Does Agile Enterprise Architecture = Agile + Enterprise Architecture?

Copyright © 2014, Intellyx, LLC
1
Does Agile EA =
Agile + EA?
Jason Bloomberg
President
jason@intellyx.com
@theebizwizard

About Jason Bloomberg
• President of Intellyx
• Advise companies on their digital
transformation initiatives & help vendors
communicate their agility stories
• Write for Forbes, Wired, &
DevX on Digital Transformation
• Buy my latest book,
The Agile Architecture
Revolution
Copyright 2 © 2014, Intellyx, LLC

The Agile Manifesto
Manifesto for Agile Software Development
We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:
– Individuals and interactions over processes
and tools
– Working software over comprehensive
documentation
– Customer collaboration over contract
negotiation
– Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.
Source: http://www.agilemanifesto.org

Context: Software
Development
• Focus on small teams
that crank out code
• Iterative, self-organizing,
collaborative
• Focus on creating
working software
Well-run Agile development means
producing a lot of good software
quickly
Photo Credit: Phil Whitehouse https://www.flickr.com/photos/philliecasablanca/2473728872/sizes/l

What about Architecture
on Agile Projects?
• We don’t need no stinkin’
architecture!
• Architecture lumped in with
documentation (less is more)
• Architects slow down
developers
• Architects produce artifacts
that aren’t Agile
– Lead to extra work
Photo Credit: Yortw https://www.flickr.com/photos/yortw/5470226807/sizes/l
Widespread belief that Agile and
Architecture don’t mix

But we Do Need
Architecture!
• Software architecture
– Appropriate
modularization of
code
– Selection of
appropriate
components & libraries
– Integration strategy
• Systems architecture
– Scalability of distributed application
– Cloud deployment issues
– Availability, caching, etc.

Create Minimum Viable
Architecture
• All documentation,
artifacts, diagrams,
etc. are means to an
end
• Don’t architect more
than the
stakeholders want
• Problems:
– Shortsighted
– Leads to legacy
issues
– Limits agility
Photo Credit: Camera Eye Photography https://www.flickr.com/photos/camera_is_a_mirror_with_memory/6628934195/sizes/l

Defer Commitment on
Design Decisions
• Traditional architecture
completed before
development
• On Agile projects,
tentative architecture
good enough
• Commit to design
decisions in appropriate
iteration/sprint
Photo Credit: Wade Rockett https://www.flickr.com/photos/waderockett/2947370316/sizes/o/

The Overbuilding Paradox
• How do stakeholders know
what flexibility they will
require?
• How generalized should
code be?
• When to build capabilities
vs. when to build
affordances?
Photo Credit: Ishikawa Ken https://www.flickr.com/photos/chidorian/19898378/sizes/l

Capabilities vs.
Affordances
• Capability
– Ability to perform or
achieve certain
outcomes through
features or functions
– Apps have capabilities
• Affordance
– A property of an object which allows an individual
to perform an action
– Tools have affordances
– Depends upon how user wants to use tool
Photo Credit: EraPhernalia Vintage https://www.flickr.com/photos/eraphernalia_vintage/3034341310/sizes/o/

Why Agile Software
Architecture isn’t Agile
• Agile movement focuses on working software
– Focus on getting the software to meet its
requirements
– Get all roadblocks out of the way
• Agile-built software is coded to be fit for purpose
Photo Credit: B4bees https://www.flickr.com/photos/brizo_the_scot/4013939756/sizes/l

Instant Legacy
• Difficult to upgrade
• Systems are
inflexible
• Impossible to
replace
• Difficult to
customize
• Challenge to
integrate
• Expensive over time
Photo Credit: LHOON https://www.flickr.com/photos/lhoon/2288339151/sizes/l

The Goal of Agile
Software
• Requirement to build software that responds to
changing requirements
• Inherent flexibility vs. rapid development &
deployment
Photo Credit: Robert Couse-Baker https://www.flickr.com/photos/29233640@N07/14859431605/sizes/z/

Scaling Agile for the
Enterprise
• Enterprise
Architecture context
– Organization,
process, technology,
and information
• Legacy context
– Existing applications,
middleware, systems of record
• Business focused, iterative, get stuff
to work, iconoclastic
Photo Credit: Boston Public Library https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/8962106164/sizes/l

Different Meanings of
“Agile”
• “Agile-with-a-capital-A”
– Software development that
follows the Agile Manifesto
• General meaning of “agile”
• Business agility as property
of an organization
Photo Credit: Earl McGehee https://www.flickr.com/photos/ejmc/10653135183/sizes/l

Business Agility
• Responsiveness
– Tactical value
• Resilience
– Risk mitigation
• Innovativeness
– Strategic value
Photo Credit: Masonite Burn https://www.flickr.com/photos/masonite-burn/6273626739/sizes/l
Ability to respond to change in the
business environment and leverage
change for competitive advantage

