Agile Planning and Enterprise Architecture

The Wall Street Journal in conjunction with MIT Sloan School of Management on 15 September 2007 reports that “markets, technologies, and competition are becoming more dynamic by the day. To succeed in this environment…requires a whole new level of flexibility.” Instead of strategy that “too often locks managers into decisions that may turned out to be flawed, because something outside their control doesn’t go as planned. What is needed is…flexibility into strategy—a plan that lays out a series of options for managers to pursue or decline as developments warrant.”

By practicing agile planning (as I call it), decisions are broken down into stages, where management can review events and decide whether “to proceed, hold back, or retreat at each stage” or alter course altogether.

From a User-centric EA perspective, I really like the idea of agile planning in coming up with the architecture target and transition plan. What we may think today is the best business or technical plan to meet user needs, may not be the case 6 months or a year later. Moreover, as plans extend beyond 3-5 year timeframe, the ability to hit the target is often grossly exaggerated.

The concept of agile planning is to come up with milestones and then based on event-driven triggers follow through to a series of next steps. Agile planning gives the enterprise tremendous flexibility to adjust to changes (whether internal or external-driven), and not get trapped in the “planning pit” , whereby decision-makers are caught in the decision hole that they dug for themselves.

While as planners, we cannot be wishy-washy—we must develop a clear way ahead for the organization—developing the capability to move forward, yet be nimble enough to adjust to changing circumstance is the way to build a truly wonderful plan.

Agile Planning and Enterprise Architecture