James Taylor's Decision Management

Some time ago I wrote a post on Application Development 2.0 three key changes seem to me to be involved:

• Collaborate don't compete
• Declare don't code
• Iterate don't finish

Let's take the first one today and work on the other two later in the week.
The first change that is necessary is that programmers and business users have to learn to collaborate rather than compete. The reality is that some aspects of application development are going to require programmers and technical skills and yet truly successful applications must be driven by and largely owned by the business. As with all changes this requires changes to people, process and technology. People must change their attitudes with business people understanding the constraints of IT and IT people understanding that their "users" are more and more comfortable with technology and must be brought into the process. Processes must change, with things like waterfall methodologies and huge requirements documents being replaced with more agile and inclusive approaches. Finally technology must change with traditional coding environments being replaced with approaches that are more accessible to non-technical users and more suitable for collaboration. Only then will the collaboration necessary for effective systems development and business agility happen.
Here's a couple of links you might enjoy:

• Concurrent Business Engineering with Business Rules
• Achieving Agility
• Business Rules Cafe