Agility and InnovationInnovation and Agility

Simon Marsden

Innovation

• Introducing something new

• Solve a problem

• Radical or incremental

– Continuous improvementculture

Agility

• moving quickly and lightly

• ease, nimbleness, low impact

Why

• Take advantage of new ideas and new technologies

• Competitive advantage - Effectiveness

– Does IT Matter – Nicholas Carr

Some other reasons why

• Do my stuff now

• Frustration with perceived slowness

• Fear of being left behind

• It sounds good

Innovation - Agility

IS gets told

• No compromise on scope

– We want it never to break– We need it to work for everyone– We want minimal admin

• Stop changing stuff

• Boys and toys

• And be agile and innovative

Where or who

• Who are the thought leaders

• Where is the need

Product management

Global

Local

Customised

Software vendor – core

team

Software vendor – local

team

Customers

IDEAS

Global

Local

Customised

IS

IS/College

Schools

IDEAS

How can we be more agile

Re- Use – learn from others

– Use other people’s stuff• In house• Open source• Package

• Small is beautiful

• Mythical man month

• Encourage people

– to do– to tell

Discovery and Sharing

Balance between doing and bringing others aboard

– Strategies• IT Strategy and Information Architecture

– Planning Processes– Standards

• everyone wants ‘their standards’• code libraries

– Documentation • Don’t need a lot if it is small• Project web site• SOA Registry

– Events

What Tech Apps Uses

• SOA – WS*

• Code – Java and Cold Fusion

• RDBMS – Oracle, MySQL SQLserver

• Web/App server – Apache and Tomcat

• Authentication – SSL/EASE (Michigan Cosign)

– Avoid IP based restrictions

Wiki Exemplar

• People using wikis since around 2004/5

• November 07 start of central service

• 235 spaces

• More than one a day and still accelerating

• Media wiki / PHP wiki / Twiki / Confluence