A very good entry describing outside-in software development is available at wikipedia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outside-in_software_development.
(Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewart/ 461099066/sizes/s/ by Stewart)
I participated in a CIO Talk Radio discussion of Enterprise Content Management (ECM). It is worth noting that outside-in thinking plays a big role in helping IT leaders align ECM projects with their line of business colleagues - the folks who will be most affected by the rollouts.
Check out Exploiting ECM to Maximize ROI in the Talk Radio archive for July 16th, 2008.
As Keith Instone pointed out to me, the CIO Talk Radio site requires registration. Try this URL to avoid such if you prefer - your mileage, however, may vary: http://www.voiceamericapd.com/business/109004/aul071608.mp3
(With guest blogger, John Sweitzer.)
In our prior post we set up the complex consumability challenge of dealing with a collection of products, and we introduced the term plusOne. Now we’ll say more about the technique.
Imagine successfully adopting software into your business as a trip. The details of this trip are captured in an adoption route, a prescriptive pattern that embodies best practices for deploying a collection of products in a particular business context.
A good adoption route will guide the traveler around potholes or ensure the potholes are filled before the traveler arrives. plusOne methods help us to construct adoption routes that avoid the pot holes that delay our realizing the business value promised at the destination.
Adoption routes are decomposed into phases that deploy meaningful subsets of the products. What products should be in each phase? In what order should the phases occur?
The products found in a scenario proposal can often be organized into three categories: the new products being proposed to solve the business problem, the pre-requisites of these new products, and the products that the new products need to integrate with to realize the anticipated business benefit.
Each phase of an adoption route is characterized by the successful deployment of one of the proposed products in a way that delivers incremental value. These products are the ones involved in the scenario that are directly related to the business benefits.
This approach encourages the adoption route phases to be about delivering incremental value and this approach incorporates the change management “fewest number of changes at a time” best practice. The idea of adding a single proposed product at a time was the inspiration for the plusOne name of this technique.
This does not mean a single product is deployed at each phase. The single new product along with its pre-requisite products need to be deployed at each phase.
The plusOne approach provides a framework to build out scalable ways to solve major consumability issues – the sort you or your clients experience when combinations of software are integrated to implement business scenarios.
The prescriptive nature of plusOne adoption routes provides a repeatable and reliable way of constructing and deploying multi-vendor software solutions that address customer business requirements. If you’re a business partner or software vendor, you can use this approach to guide your marketing and sales as well.
For planning and deployment teams, adoption routes are meant to be proven ways to help clients arrive at the to-be destination safely. For your product teams, the prescriptive natures of the adoption routes suggest the permutations (such as product versions and physical topologies supported) that matter most.
Your plusOne adoption route will get 80% of your travelers to the top of the mountain without climbing equipment. The other 20% are those who really enjoy – or feel they must have – a distinctive climbing experience. They’ll use the grappling hooks and snow shoes that they always have. For the most part, though, you and most of your stakeholders will be better off staying on the well marked trail.
(Image attribution: www.flickr.com/photos/ stg_gr1/168242348/sizes/s/, by stg_gr1)
(With guest blogger, John Sweitzer.)
Imagine you are looking at the top of a tall mountain from the bottom with a picture of a luxurious mountain-top resort in your hand. You are smiling inside as you imagine yourself at the resort. You know it is at the top of the mountain. You then look at your surroundings and suddenly realize you have no idea how to get from the bottom to the top of the mountain.
Outside-in approaches first focus on describing the top of the mountain in terms of business objectives. Essentially the business objectives are the destination. The destination (often referred to as the to-be state) is captured in a high level business scenario picture that illustrates the business benefits that will be realized after the successful deployment of the products . Consumability focuses on the reality of the gotcha that one cannot enjoy the benefits of being at the destination until after the software has been successfully deployed.
Business analysts, IT teams and business partners all face a range of consumability challenges. Especially when a complex environment demands a combination of products be identified, planned for, installed, configured and deployed.
If you were working your way to the top of the mountain you’d be worrying about how steep the climb is and how many switch backs you have to navigate. A software deployment journey would have you worrying about the various technology and organizational changes that need to be addressed.
The journey can be treacherous if there are many consumability pot holes along the way. Such a pot hole occurs when you have only partial details about how to integrate the products together. You may have the skills and resources to fill the pot hole but you probably would prefer to use those resources to address other business needs. That is, you may actually be a world class mountain climber but in this case you want to have some energy left to enjoy the resort after you get to the top.
(Image attribution: www.flickr.com/photos/labgp/ 255256101/sizes/s/, by LabGP & SigOther)
The Rational Software Development Conference (RSDC) the first week of June this year included a talk by William Shatner, who compared software development and movie making. It, like all the talks at RSDC, was interesting, and you can view these talks via the IBM RSDC developerWorks site which will point you to the RSDC IBM TV channel (you’ll need to register, but it is quick and painless to do so).
Mr. Shatner’s opening comments included some factoids about the software industry:
I don’t want to debate the numbers, because my experience tells me they’re approximately correct for the point being made. But I can’t help but wonder: if 75% fail and 33% are canceled, then either 42% aren’t canceled but are otherwise a mess (75-33), or only 12% of projects succeed (75+33).
To be clear, there’s a much more reputable number stated by Danny Sabbah, who runs the IBM Rational business, also provided at the conference during his presentation: only 34% of software projects are deemed successful.
One problem is that any of these numbers are believable to folks in the SW industry because we see the number of missed opportunities for real success. That’s why business analysts and requirements leaders need (we think) to use outside-in development techniques.
What is an enterprise of the future anyway? IBM has a good sense of the answer as an outcome of its third biennial global CEO study, surveying more than 1,000 CEOs and institutional leaders worldwide to build a detailed picture.
You can learn more about this at the IBM CEO Study site. I’ll describe just one small aspect of the research which hits directly upon outside-in thinking.
IBM categorizes the research into four categories, of which one is “innovative beyond customer imagination.” The notion is that CEOs are investing to capture new opportunities and to serve more sophisticated and demanding consumers. The big question is, what will it take to convert these investments into greater market share?
Which brings us to the outside-in implication. IBM believes that the out-performing enterprise of the future will connect everyone in their firm to their customers. It will develop deep relationships with leading edge clients and employees, and collaborate with them to understand stakeholder needs and develop products.
The enterprise of the future, then, is a more proactive - outside-in thinking - partner and thus an integral part of its customers’ businesses.
On a visit with a few China-based clients this week I realized that successful, growth-oriented clients really want their vendors to think outside-in.
Why is this? The high-energy CIOs appreciate their dependency on software systems to enable and expedite their growth. They can’t afford for their vendors to misstep on requirements or implementation because they need that next capability asap.
When they are offered the opportunity for design partnership or to provide input on directions, they jump at it. Whether they look at screen mock-ups, demo workflows, or participate deeply in a design session, there’s value in it for them. They can influence the direction towards their needs, but more importantly they can assure that what’s built will be useful.
I’ve never yet met a client who doesn’t respond with great enthusiasm to the offer of working closely with my development teams. And in China, which is one of the world’s fastest growing economies, there’s a commensurate interest in leveraging technology for big advances in business growth.
So go for it - talk about outside-in with your clients, potential clients, and in-house line of business clients. If they don’t welcome the concept with open arms, let me know.
(Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ robennals/619102440/sizes/s/ by robennals)
John Sweitzer and I just recorded two podcasts introducing outside-in development.
In the first, we introduce our book, “Outside-in Software Development,” by describing the first two of five steps to outside-in thinking.
In the second, we describe the remaining three steps to outside-in, and how to get started.
These episodes are also available in “OnBizTech” in iTunes.
(Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mkeefe/ 2349283746/sizes/s/ by M. Keefe )