Poised for Change Making and Keeping IT Systems Ready

!

Rebecca Parsons Chief Technology Officer

ThoughtWorks !

Quick delivery and release

The virtuous cycle includes:

Testable hypothesis

and then repeat

Measurement

Business Agility

So... what does it really take?

Experiment often

Be prepared to change quickly

Visibility into progress and performance

Rely on evidence not guesses

Balance predictability and opportunities

Factors

And How Do We Do That?

Continuous Delivery

Focus on achieving pragmatic software quality

Evolutionary architecture

Properly organized IT

Techniques

Early and often technical testing

Consider the time, scope, quality tradeoff

Focus on evolvability of the software

Trends often more valuable than values

Measure quality continuously

Internal Software Quality

And Where Do I Start?

Re-factor first for understanding, then for ease of change or re-use

Identify the hot-spots

Establish test coverage outside to inside

So is the Strangler Pattern

Abstraction is your friend

Remediating Code Quality Issues

Using event capture and routing

Used to add functionality around the edges of an old applicationUsing asset capture with bi-directional migration

Not used often enough

Very useful for addressing old complex code bases

Strangler Pattern

Last responsible moment

Postel’s Law

Architect for testability

Principles of Evolutionary Architecture

Minimizes technical debt from complexity

Delay decisions as long as you can

Maximizes the information you have

Decide early what your drivers are, and prioritize decisions accordingly

Last Responsible Moment

Beware the Silver Bullet

Continuous integration

Automate (almost) everything

Standardize environments as much as possible

End goal - deployments are boring

Automated testing

Continuous Delivery

What About the Organization?

Dilemma Cost control requires stability

whereas Value generation requires

responsiveness

The Same organization can’t do

both well

Consider the impact of Conway’s Law

Consider your differentiators (internal and external)

Separate commodity computing

Right-sized out sourcing

Manage at the portfolio level

What To Do?

Goal Business Agility

Lowering risk of experimentation

Architecting for real adaptability

Keeping systems poised for change

Aligning the organization

Maximizing visibility and feedback

Achieved by

Thank you! http://rebeccaparsons.com

http://www.thoughtworks.com @rebeccaparsons