Responsiveness
• The ability to respond
quickly and efficiently to
(potentially) positive change
in the business environment
– Changing customer demand
– Changing marketplace
environment
– Changing supply chain
factors
• Tactical driver
Photo Credit: Good Eye Might https://www.flickr.com/photos/brittanyg/1796000993/sizes/l

Resilience
• The ability to respond
quickly and efficiently to
negative change in the
business environment
– Managing risk
– Bouncing back from
adverse events
– Disaster recovery
– Security breach response
– Regulatory change
response
• Tactical driver
Photo Credit: Joe https://www.flickr.com/photos/bitshaker/167480266/sizes/o/

Innovativeness
• The ability to introduce change into the business
environment in order to achieve a strategic
advantage
– New products or services
– Expand market share
– Enter new markets
Photo Credit: Kay Kim https://www.flickr.com/photos/kaykim/3883340152/sizes/o/

Where’s Our Business
Agility?
• Organizations must be responsive, resilient, and
innovative
• Business agility is a property of the enterprise
• People and technology can be flexible as well,
but we must architect our organizations to be
agile
Photo Credit: Stuart Berwick https://www.flickr.com/photos/lapleader/793507962/sizes/l

Introducing Complex
Adaptive Systems
• Systems of systems
that exhibit emergent
properties
– Properties of system
as a whole
• Component systems
can be human,
technology, etc.
• Self-organizing
Photo Credit: DirectDish https://www.flickr.com/photos/13800911@N08/3557789021/sizes/l

Enterprise as Complex
Adaptive System
• Business agility is
property of organization
as a whole, hence an
emergent property
of the organization
• Enterprise is system of
systems that exhibits
emergent properties
• System of people and
technology
Photo Credit: agu2000_de https://www.flickr.com/photos/38123550@N00/166930597/sizes/o/

Engineering a Complex
System
• Architecture focuses on the overall
design of a system
– How all components of the system
must work together to achieve
business goals
• Engineering focuses on the best way
to build and run a system
– Lifecycle best practices (quality
assurance, deployment, updates, etc.)
– Compliance with architecture
Agile principle: respond to change over
following a plan
Photo Credit: Brent 2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/brentinoz/4221291984/sizes/o/

At the Heart of Agile
Architecture
• Think of the enterprise as a system of systems
• Component systems are people and technology
systems
• We must architect the organization so entire
enterprise exhibits business
agility
• We can only engineer
business agility via its
component systems
• Change is constant & how
changes to component
systems affect the enterprise is unpredictable
Photo Credit: nickodoherty https://www.flickr.com/photos/nick-od/9151191333/sizes/l

Complex vs. Traditional
Systems
• Avoid emergent properties in traditional systems
• Traditional system: given requirements, build to
requirements
• Complex system: establish initial conditions and
rules for behavior of
component systems,
and emergence takes
care of itself
• Feedback loops are
common
Photo Credit: Franco Folini https://www.flickr.com/photos/livenature/8064660509/sizes/l

The Secret to Emergence
• Rules that affect behavior of
component systems can be
very simple
• Emergent behaviors often
unpredictable
• Try something, see what
happens, repeat
• Feedback loops & iterative
approaches
Photo Credit: Juan Leis https://www.flickr.com/photos/kaibara/4632384645/sizes/l
Sound Agile to You?

Attractors for Complex
Systems
• Stable
– Emergent behaviors die out or
never occur
– Not applicable to enterprise
• Cyclical
– System bounces between two or
more well-defined states
– Also not applicable
• Chaotic
– Unpredictable, few discernable patterns
– “Normal” state for enterprise
• Agile
– Exhibiting desired emergent behaviors
Photo Credit: Anders Sandberg https://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/273180669/sizes/o/

Architecting Complex
Systems
• Coherence of system
– If emerging behavior strays from desired outcome,
have pre-established means for bringing
organization back in line
• Feedback loops
– Gather & analyze data on emergent behavior to
correlate with initial constraints and determine
next course of action
• Mimics natural selection
– Favor desired behavior and discourage undesirable
behavior, and system will adapt to changed
environment

Agility vs. Flexibility
• Flexibility is the ability of a
component system to deal with
change within a specified set of
parameters
– People can be flexible vs. rigid in
their decision making
– Software can be flexible if it is
configurable to behave differently
given different requirements
Photo Credit: Joe Goldberg https://www.flickr.com/photos/goldberg/43948299/sizes/o/

Does Flexibility Lead to
Agility?
• If your people and your
software are flexible, does
that make your organization
agile?
– Necessary, perhaps, but
definitely not sufficient
• Being able to change
inflexible software quickly
doesn’t necessary make it
flexible
Photo Credit: A. Drauglis https://www.flickr.com/photos/artdrauglis/4193261266/sizes/l

