We frequently encounter change initiatives that fail due to inadequate business cases and poor solution design practices. This is further complicated by attempting to design and estimate change using an approach more suited to monolithic applications. Consequently, these issues are more common for BPM/SOA change initiatives or those affecting multiple systems.
Another reason for the high failure rate of IT projects is that the planning and design phases are skewed towards deriving an estimate rather than the most appropriate design of the solution. Furthermore, the emphasis on determining time and cost without establishing the business intent and solution architecture for the change is the primary reason for project scope creep and delays. We believe that our comprehensive Conceptual Design Process (CDP) addresses these issues.
The Fragile to Agile Conceptual Design Process (CDP) forms part of our Integrated Architecture Framework which is deliberately modular so that each design domain can be considered separately as well as holistically. The CDP is specifically architected to ensure that core decisions regarding the scope and solution are made in the design phase so that solution delivery can commence with a level of certainty. Analogous to the construction of a house, the CDP generates the information required to commence the building phase such as the foundations, footings, floor plans etc. It does not consider the colour of the walls or internal fittings as these decisions can be made at a later stage and without significantly impacting cost and time.
The CDP is also designed to improve the overall speed and quality of change within an organisation. In the absence of a CDP, projects are at risk of falling into one of two categories i.e. excessive analysis or prematurely moving into solution delivery. The Fragile to Agile CDP is right sized to an organisation’s needs and does what it needs to do, and only what it needs to do, to provide enough certainty to transition confidently to the solution delivery phase.
The Fragile to Agile Conceptual Design Process (CDP) alleviates many of the issues experienced during the design phase by:
- Capturing measurable business intent for the change;
- Assessing the business viability of the change, and providing the ability to terminate non-viable initiatives early to ensure constrained resources are optimally employed;
- Producing a solution design as the primary output, and a solution estimate as a related outcome;
- Only generating necessary design artefacts;
- Supporting the direct flow of artefacts from the Conceptual Design to Change Delivery processes;
- Embedding governance within the design process;
- Producing both a Business Case and a Conceptual Solution Summary;
- Clearly defining the roles required and the artefacts they are responsible for;
- Detailing the involvement of technology and business designers and how they work together;
- Being repeatable;
- Supporting design that adheres to the tenets of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and assisting the determination of business process and service layers;
- Being metrics based to provide a greater level of accuracy in time and cost estimations;
- Supporting both a modelling (UML) and document based output method;
- Incorporating structured hierarchical requirements gathering;
- Supporting either agile or waterfall based solution delivery methodology.