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EDS' Next Big Thing Blog: Read and Respond to What the EDS Fellows Say About Technology

Read and respond to what the EDS Fellows have to say about the future of technology on EDS' Next Big Thing Blog on eds.com.

Unique is where the value is

by Charlie Bess

In preparation for a discussion about the future of value delivery in IT, I was going to cover how business and IT will be different than approaches from the past. Rather than turn it all into a text blog entry, I thought I'd try publishing a mind map. It does not include antidotes, but it may convey context better than just a text document...

Published Friday, November 18, 2005 6:31 PM

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Comments

Posted by Jeremy Huppatz Wednesday, November 30, 2005 7:02 AM

Hi Charlie,

There's some very canny observations there. Is it possible that some of the outcomes from this kind of thinking could include new software design and project management patterns? For example:

* Design for rapid obsolescence: The Agile Enterprise framework already starts us down this track, but it's going to take some time for the new deal to sink into the heads of experienced project managers and business analysts whose practices and patterns are based around questions related to the requirements we need to implement TODAY rather than the ability to adapt to requirements that may arise TOMORROW.
* Closed-loop information architectures: See the works of W.H. Inmon and Claudia Imhoff re: their Corporate Information Factory model. The ultimate agile application architecture is one in which transactional information is filtered through the corporate data store (Data Warehouse/Operational Data Store) and various data mining analyses to tune the transactional systems in a continuous feedback loop.
* As a corollary to the ideas above, it should be possible to write business models that are self-adapting and self-enhancing. With sufficiently powerful agent-based algorithms and a well-documented/well-managed data store it should be possible to continually refine pricing models, operational structures, training outcomes, and any number of other organizational parameters.

I'm sure I've only skimmed the surface, but it seems to me that there's a lot of opportunities here if only we make the choice to invest in the concepts and champion their deployment to our customers.

Regards

JH

Posted by Charles Bess Wednesday, November 30, 2005 7:44 PM

When you think about some of the goal seeking algorithms that are out there now and the possibility of solid business models that hand normal operations, the possibilities for simulation and making the organization respond to events in the environment boggle the mind.
On the other hand, it should be obvious that people are headed down that path, it is just a matter of time.

Posted by Mark Monday, January 23, 2006 8:28 PM

You should restructure everything, destroying the synergy of the few functioning teams you have left. : - )