Are there limits to agility?

1. LIMITS TO AGILITY?
ASAS 2015
Gert Florijn & Eelco Rommes
October 2015

2. CONTEXT: IT-MAINTENANCE
Agile improves software development. But many
organizations do not develop any software. They
buy it.
 What can such organizations learn from agile development?
 How can they become more agile?
hospitals waterboard municipality

3. IT IN HOSPITALS - THE IDEAL PICTURE
RDZ versie2.2 Referentiedomeinenmodel Ziekenhuizen van i-ziekenhuis
i-ziekenhuis is een samenwerkingprogramma van de NL ziekenhuizen en UMC’s op initiatief van NVZ en NICTIZ
For example: a hospital fulfills many tasks, as this
reference model shows.

4. IT IN HOSPITALS - PRACTICE
Any hospital needs a lot of IT to run.

5. MANY FACTORS OF COMPLEXITY
P Projects
F Functional
maintenanceF
The typical resulting IT-landscape is complex and hard
to manage.

6. SOME CHARACTERISTICS
 A few core systems, many satellites
 A few vendors dominate the market
 Many interfaces to sync data
 Old technology, old data
 Mostly COTS

7. Laws & policies
THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’
Vendors
Partners
Users
Coupling
Pressure to change
comes from various
sides.
Changes cause a ripple
effect.

8. THE NEED FOR AGILITY - EXAMPLE
Hospitals become network
organisations, exchanging
information with all kinds of
partners.
Mutual dependencies make the
ripple effect stronger.
Agility becomes more and
more important.

9. 7 WAYS OF CHANGING (OR NOT)
...as seen
in practice...
How do such IT-organisations typically deal with change?

10. ISOLATING THE CHANGE
Select, procure, implement in isolation.
Create islands of automation to reduce complexity.
But under water, these islands are connected. They
form an ecosystem.
Changes on one island cause changes on others.
Source: www.pixgood.com - archipelago islands

11. TRENCH WARFARE
IT-departments may try to avoid change by developing
tactics to delay changes, like strictly following
procedures, endless investigations, risk analyses,
speaking in jargon, all kinds of approval boards, etc.
This may buy time, but it is not very collegial.
Source: www.militaryhistorynow.com

12. BIG BANG
Large, critical systems are typically
upgraded or replaced in a big bang migration.
An incremental approach can be too complex to manage,
due to the many interdependencies.
Source: The Big Bang Theory

13. SPECIAL OFF-THE-SHELF
Buying off-the-shelf software, then
adapting it to suit the specific
needs of the organisation is
common practice.
It is also expensive and risky and
makes it harder to implement
inevitable fruture updates.
Source: Buzzfeed.com - the “Land, Air and Sea Burger”

14. REFUSING TO CHOOSE
Many organisations try to do too much at
once. They lack overview and mechanisms for
setting priorities. This leads to many
unfinished projects. Some live for a long time,
making no progress but not failing either.
Source: hdimagegallery.net – too much choice

15. IT AS A CROWBAR
Changing IT is often not
enough to change an
organisation.

16. JUST DO IT
Aka the golfcourse application.
“I just bought this new application, please
install it for me.”

17. CHANGING THE WAY WE CHANGE
... 6 suggestions
to become
more agile...
How can organisations such as these become more agile?

18. VIEW THE LANDSCAPE AS A SYSTEM
Looking at a landscape as a single, coherent whole,
challenges an organisation to manage it as such.
Interfaces, coupling, integration an integral part of
that system, enabling it to work.
Source: posti più belli del mondo

19. LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY
An overview of the landscape is crucial. What do we
have? Where is information stored, shared, used?
Landscape photographs are created with the viewer and
a specific goal in mind.
Broad strokes are more important than details.
Source: Barcelona Photography Courses

20. MANAGE THE TECHNICAL DEBT
Keep the technical debt manageable.
Life cycle management, timely upgrades, reducing
specials, choose solutions that fit the regime.
There is business value in refactoring.
Source: gifsgallery.com

21. IF IT HURTS, DO IT MORE OFTEN
Automate what you can: generating test data
from production, deployment, monitoring,
regression testing, etc.
Quality work requires quality tools.
Source: Coyote & Correcaminos de Looney Tunes

22. THE PRODUCT OWNER IS A TEAM
Organize productownership at the landscape
level.
This is a hard task, which probably needs a
team to support it.
Source: usa365.nl/murdock-interview

23. EARN A PLACE AT THE TABLE
Some IT decisions belong at the board level.
IT-experts need access to them.
Source: www.amc.com/shows/mad-me

24. YES, BUT...
@@slide to be done – alvast wat tekst hieronder
This is not easy and there are costs involved.
But that is no reason not to do it.

25. HOW AGILE CAN WE GET?
There are many open questions waiting to be
answered.
But perhaps we can make elephants dance.
Let’s see how agile we can get.
Source: Who says elephants can t dance

26. CONTACT US
Gert Florijn
 gert.florijn@mxi.nl
Eelco Rommes
 eelco.rommes@mxi.nl