Articles of Interest

While it is important to incorporate the core practices like automated testing, continuous integration, refactoring, simple and evolutionary design and collective ownership, it is also imperative that the organization understand and incorporate the ‘core values’ that these practices are based on - fast feedback, clean code, simplicity and repeatability.

Business owners like you and technology experts like me are witness to the evolution of every organization into a digital organization. This movement is born out of the realization that technology is not just a supporting software function but is at the core of every transforming business.

The technical utopia that can sustain these business ‘ideals’ can only exist within an extremely sound engineering organization or an organization driven by an exceptional engineering mindset.

Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist at ThoughtWorks and renowned author, software consultant and speaker confirms that an organization’s Tech Excellence has never been as crucial as it is today. Creating a technology strategy that allows businesses to not only deal with, but take advantage of the increasingly rapid pace of change separates successful organizations from the obsolete ones.

McKinsey talks about how, “Small, independent teams are the lifeblood of the agile organization.”

These teams have the following qualities:

Directly connected to the business

Action a clear business investment

Trust and collaboration between team members

Low dependencies

The objective here is to craft a working environment that is fluent enough so that we can get from business idea to the production as quickly and seamlessly as possible

<strong>Simplicity</strong> – This fundamental principle can unbundle work loads down to micro units, based on the fact that smaller chunks of work are easier to get into production. It is also a key attribute to observe when scaling solutions.

<strong>Openness</strong> – Consistent collaboration thrives in an open work environment. A survey by a leading co-working operator found the happiest and most productive employees are those who regularly team up with people both outside and within the office. Such an environment ensures that every idea or problem can be augmented through diverse perspectives.

<strong>Resonance</strong> – The increasing degree of uncertainty requires organizations to develop a responsive delivery approach. Components of such an approach include building feedback into the development cycle, breaking down silos towards better collaboration, enabling collective team ownership of the solution and extensive automation.

<strong>Collaborative ecosystems</strong> – Engineering-centric organizations profit from building, nurturing and leveraging strong ecosystems. An ecosystem is built on the back of a common business objective tying everyone’s efforts together towards qualitatively superior inter-organizational communication.

<strong>Iterative models or approaches</strong> – These are a forward-facing investment of time and resources. Building simplified, observable solutions that can be automated means businesses can hit the market midway, can keep learning and deliver value.