Achieving true business agility involves much more than just producing "working software". It requires a comprehensive understanding of the business, its challenges, and various constraints ranging from resources, cost, and risk to regulatory compliance and competitive pressures.
In addition to producing working software, it's also important to ensure that the results developed - including the organizational structure, capabilities, business processes, and possibly even the physical infrastructure - are flexible and not an "instant legacy" that will be hard to change in the future. Key to avoiding this "instant legacy" problem is deferring decisions for as long as possible. Deciding too early without sufficient information increases the risk of that decision being wrong. Moreover, it's important to explore alternatives and not rush into a specific solution too soon.
Understanding the broader context and impact is where Enterprise Architecture and solution architecture add real value and can help increase the agility of an enterprise. To understand this broader context and to evaluate alternative solutions to your business challenge, architecture models are extremely useful. They provide a visual representation of the system's architecture, making it easier to understand the system's components and their dependencies. They can help teams keep track of crucial dependencies and understand how changes in one component may affect others. n a fast-moving organization, architecture models are even more valuable. They can be quickly updated to reflect changes in the system, making them a powerful tool for managing change and maintaining agility.
In conclusion, achieving true business agility involves much more than just producing working software. It requires a comprehensive understanding of the business and its challenges, a flexible approach to decision-making, and the use of tools like architecture models to understand the broader context and evaluate alternative solutions.
The Open Group Library materials are used to prepare the post.