Architecting Enterprise as
Complex System
• Architect people as well as technology
– Very different sets of activities
• Emergent behaviors often
unpredictable
– Continual adjustment necessary
– Automation critical for ensuring agility
• Small changes to component system
behavior may lead to significant
emergent behaviors
– Butterfly effect
Too slow and you’re not agile!
Photo Credit: Diganta Talukdar https://www.flickr.com/photos/nagaon/4394582833/sizes/l

Architecting People?
• Governance: creating, communicating, and
enforcing policies
– Apply to both human & technology behavior
– Policy-related processes
• Automated & lightweight
• Focus on important policies
– Security
– Regulatory compliance
– Software interface standards
Not a traditional approach to governance!
Photo Credit: Dave Catchpole https://www.flickr.com/photos/yaketyyakyak/5913250849/sizes/l

Governance as Agility
Enabler
• Simple rules & policies lead to
complex emergent behavior
– Which ones lead to agility?
• Levels of governance
– Low-level rules & policies
– Departmental
– Organizational
• Governance has negative connotation
– Reputation for limiting productivity
– Governance, Risk, & Compliance tools integrated in
traditional manner
Photo Credit: Mike Lewinski https://www.flickr.com/photos/ikewinski/9430887561/sizes/l

Bimodal IT: The Wrong
Way
• Digital Team
– Self-organizing
– Fast-moving
– May follow
Agile at least
in spirit
– Little
governance
• Traditional IT
– Hierarchical
– Slow-moving
– Waterfall-centric
– Formal,
bureaucratic
governance
Photo Credit: Keith Williamson https://www.flickr.com/photos/elwillo/
Ungoverned Shadow IT is Result

Rethinking Bimodal IT
• Business-driven transformation of traditional IT
– Iterative
– Opportunistic legacy modernization
– Cross-cutting reorganization to DevOps culture
– Increased collaboration with digital teams
– Move toward
continuous
development &
integration
Photo Credit: Andrew Magill https://www.flickr.com/photos/amagill/
Increased automation of governance

Shifting Role of
Governance
• Old Way
– Paperwork-heavy
– Morale-killing policies & procedures
– Bureaucratic & slow
– “Scar tissue” that impedes
innovation
• New Way
– Highly automated
– Focus on “edge cases” where
governance is essential
– Depends on dynamic constraint satisfaction
Photo Credit: Pascal https://www.flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76/

Governance & Agility?
• Do we get business agility?
• Agility doesn’t mean chaos
– If everybody in an
organization did whatever
they wanted to without any
rules or policies
– Rules & policies
inconsistently
communicated or applied
• Secret to business agility is to empower people
to innovate within constraints of organizational
policy
Photo Credit: Pascal https://www.flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76/

Introducing Bloomberg
Agile Architecture
• Bloomberg Agile
Architecture™ reinvents
Enterprise Architecture
(EA) to drive business
agility across the
organization
• New architecture paradigm
• EA technique focused on
architecting agility

Extending the Agile
Manifesto
• Individuals and interactions over
processes and tools
– As a system of people & technology,
the enterprise is more about people
• Working software over comprehensive
documentation
– Technology must actually work to
enable agility
• Customer collaboration over contract
negotiation
– Slice across the silos
• Responding to change over following a
plan
– Architect for change
Photo Credit: Mary Margret https://www.flickr.com/photos/double-m2/4384578534/sizes/l

Bloomberg Agile Architecture
Mind Map

Goal of Agile Architecture
• BAA is a technology-driven
technique
– Specific approaches for
leveraging modern
technologies like Cloud
Computing & Big Data Analytics
to achieve business agility
goals of the organization
• Goal of architecture
– Connect the dots between the
enterprise agility drivers &
necessary technology changes
to achieve goals of business
Photo Credit: Whitney Waller https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitneywaller/4269947837/sizes/l

Agile EA & Architecture
Frameworks
• Architecture frameworks (TOGAF, Zachman,
DoDAF, etc.) do not adequately address business
agility
– Difficult to use properly
– Can help achieve baseline
or specific business
outcomes
• Take subtractive approach
– You need to figure out
which bits to use
• BAA Technique is additive
– Works within context of frameworks
Photo Credit: Stephanie Overton https://www.flickr.com/photos/sloverton/7303570930/sizes/l

BAA as Agile Technique
• BAA is itself an Agile
technique
– Favors an iterative,
problem-focused
approach that seeks
to achieve real
progress in a practical,
step-by-step manner
– Even the most
intractable of legacy rats’ nests can benefit from
the BAA Technique
• If your plan is to follow BAA, you must be willing
to change the plan!
Photo courtesy Orange County Archives.

Thank You!
Jason Bloomberg
President, Intellyx
jason@intellyx.com
@theebizwizard
Send email NOW to afei@intellyx.com to
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Does Agile Enterprise Architecture = Agile + Enterprise Architecture?

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