Agilization

Today I'm re-authoring the Action Framework system. It reminded me that in 2002, the Action Framework was the reason why I started on the journey to producing a better way of working with data that has since become known as enterprise mashups.

Under any other description, an Action Framework is a performance management system but unlike traditional performance management systems that focus too much on strategies and plans and not enough on reality, the currency of an Action Framework are the actions that happen across an organization on a daily basis.

When I started NDMC I was keen to find a better way of managing organizations because I've seen so many good and enthusiastic people find themselves in middle-management positions, not knowing why they're doing what they've been asked to do. All too often, enthusiasm and effort does not translate into results and rewards because of poor instruction or poor alignment between the actions of these key people and the required outcomes of the organization. Another issue that I was keen to resolve was how organizations listen to their customers and learn what matters most to them. Normally organizations get this wrong because they have sales people doing the asking or they rely on satisfaction surveys with their 'yes' and 'no' black and white responses. So it made sense to me that a performance management framework needed to have installed mechanisms to listen to the outside world and adjust plans based on its ability to learn.

From these fragments of logic, my colleagues at NDMC and I created the first Action Framework in 2004. Initially our first attempt was built on spreadsheets that I used to capture strategic plans, budgets and actions and insights.  Aligning all of these elements was not easy on a spreadsheet (I wasn't convinced we were helping anyone see the woods for the trees with such a complicated landscape of data) so a year on we turned to the use of an SQL relational database and built a series of data capture and analysis applications in dotnet.

But there was a fundamental problem. Whatever we did to create 'the perfect system' for every organization, there were too many variables and far too many repositories and sources of data. In consequence, the cost of 'feeding' the Action Framework with up-to-the-minute data proved too expensive. We had a good model but not a good 'system'.

What we needed was a method of creating Action Frameworks that would be different for every organization; that could capture data from pretty much any data source from across the enterprise and present insights in new and useful ways without the traditional overheads and burdens of IT projects.

It was with this fragment of common sense that we embarked on the production of such a system. Initially we went to all of the major suspects to see if we could use an existing tool but it didn't take long for us to realize that our vision was at odds with what the IT industry believed to be possible.

Enterprise mashups are a very different concept in IT that requires a fresh perspective in the way such a technology can be applied. Unfortunately, most people in business apply the role of enterprise mashups into the current ways of working and uses of IT. They try to fit Enterprise Mashups into the present day landscape of IT and ask the question ' so what does it replace?'

People that do this miss the point.

The envisioned role of Enterprise Mashups is to provide a system and mechanism for creating an information management that is always in consort with the information needs of the community they serve. Any effective Action Framework cannot be affordably deployed (and therefore can not exist) without this level of agility in IT systems.

Anyway, back to re-building that Action Framework;-)