responsible for functional architecture. In spite of the fact that I don’t have any practical experience, I have been asked to help define a practice in Business Capability Modeling. I think the reason for that is that I have some practical insight into the requirements that functional architecture…
Functional Architecture Principles
Functional Architecture as a discipline has been brewing for a few years now. I have been a “functional architect” for a software application, and have also been involved in functional architecture review of enterprise software programs. I won’t claim to know what functional architecture means in any universal sense, but having done this work, and…
Consulting Engagements
My current role is interesting. I am an internal IT consultant in a large financial corporation. As an internal consultant I am free to work on as many projects as I can juggle. My billing is only explicit when I work on capital projects. I spend more time talking than “working”. Most of my working…
A taxonomy of software types
Generally, software falls into three classes; Apps, Tools, and Infrastructure. The Breakdown Apps – or applications as they were formerly known – are software built to help a user do some valuable activity, like check a bank balance or edit digital images. While the end user must learn how to use it, an app is…
The Perfect Product Road Map
At the core of every software product road map are two concepts. These are essential to all software product development. We may think of different things, and we may use different terms or even look at them from different angles but at the end, I am convinced that it boils down to only two things:…