Incremental Software Architecture

Chapter 1The Need for Incremental Software Architecture

Technical books rarely begin with conclusions. But the impetus for this book is so strong that it must be revealed at the onset. So, with no time to spare, here is the bottom line: IT and business organizations, in their current incarnations, must be eliminated. Replacing them with regional,¹ nimble, and smaller management and technical groups, called Micro-Organizations in this book, will be of immense benefit to the product and software development community.

Mere replacement is not enough, however. Merging a Micro-IT organization with its Micro-Business organization counterpart could diminish the constant battle for alignment efforts and improve firm-wide communication. Moreover, unifying smaller business and IT groups to provide rapid enterprise solutions could reduce the long-running frictions between the two, and create a more productive work environment.

This vision accentuates the need to break down the traditional enterprise centralized management into smaller decentralized organizations to boost efficiency and speed up decision-making. Consequently, regional, small-scale, and agile Micro-Organizations would seize governance and best practices responsibilities to deliver practical and superior systems.

As a result, joint business and IT teams would operate autonomously to deliver and integrate products on time and on budget. Rather than reporting to enterprise executives, teams would report to regional management ...