The Realities of Modernization Changes
The requirement for a company to start a Business Transformation is generally predicated on changes within their business verticals.
These changes require improved daily processes that could touch almost all of the company’s daily activities.
This transformation extends past the requirement of just upgraded and new Technologies, it requires a new Paradigm of Thought.
The Modernization Changes Business Arenas:
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Technical Domain Mapping – Business Domain is directly reflected in the Technology Domain Models
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Code Quality Standards – A structured set of Developer coding standards that help lower the cost of maintenance
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Development Quality Partnership – A formal partnership with the QA Team during the Development processes
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Development Review Process – A three-phase structured Design, Develop and Integration Review process
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Corporate Technology Training – A “First Class Citizen” training approach to Business Transformation changes
The five areas are what we are going to detail in the sections below and explain how the contribute to the goals of Lower Costs and Scalable solutions.
Business Solutions
To control costs and the impact on the Business Culture a careful and keen eye must be used to ensure that the expectations for the transformation are met.
By looking at the Business Solutions defined from a Corporate Holistic View as well as a Technological Holistic View we can foreshadow issues and solve them before they become to costly to address.
Technical Business Domain Mapping
This is the requirement to create a Technology Environment that directly reflects the Business Environment.
The mapping of the Business Domain to the Technology Domain, using the same Business language, creates a vision that is shared between the Business Teams and the Delivery Teams.
The Language of Business is referred to as the Ubiquitous Language
Code Quality through Code Development Standards
This requirement helps ensure that the Developers of the Business Solutions are held to the highest standards for the designed solutions they deploy.
This developer’s code requirement will lower the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by creating a deployed code base that is Scalable and Extensible which will lower the cost of Application Maintenance over the lifetime of the deployed software.
A Structured Development Review Process to Lower Initial Defects
A formal three-phase Development Review Process enforces the Technical Domain Mapping, the Ubiquitous Language and the defined Code Standards.
The Three Phase Development Review Process:
- Phase One – The Development Review process begins with the Design Review which validates the Road Map for development of the Acceptance Criteria of a Sprint User Story.
- Phase Two – Once the Developer has completed the Test Driven Development (TDD) phase of the code development for assigned tasks, using Mock and Stub Dependencies in place of system dependencies, the Code Review Team certifies compliance with the quality process criteria.
- Phase Three – The third phase integrates the developed code into the QA test environment.
The Development Integration Review Team validates that the standards are still in play and that the QA Objective passes to the QA Testers satisfaction.
This process passes code to the QA Team that is essentially “Bug Free”.
A Strong Partnership between Quality Assurance and the Development Teams
A formal partnership with the Sprint Team’s QA testers and the Code Developers ensures that the “QA Objective”, the defined QA test criteria, validates that the QA deployed code meets the User Story Acceptance Criteria before it is presented to the Quality Assurance Team for formal testing.
By integrating the QA Testers with the Developers, during the Integration of the Development Certified Code into the QA environment, we place the QA Testers on the “Same Side of the Net” with the Developers.
This process creates delivery partners and not adversarial team members playing the “Gotcha” game.
This process respects the QA Team’s time and frees up the QA Team to spend time concentrating on Performance, Security, Hackers and Ignorant User activities, not finding bugs that the developers should have found before it went to QA.
A Structured Training Program for the Client’s Resources
Business Solutions require training programs to ease the fear and stress of the changes within the Company community.
New Business process training is generally not treated as a “First Class Citizen” within the transformation process and this can lead to skill set gaps that drive up the cost of doing business on a daily basis.
During the Business Transformation planning phase formal and informal training should be an integrated part of every area of change
Concluding Thoughts
It is important to keep in mind that Business Solutions are designed by human beings, consumed by human beings and Fail due to human beings.
Business solutions are more than the Technologies developed.
Wisdom Pearl # 110 – Technology Culture Change
Legacy Technologies were created by Legacy Technologists
… When Recommending “Fixes” to the Legacy Environment
…… Be Hypersensitive for the “Not Invented Here Syndrome“
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