InfoQ Homepage Business/IT Alignment Content on InfoQ
-
Harmonizing Agile With "User-Centered Design"
UX specialist Anthony Colfelt presents a case for how agile, alone, might not be sufficient and a thorough and engaging look into how User-Centered Design can, and should, be merged with it.
-
Estimating Business Value
The traditional agile approach to prioritization is that user stories of higher business value should be implemented before ones of lower business value. The concept is simple, but implementing it well relies on having a mechanism to assess business value. Pascal Van Cauwenberghe has recently described an approach to defining business value, called "Business Value Modeling", which may help.
-
SOA: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
A new developerWorks article by Jens Andexer and Willem Bekker describes business implications of SOA, stressing both its advantages and drawbacks.
-
Bringing SOA and BPM Closer Together
With SOA and BPM still being most popular buzzwords in IT today, a question of their relationships is still debated between practitioners. The Process Isomorphism pattern, proposed by Jason Bloomberg, makes an attempt to bring them closer together.
-
Transcending SOA: OMG Announces Business Ecology Initiative (BEI)
The Object Management Group (OMG) this month announced a "Business Ecology Intitiative" (BEI) withIBM as Founding Sponsor. BEI is focused on erasing the artificial lines between business and Information Technology (IT) so that IT becomes a ubiquitous, integral and vital asset to the company.
-
Article: The Economics of Service Orientation
This article explores the structural economic changes brought about by service orientation and how the concept of services and reuse at the service level promises to relieve the enormous pressure arising from increasing costs and flat budgets. Service orientation is compared to other strategies for keeping costs in check.
-
Book Review: Brown, Laird, Gee, Mitra: SOA Governance
InfoQ had the opportunity to review the new book “SOA Governance: Achieving and Sustaining Business and IT Agility” and interview its authors Clive Gee, William A. Brown, Robert G. Laird, Tilak Mitra.Topics covered include the role of reuse in SOA, SOA governance tooling, Business/IT alignment, etc.
-
Improving the Business Process Simulation
While interest in Business Process Management increases, Business Process Simulation is becoming more and more important. Recent blog posts by Keith Swenson and Bruce Silver discuss important aspects of the Business Process Simulation.
-
Article: We Need to Create Information System Ratings
Pierre Bonnet, CTO of Orchestra Networks, argues that information systems are too opaque and not agile enough. He claims this is the main reason why "healthy" multinationals can collapse within months as they take on too much risk. He suggests that information systems be rated on how they manage master data, business rules and business processes.
-
SOA & The Tarpit of Irrelevancy
A new three-part post by Neil Ford discusses both the rationale behind SOA implementations and the role large vendors play in distracting them.
-
Requirements Come Second - What Comes First?
Allan Kelly sites an article from MIT's Sloan Management Review about why it is important to get a team's technical competence and ability improved before focusing on business-IT alignment. This, he claims, is one of the reasons Agile software development has been so successful. Allan's point indirectly touches on a recent community debate about successful, valuable, Agile adoption.
-
Applying SOA Lessons to Web 2.0 Implementations
In their new article, two experienced SOA architects present five SOA best practices that can help to achieve success in adopting Ajax, REST, and other Web 2.0 technologies.
-
Agile For Embedded Systems
Some might say that agile development and embedded software (ie. "software supporting a hardware device") do not mix well. Mark Levison has taken some time to assemble and writeup a resource reference of people, experiences, and advice that help to show otherwise.
-
Business Case for SOA
One of the prerequisites for successful SOA implementation is an understanding of the business problem that will be solved and building a business case for the implementation.
-
Performance Reviews Banished
In the Wall Street Journal, Sam Culbert argues that annual performance and pay reviews are at best dysfunctional. He sees their primary purpose as "intimidation aimed at preserving the boss's authority and power advantage". Jeff Sutherland, Mary Poppendieck, ... offer alterantives