Enabling Operational Excellence
Enabling Operational Excellence
Enabling Operational Excellence
Enabling Operational Excellence

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Business Agility vs. Agile in Software Development: Not Related!

Business agility results when the IT aspect of change in business policies and business rules disappears into the plumbing.  All artificial (IT-based) production-freeze dates for deployment disappear and the software release cycle becomes irrelevant.  The only constraint is how long it takes business leads and Business Analysts to think through the change as thoroughly as they feel they need to. We define business agility as follows: being able to deploy change in business policies and business rules into day-to-day business activity as fast as business people and Business Analysts can determine the full business impact of the change and assess whether the change makes good business sense Agile in software development is an IT development method featuring rapid iteration and prototyping.  Agile methods and business agility have nothing to do with each other.  Agile in software development leaves off exactly where business agility picks up – at deployment. In working with clients we frequently come across systems that feature a very ‘open’ environment with few enterprise controls.  Typically, this ‘flexibility’ resulted from diligent efforts by IT to satisfy many stakeholders individually.  But the ‘flexibility’ is just an illusion.  The failure of business-side stakeholders to come together and develop a collective business solution before ‘agile’ software development commences can plague the company for years to come.  It reduces overall productivity, lowers customer satisfaction, and diminishes the capacity to make sound operational business decisions.  It makes apple-to-apple financial comparisons virtually impossible.  And it always costs a lot in ‘maintenance’.  There are simply no magic bullets for building business solutions! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Excerpted from Building Business Solutions: Business Analysis with Business Rules, by Ronald G. Ross with Gladys S.W. Lam, An IIBA® Sponsored Handbook, Business Rule Solutions, LLC, 2011, 304 pp, http://www.brsolutions.com/bbs  

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Ronald G. Ross

Ron Ross, Principal and Co-Founder of Business Rules Solutions, LLC, is internationally acknowledged as the “father of business rules.” Recognizing early on the importance of independently managed business rules for business operations and architecture, he has pioneered innovative techniques and standards since the mid-1980s. He wrote the industry’s first book on business rules in 1994.

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    Paulus Meijs

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    If you define “Business Agility” and “Agile Development” in this way, then they are indeed BY DEFINTION separate. If you take a more general perspective, then Business can learn from “Agile methods” or principles, eg. “Comunication is more valuable than process” (from the Agile Manifesto “http://agilemanifesto.org/” ).

    Also Forbes ventilated the last opinion in “The Best-Kept Management Secret On The Planet: Agile” (see “http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/04/09/the-best-kept-management-secret-on-the-planet-agile/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Innov%2Batres&goback=%2Egde_1523_member_108113673”)

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