Application Analysis

The big IT problem

One of the biggest problems we've encountered involves companies that haven't clearly defined their business goals. How can IT align itself with the business goals of the company if those goals change on a whim? Focusing on building collaborative value propositions can begin to feel like an exercise in futility.

We tend to think of this situation as part of the "typical organization". Management feels like IT is unresponsive to the Company's needs and IT feels like the business is not thinking far enough into the future to take advantage of the solutions they can provide and are consequently under-investing.

Communication is key

If the IT group is truly the last to know about changes in corporate direction, clearly something needs to change within the management structure to bring the technology group into the fold. If the business is truly changing strategies rapidly, the IT group may have to rethink the way it approaches solutions.

Being super-responsive

When the IT group can't keep up with corporate strategy, it's time to start looking at some agile programming methodologies. This means breaking your applications into smaller, bite-sized chunks. You're going to be driving your application to a release more often and in shorter time-frames. At each point, management has the opportunity to redirect the development efforts to point them in a new direction if necessary. Adoption of a component based architecture can provide the additional flexibility IT needs to keep up.

Product Vision

An application analysis engagement results in the production of the first draft of your Vision document. The Vision provides a high-level basis for the software project. It captures the essence of the solution being considered in the form of high-level requirements and design constraints. It provides input to the project-approval process and is closely related to the Business Case. It communicates the fundamental "why and what" for the project and is a gauge against which all future decisions should be validated.