On Frankenarchitecture, DevOps, Strategic IT, and the Culture of Digital Transformation

I've received some smart and interesting feedback on my blog posts via LinkedIn. So this week, I'd like to share some of that feedback.

On Frankenarchitecture

I posted on 12 warning signs of bad application architecture and received some good suggestions to add to this list:

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5 Things Digital Transformation Leaders Should do this Summer

Last year, I posted 5 things CIO should do this summer as a reminder to CIO to get out of the weeds and smell the roses. So this year, here is a follow up post on what digital transformation leaders should do this summer.

And not just CIO! CDOs (digital and data), CMOs, and all of the key leaders driving different aspects of the transformation program.

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Meeting notes for your agile and scrum meetings? Here's why they are important and some options to implement

My question for the agile scrum masters, coaches, and team leads today is whether or not you are documenting meeting notes after planning sessions, standups, and other common scrum meetings?

You might be tempted to do away with meeting notes as a relic of the past. In fact, if you have a small collocated team that has a long tenure working together, then I agree that it might be overkill to document notes when everyone on the team is easily accessible.

Even for geographically dispersed teams, some might suggest using Slack or similar collaboration tool is a reasonable substitute for meeting notes. These tools are a reasonable option if the history of discussions and decisions at meetings have limited long term value.

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What Drives Agile Teams to Become Agile Organizations

Last week I moderated a panel at nGage's Enterprise Transformation Exchange on Developing an Agile IT Organization: Concepts, Culture and Concerns. The message from panelists was clear. Organizations looking to transform need to go beyond scrum practices and improving IT project execution. CIOs and other IT leaders are looking to agile practices to transform operations, develop new products, drive a stronger collaboration between business and technology organizations, and to establish a more agile mindset from employees up to executives. That means evolving from agile practices to an agile organization, culture, and mindset.

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12 Warning Signs of Bad Application Architecture

At a #CIOChat this weekend we were asked about warning signs for bad architecture. Here was my quick response capturing just a tweet-sized summary of architecture that "smells bad" -

Too slow making biz needs. Too difficult/complex to explain to new technologists. Lack of defined integration process (closed system). Can’t be deployed to the cloud. Performance or stability issues. #ciochat

— Isaac Sacolick (@nyike) June 2, 2018

Many responses were around "accidental architecture" that is "cobbled together" and sometimes degrading into "Frankenstein architecture." There were many technical issues identifies such as "data integration via feed files", "root cause analysis is rarely done", "testing with real live data", "diagrams remind you of fettuccine alfredo" (if there are diagrams), and the awful scenario of "when a system crashes and you go to do a restore and the tape is blank."

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10 ways Digital Organizations are Smarter Faster than their Peers

A quote from my book, Driving Digital: The Leader's Guide to Business Transformation Through Technology

Here's how digital organizations are smarter and faster -

1. They change their culture by developing "bottoms up" practices like agile, ideation, relationship developing CRM, and citizen's development.

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Leading Digital Transformation: Finding the right velocity in driving organizational change

I was recently asked, "Isaac, what keeps you up at night?" My answer is simple. In transformation programs, going too slow can lead to your business being disrupted. If your competitors are putting out great experiences, are more competitive winning business by leveraging data, or are demonstrating strategic business impacts with AI, blockchain, or IoT then your business is at risk. Here's a quote from my book Driving Digital: The Leader's Guide to Business Transformation Through Technology

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