| Agile
– “Characterized by quickness, lightness, and ease
of movement; nimble.” (Dictionary.com)
Businesses have always desired to be nimble.
Our history is littered with companies that died because they
weren’t able to able to change with the times. 8-Track tapes,
fountain pens and the milkmen are all examples of products that
had their time but eventually came to an end. The companies that
made these products or offered these services had to change, and
change quick. Some companies are able to change while others aren’t.
Agility finds it’s way into all parts of a business. At
the top, the CEO and executive team must maintain an agile vision.
The direction of the company, the offerings, the way we bring
product to market, build the products and ultimately support the
products must all be nimble to support the changing environment.
And yes, the systems that support all of these processes must
be quick, light and facilitate ease of movement.
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In the I.T. area,
we find that at the heart of the “agility” issue is
that rigid, tightly coupled
systems cost too much to change. We architects, designers and
developers have been pushing for agile systems, but success has
been slow and incremental. High level programming languages, meta-models
and specialized servers like databases and directory servers are
all examples of recent successes in creating more agile systems.
Yet, the pace of business and expectations continue to increase
and demand more flexibility in the systems we deliver.
The service network
is designed to create loosely coupled
systems that can easily be changed. One of the primary goals of
the Service Oriented
Enterprise is to make sure that the I.T. infrastructure is
not the obstacle to creating an agile business. I.T. should enable
agility – not prevent it.
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