Business foundations of IT

Many organisations face the twin problems of high operating costs and lack of business agility arising from past architectural choices and ad hoc growth. In this briefing, Ian describes a number of practices and activities that together create a useful representation of a firm's operating model -- one that can be used to identify, prioritise and plan strategic IT investments.

The briefing was all about what happens before the first line of code is written, about creating the foundations for success by modelling stable business capabilities, identifying projects that address shortcomings and instigating technical and architectural strategies needed.

Ian also showed examples from his recent experience with clients from the communications and media, entertainment, financial services, and oil and gas industries.

Describing how to create a stable foundation for the IT systems estate, Ian used three case studies from recent client work as well as shows how, by considering the business capabilities, the "What" we are trying to achieve, over the "How" - business and IT can work more effectively to common goals, with a common language.

Videos

A brief introduction

Case studies

Slides

Speaker Profile

Ian Robinson specializes in the design and delivery of service-oriented and distributed systems. He has written guidance for Microsoft on implementing integration patterns with Microsoft technologies,and has published articles on business-oriented development methodologies and distributed systems design - most recently in The ThoughtWorks Anthology (Pragmatic Programmers, 2008). He is currently co-authoring a book on Web-friendly enterprise integration.