James Taylor's Decision Management

When I was at the webMethods conference recently I heard Connie Moore of Forrester use a great phrase "designing with change in mind". This made me wonder if I could write a short list of characteristics of a dynamic or temporary application built, not to last, but to change. So here goes:

• Everything is externalized and managed
• Business Data is in a database
• Business Process is in a BPMS
• Business Rules are in a BRMS
• User interaction is managed through a browser and is dynamic
• A dynamic application is a composite application
• Functionality is expressed in services
• Services have well defined interfaces and are loosely coupled
• Process and workflow definitions link services to deliver value
• Business users handle business problems
• When the business process changes, the business users can change it
• When the business rules change, the business users can change them
• If the business user does not like the interface they can change it
• If the business user wants to bring in external services they can "mash them up"
• IT handles technical problems
• When the application does not run fast enough, IT makes it run better
• When the application needs to be hooked up to something complicated, IT does that
• When the structure of the application changes, IT makes sure it still works
• IT makes sure all of the above is done in a sustainable, technically valid way

I am sure there's more but you get the drift. So why should you do this? Because this approach prepares you for "change time" and change time is almost the total of the life of a system because change is inevitable. Both this blog and my other one have sections on business agility.

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