Principles of Evolutionary Architecture & Design for Agile PM (Part 1)

Dr. Rico has been a leader in support of major U.S. government agencies for 25 years. He's led many Cloud, Lean, Agile, SOA, Web Services, Six Sigma, FOSS, ISO 9001, CMMI and SW-CMM projects. He specializes in IT investment analysis, portfolio valuation and organizational change. He's been an international keynote speaker, presented at leading conferences, written six textbooks and published numerous articles. He’s also a frequent PMI, APLN, INCOSE, SPIN and conference speaker. For more see davidfrico.com.

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Topics: Agile, Applications Delivery, Information Technology, Manufacturing, Quality, Requirements Management, Scope Management, Testing/Test Management, Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)

Large-scale change of enterprise-level architecture and infrastructure presents a challenge, especially in today's networked world. The challenges of today’s enterprise information systems are somewhat unique, compared to when the electronic computer emerged nearly 70 years ago. An early challenge was to stabilize computer technology in the first decade or so. Once it was stabilized, the next challenge was to build useful, large-scale automated systems such as weapons, corporate networks and business automation functions. Standardizing programming languages was a major concern during this era.

Commercialization of information systems such as mainframe computers, software applications and even networks began to emerge in the 1960s. Several challenges faced these early adopters of information system technology. Skilled professionals (and especially managers) were in short supply. The management and technical disciplines were just emerging (i.e., project management, systems development, software development, etc.). Early projects were complex, requiring years, thousands of people and billions of dollars. The terms “management crisis” and “software crisis” emerged with respect to information systems.

The first 25 years spawned at least two major phenomena with respect to information systems. The first was the waterfall lifecycle. That is…

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