Completing the Revolution

by Oliver Sims, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

Today's business-IT divide reminds me forcibly of an anecdote about the automobile market at the end of the 19th century. At that time, it was widely held that the total market for automobiles in Europe could only be around 50,000 because that was the probable number of chauffeurs that were going to be available at any one time. Remember that back then chauffeurs had to be not only competent drivers, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of where gasoline could be obtained, but also highly skilled mechanics, capable of doing complex roadside repairs whenever required.

Today, IT application development is the business's 19th-century chauffeur. But why can't the business drive itself? We need to move IT to being the automobile -- moving the business effortlessly from A to B while, with minimal time in learning how to "drive" (produce application function and define data), the business defines where A and B are, how fast to drive, and maneuvering around the bends.

My recent Enterprise Architecture Executive Report (see "Completing the Computer Revolution" (Vol. 12, No. 7) aimed to show that the techniques and know-how is available today to start designing and building application development capability that businesspeople can use. So, assuming that the scenarios painted in that report are deemed desirable, the next question is how to make them a reality.

On the technical side, there are, I believe, only two major requirements for the production of the kind of environment presented in the report. First, a set of architectures rigorously directed at separating business from technical concerns; second, a consistent and concentrated focus on the goal of making things as simple as possible for the business developer. Both of these are quite feasible given the right team.

However, over the years -- working with a range of companies in different industries from small to very large -- it has become apparent that three factors are most needed to make the kind of fundamental change suggested by our two scenarios:

1. A really good business case that addresses pressing and perhaps endemic problems

2. Sufficient financial reserves to make the required investment

3. A senior executive who not only shares the vision and makes its achievement a high priority, but also stays in post long enough to drive its realization

With respect to cost: while the investment is not huge, it is not trivial either. To give some indication of the effort required, and based on experience with a project that produced a similar environment, I suspect it could take in the region of between 60 and 120 person-years over, say, four years. However, payback should begin within the first eight months or so as application developers in IT start to benefit from some of the artifacts produced (or, if a vendor or startup, early subsets could be sold as product). Also the payback should be cumulative as more of the environment is produced and put to use. With respect to the third factor, it's lack of this that most often causes highly promising projects to lose their impetus and then fizzle out. But if we can find all three factors, whether in a multinational, a product vendor, a middleware vendor, or in a startup, then we may indeed be able to complete the computer revolution.

Summary

Just think! If for a moment we lift ourselves above the constant cacophony in our industry of new strategies, new technologies, new hype, old concepts wrapped in new clothes, and so forth, and ask ourselves, "What is the biggest challenge we face?" I suspect that removing the business-IT divide will be up there in the top three. But the business-IT divide was caused in the first place by the advent of IT into businesses. Now is the time to start thinking about repatriating application development to its natural home -- back in the business. This will be difficult for many reasons, but by no means impossible. It's time to start completing the computer revolution!

I welcome your comments about this Advisor and encourage you to send your insights on current business technology trends to me at comments@cutter.com.

-- Oliver Sims, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium